Thailand Karens
The Central Thailand Mission (CTM) based here in Bangkok provides the basics of food, clothes and other essentials to destitute communities. Their work includes bettering conditions in an orphanage, a center for the physically handicapped, and a shelter for abused women, all of which we visited in the greater Bangkok area.
Another downtrodden community that CTM has undertaken is to help is the marginalized Karen community who have been persecuted and pushed out of their homeland, victims of neighboring Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing.
The Karens have been persecuted by their own government, forcing them to flee Burma into Thailand, where they then struggle to survive against discrimination and the odds of finding livelihood in a new land.
Family Care helped CTM with a grant to supply a clean water system for deprived Karen villagers in an IDP (Internationally Displaced Persons) settlement in northwestern Thailand. The grant also provides for the establishment of a self-sustaining fish farming program, as well as providing educational materials for a school for the children of these refugees from Burma.