So, it turns out that this is my 100th blog post. Too bad it's been nearly three years since I last had a chance to write. In January of 2017, my life suddenly got very complicated very quickly and trying to balance working full time at two NGOs while fundraising for one of them that was a startup took way more of my time than I thought it would. So, I'll give you some quick updates:
- January 2017: Launched Jojo's Sanctuary with my Thai partners Butsaba, Jay and Orawan (our website is www.jojosthailand.org)
- Received a grant for $10,000 from Vital Voices in the US which helped us get started in building a suite of trainings for at risk youth about Trafficking Prevention. We wrote a proposal to provide 6 trainings in a year and at the end of 2017 we had done 30! We were so under budget we were able to sponsor some school uniforms for lower income students, donate to the hospital bills for a girl with cancer and provide back to school packs for about 20 students.
- March 2017: Went to the US for fundraising, which went pretty well for a first time out!
- Orawan decided she needed to focus on her family and helping her parents run their business instead of joining our startup, so she remained on our advisory board but didn't work with us on a day to day basis.
- Had a great sendoff from HUG Project with the students doing the traditional string tying ceremony and saying blessings of farewell to me. The thing that made me cry the most was the two pre-teen boys who said "I'm not ashamed to say I love you and give you a hug!" So sweet because physical affection is very much NOT culturally Thai.
- April 2017: Started working with Care for Children developing plans for how to best approach working with the government to provide foster care for emergency cases and how to get licensed as foster parents.
- June 2017: Took in Billy as a foster child. You may remember, he was living on the streets and we tried to get him into GED classes but it was just too difficult for him to adjust. Got him enrolled in a new school a bit further away from the city.
- August 2017: Celebrated Billy's 15th birthday.
- The rest of the year saw us attending a bunch of trainings and fleshing out how we wanted to run our family strengthening program.
-October 2017: attended a training about Keeping Families Together, a program that works with churches to run family strengthening programs. They basically confirmed all our plans so we decided to go ahead and run with it. We called our project "Building Family Dreams."
- December 2017: celebrated Christmas with HUG Project.
- January 2018: Started prepping in earnest for our Building Family Dreams launch and started working on 7 citizenship cases.
- March 2018: Launched Building Family Dreams with 8 families.
- April 2018: Went back to the US for more fundraising. Slightly less successful this time, sadly, but still enough to keep us going month to month.
-June 2018: celebrated one year of fostering Billy with no running away from home and not a single missed day of school!
- August 2018: celebrated Billy's 16th birthday!
- Launched our economic empowerment portion of Building Family Dreams, buying sewing machines, lawn mowers, pigs, chickens and cows for the members so they could start their own microbusinesses.
- December 2018: Had a huge Christmas party at the botanic gardens with games, gifts, a buffet dinner, Christmas carols and a sermon from the village pastor. One of the best Christmas parties I have been to!
- Celebrated Christmas Day with Sophie and Billy at my friend Jume's house with her kids and foster kids and my friend Helen from HUG Project. We all had such a great time and ate the most eclectic Christmas dinner I have ever seen. We had potatoes au gratin, apple pie, watermelon, fried rice, omelettes, stir fried veggies, spicy tom yum soup and KFC fried chicken. Everyone was stuffed and satisfied.
- February 2019: Got citizenship for 3 kids and 1 mom all in the same visit! Talked a village chief out of extorting thousands of dollars out of them to sign the papers in exchange for paying for his gas, food and missed day of wages (about $45).
- April 2019: Billy got arrested for drunk driving on his motorbike on Palm Sunday which also happened to be the biggest Thai festival of the year. I was NOT impressed, to say the least.
- May 2019: Back to the US again for more fundraising! I felt pretty good about this trip and got to meet and speak with so many new people and places. It was very exciting and I also got to attend my friend Wednesday's wedding and pseduo meet her baby boy (she was 9 months pregnant, so it was more like watching him do somersaults in her stomach).
- June 2019: Visited my friend Bethany and my godchildren in Washington DC for a week before popping over for a surprise and short visit to my parents in Washington State. Highlights were spending time with the godchildren I hadn't seen in 7 years and visiting the Museum of African American History and Culture. YOU MUST GO.
- August 2019: graduation camp for Building Family Dreams. What a ride it was! This village still needs a lot of support, so we aren't just abandoning them, but we are planning to help them provide this program to another Lahu village in 2020 while we put most of our effort into working with families through the Chiang Mai Boy's Orphanage. They have 8 families of boys who have gone home to their bio families after growing up in the orphanage so they need a lot of relationship building skills, which we are excited to provide.
Whew, there you have it, three years in a nutshell. I will be trying to update this more frequently between writing blog posts on our website, writing newsletters and potentially working on a writing a book. It's quite the ride, this life in Thailand!
For more photos, please check out www.jojosthailand.org
- January 2017: Launched Jojo's Sanctuary with my Thai partners Butsaba, Jay and Orawan (our website is www.jojosthailand.org)
- Received a grant for $10,000 from Vital Voices in the US which helped us get started in building a suite of trainings for at risk youth about Trafficking Prevention. We wrote a proposal to provide 6 trainings in a year and at the end of 2017 we had done 30! We were so under budget we were able to sponsor some school uniforms for lower income students, donate to the hospital bills for a girl with cancer and provide back to school packs for about 20 students.
- March 2017: Went to the US for fundraising, which went pretty well for a first time out!
- Orawan decided she needed to focus on her family and helping her parents run their business instead of joining our startup, so she remained on our advisory board but didn't work with us on a day to day basis.
- Had a great sendoff from HUG Project with the students doing the traditional string tying ceremony and saying blessings of farewell to me. The thing that made me cry the most was the two pre-teen boys who said "I'm not ashamed to say I love you and give you a hug!" So sweet because physical affection is very much NOT culturally Thai.
- April 2017: Started working with Care for Children developing plans for how to best approach working with the government to provide foster care for emergency cases and how to get licensed as foster parents.
- June 2017: Took in Billy as a foster child. You may remember, he was living on the streets and we tried to get him into GED classes but it was just too difficult for him to adjust. Got him enrolled in a new school a bit further away from the city.
- August 2017: Celebrated Billy's 15th birthday.
- The rest of the year saw us attending a bunch of trainings and fleshing out how we wanted to run our family strengthening program.
-October 2017: attended a training about Keeping Families Together, a program that works with churches to run family strengthening programs. They basically confirmed all our plans so we decided to go ahead and run with it. We called our project "Building Family Dreams."
- December 2017: celebrated Christmas with HUG Project.
- January 2018: Started prepping in earnest for our Building Family Dreams launch and started working on 7 citizenship cases.
- March 2018: Launched Building Family Dreams with 8 families.
- April 2018: Went back to the US for more fundraising. Slightly less successful this time, sadly, but still enough to keep us going month to month.
-June 2018: celebrated one year of fostering Billy with no running away from home and not a single missed day of school!
- August 2018: celebrated Billy's 16th birthday!
- Launched our economic empowerment portion of Building Family Dreams, buying sewing machines, lawn mowers, pigs, chickens and cows for the members so they could start their own microbusinesses.
- December 2018: Had a huge Christmas party at the botanic gardens with games, gifts, a buffet dinner, Christmas carols and a sermon from the village pastor. One of the best Christmas parties I have been to!
- Celebrated Christmas Day with Sophie and Billy at my friend Jume's house with her kids and foster kids and my friend Helen from HUG Project. We all had such a great time and ate the most eclectic Christmas dinner I have ever seen. We had potatoes au gratin, apple pie, watermelon, fried rice, omelettes, stir fried veggies, spicy tom yum soup and KFC fried chicken. Everyone was stuffed and satisfied.
- February 2019: Got citizenship for 3 kids and 1 mom all in the same visit! Talked a village chief out of extorting thousands of dollars out of them to sign the papers in exchange for paying for his gas, food and missed day of wages (about $45).
- April 2019: Billy got arrested for drunk driving on his motorbike on Palm Sunday which also happened to be the biggest Thai festival of the year. I was NOT impressed, to say the least.
- May 2019: Back to the US again for more fundraising! I felt pretty good about this trip and got to meet and speak with so many new people and places. It was very exciting and I also got to attend my friend Wednesday's wedding and pseduo meet her baby boy (she was 9 months pregnant, so it was more like watching him do somersaults in her stomach).
- June 2019: Visited my friend Bethany and my godchildren in Washington DC for a week before popping over for a surprise and short visit to my parents in Washington State. Highlights were spending time with the godchildren I hadn't seen in 7 years and visiting the Museum of African American History and Culture. YOU MUST GO.
- August 2019: graduation camp for Building Family Dreams. What a ride it was! This village still needs a lot of support, so we aren't just abandoning them, but we are planning to help them provide this program to another Lahu village in 2020 while we put most of our effort into working with families through the Chiang Mai Boy's Orphanage. They have 8 families of boys who have gone home to their bio families after growing up in the orphanage so they need a lot of relationship building skills, which we are excited to provide.
Whew, there you have it, three years in a nutshell. I will be trying to update this more frequently between writing blog posts on our website, writing newsletters and potentially working on a writing a book. It's quite the ride, this life in Thailand!
For more photos, please check out www.jojosthailand.org
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