This is our last Rice Run of a decade. So much has happened and so many people assisted in this program in the past 10 years. We have been serving the people of Rang Moo and Suan Ooy neighborhoods every two weeks with a large bag of rice, 5 cans of sardines, a fish sauce and SILK has been adding a bottle of cooling oil to each package. Sister has started this and the Presentation Sisters of Western Australia and the volunteers in Bangkok are continuing this project of mercy and compassion for the elderly. On Jan 16, 2020, we will register recipients for the next calendar year.
Friday was no exception and 98 seniors and handicapped people that are registered in Rice Run received the assitence. I loaded Sister’s truck and 8 volunteers led by Shannon came in the afternoon to distribute the help.
The last Milk Run of 2019. Gale and Vivian came along and Theresa brought along five volunteers to join Erez and me. At Suan Ooy, Avi came with her two beautiful little ones to share gifts with Thai moms and their babies…
The 13 of us for the last Milk Run of the year. Happy Holidays!!
We gave 32 boxes of baby formula and registered 3 new babies. In Suan Ooy, we gave out another 23 boxes to moms and elderly and registered another 1 newborn. Our numbers seem to stabilize at about 30 and 23 for the Milk Run. A year ago at the last Milk Run of 2018, we gave out 37 and 20. Another year is over for the Milk Run and this program is entering year number 28!… Happy 2020 to you all!
May organized another great company visit for students in our School Run project. We met on Thu afternoon to get a tour of Bumrungrad International Hospital. A boy and two girl students couldn’t make it but two girls and two boys did and along Carmen, Janna and Milos had a most detailed and exiting tour of this phenomenal Thai company.
Carmen, Platu, Art, Earn, Janna, Blue, K. Kim and K. Pagaa in Welcome Center
Khun Kim and Khun Pagaa were our amazing tour guides, showing us the Welcome Center, one of the Clinics of the Hospital, a standard hospital room (each includes a full bathroom and a kitchen, and is a size of a small luxury apartment) and other facilities. Our tour ended with a hour long Q&A about the hospital history, staff, jobs and approximate salaries, even the benefits the employees get. We felt like there was no question unanswered and left feeling so impressed by the Bumrungrad Way of doing things.
Another great Milk Run event with beautiful, cold weather – we hit 19C (66F) and it felt so cold for us living in Bangkok. Still, the 29 moms and careers came to collect in Rang Moo, many of them bringing their little ones.
Tiana says hello to this little bundle of joy!
In Suan Ooy, we gave away another 24 boxes of milk formula, 10 going to the “oldies”. December always brings travel and a change of volunteer faces in Klong Toei. On Friday we had three volunteers come for the last time before they travel away for the Winter break but also several new faces showed up ready to cover the work for the next 6-8 weeks… Winter Hollidays are here again…
WARNING: a very dull post meant for the Milk Run volunteers!! Proceed with caution – this post may put you to sleep!
The Milk Run recipients are registered and the baby receives milk formula usually until it’s 1st birthday. We are still using the card registration system that evolved over the 27 years of the Milk Run program and while very powerful at preventing abuse and keeping track of attendance, this system does require some regular maintenance. This post is about how to take care of the card registration system.
Registration cards live in 3 separate boxes: 1 for the office supplies (blue handle) and 1 box each for the recipients from Rang Moo and Suan Ooy communities. Every 2 weeks, as we register new moms and have their pictures taken, we update the cards…We do 1 community at a time, first step: is to add the new photos to the cards. The photos should be taken from some distance so they can be cut to fit in the top-left corner of a registration card. A photo should clearly show faces of both mom and the baby.Once the photos are attached to the corresponding cards, second step: is to create enough new registration cards so we can add more moms that will come for the first time. The new registration cards are saved in small photo albums marked with “*1st” and “*2nd” – Rang Moo and Suan Ooy. New cards should be numbered using the numbers that are not used in the current stack of registration cards. To create more blank registration cards, the third step: is to make more photocopies of registration form, cut them into individual size and… … glue them to index cards we purchase at B2S or another office supply store. Finally, each new registration card should also have a corresponding small card that a mother will get to carry and show us when they come to collect milk formula. We create these small cards by cutting the index card in 4 equal pieces.
The admin work can be done every two weeks or once a month. It only takes an hour of loving kindness and desire to show these moms that someone cares that the cards and pics look good, that the old, beat up cards are replaced if needed and the whole system is kept free of clutter and with plenty of pens, staples, paper glue and index cards. The rubber stamps we use need minimal care – we add more stamp ink only once or twice a year.
Ideally, we rotate the Milk Run admins every 3 to 6 months so no one feels stuck with this work. As an alternative, admin group can be (and has been done many times) as a morning group activity. Thank you for making it through this post! 🙂
May suggested and then organized to take our School Run students on a theater event. Along with Janna, Michelle, Ange, Trini, David and Judy they went to see a performance of the Peel the Limelight theater troupe. The two students who are interested in pursuing careers in performing arts were naturally delighted but everyone had a chance to discover a part of the world of live performance that they rarely had any exposure to before. Great job May and our group of adults dedicated to these young Thais…
A difficult shopping day for me – I was alone loading the truck at Makro plus there were issues there with affordable fish sauce being out of stock and another one when I came to the checkout to discover I mixed different types of oil and I had to go back and reload things… We are always so fast at shopping so I guess this was the one time that we needed to slow down and appreciate what we experience on all other days.
I didn’t notice that yellow and beige cases of oil were all mixed up. Cost me a lot of time…
Fortunately, the Rice Run distribution went great. As always, we had a lot of helping hands including the boys from the School Run program that keep showing up to help. Sister would love seeing them in action…
A great Milk Run with some new faces – today we had three new volunteers show up to land a hand. View came to see how she could help us with Social Media, Nikola was there to take pictures of the event.
Grace was with us too but not in this pic!
The 10 of us gave out 31 boxes of Milk formula in Rang Moo and added 3 new babies to the program. Another 24 boxes of milk formula were given away in Suan Ooy and we also added 2 new babies there. Adi brought a huge bag of toys donated by her women group – all were given away in 15 minutes in Suan Ooy. Here are the photos…
This Sat, Nov 9th was the due date for school fees for the students of PatumKonga School for boys. All three of our boys showed up to thank us and one even brought his dad along.
Fiew with his dad who works as a security guard in Bangkok Port
Each boy received 3200 baht (about US$100) for their semester fees, Nov 2019 to Apr 2020. We purchased uniforms for them 4 months ago and the girls in the School Run program will have their fees due on Dec 1.
PatumKonga School is located on Sukhumvit, between Soi 40 and Soi 42. It was amazing to get a look into Thai education and facilities and everyone you meet is so friendly and helpful.
This was the first in the series of monthly events we are organizing for the students we support in the School Run project. Every month we will take them to another organization and show them how people come together to offer a service or a product and what it takes for a young person from Klong Toei to join that world.
May has taken upon herself to organize these School Run events and she delivered an amazing evening with 137 Pillars Serviced Suites and Residences. The top management was there to welcome our students and they were given a tour and a Q and A session along with refreshments and lots of positive energy.
