Our programs

Milk Run. Sister Joan started the Milk Run in 1992, when many newborns in the slum were not surviving their first year. Every box goes to a registered mother, as Sister Joan always insisted: each receives a box of milk formula every two weeks for 12 months, now 15 since COVID. At its peak in the 2000s, 180 mothers were registered at a time. Since 1992 that has added up to about 95,000 boxes of formula for more than 3,500 mothers and their babies.

Rice Run. After years of helping individual households, Sister Joan saw that the elderly of Klong Toei also needed basic food, and in 2002 the Rice Run began as a group effort. Each February we register senior households for the following 12 months, and every fortnight each one collects a parcel of rice, cooking oil, fish sauce and dried pork. For most of those years Sister Joan registered 120 households; today it is about 60. Since 2002, roughly 60,000 food parcels have been handed out.

School Run. Education was always at the heart of the Presentation Sisters’ work. In 2019 we added the School Run to help registered students continue their studies and complete a degree at Thai universities. Six students have graduated so far, and four more are studying at universities in Bangkok.

None of this would have been possible without the volunteers who have kept the programs going, week after week, and the steady financial support of the Presentation Sisters (PBVM), and one woman who decided to help the poor.