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Sunshine Hotel Group awards 200,000 baht in scholarships
The children of Sunshine Hotel
Group staff members
say thanks for the generous scholarships.
Phasakorn Channgam
The Sunshine Hotel group donated 200,000 baht in
scholarships to 82 children of company employees.
Group President San Supornsahatrangsi and Vice-President
Wanthanee Supornsahatrangsi presented the scholarships at the Sunshine
Garden Resort May 8. Recipients were children of employees at the group’s
Sunshine Hotel & Residence, Sunshine Garden Resort, Loma Hotel Resort & Spa,
Green Park Resort, Sunshine Vista Serviced Apartments and Ravintra Beach
Resort and Spa.
The awards consisted of 1,500 baht for kindergarten
students, 2,000 baht for primary school, 2,500 baht for secondary school and
3,000 baht for university students.
San said the funds will not only help Sunshine families
financially, it will raise morale among company employees.
PSC makes annual
visit to Camillian Center
Father Giovanni talks with one of the children.
William Macey
PSC Charity Chairman
It is always a great pleasure to meet Father Giovanni
at the Camillian Center in Bang Chang for he has an inexhaustible supply
of energy to help the residents.
Members of the Pattaya Sports Club make an annual
visit there to provide many rolls of brightly colored cotton, which
enables the ladies to make a year’s supply of bedding.
Some of the children pose for a commemorative
photo
with representatives of PSC.
Fr. Ray Children’s Home celebrates monthly birthdays
Derek Franklin
Most of us will remember our birthdays as young
children. The excitement we felt as the day got nearer, the joy of
finding a pile of birthday cards which the postman had delivered through
the post box and the wishes we made as we blew out the candles on the
cake. Even as adults most of us look forward to celebrating our special
day, even if we are all getting a year older and spending the day with
friends and family and reflecting on how lucky we are.
A bag full of junk food - just what every twelve year old boy wants.
But there are many children living in Pattaya who
have never celebrated their birthdays, never heard anyone sing ‘Happy
Birthday’ to them and never ripped open a beautifully wrapped gift to
find a brand new toy inside. A lot of families are too poor to afford a
birthday cake, finding enough rice to eat is more important, and many
parents are struggling to earn enough money to buy clothes for their
child than buy birthday presents.
Every two months at the Fr. Ray Children’s Home there
is a birthday party to celebrate all those children whose birthday falls
in the current and previous month. The cook spends several days baking,
making sure that each birthday boy or girl receives their own individual
cake, complete with candles ablaze, and that there is enough cake for
everyone else. A birthday present is presented to each child and it may
contain toiletries, chocolate, candy and clothes, and every time there
is a party there are always a few residents who are celebrating for the
very first time.
All the children receive a slice of cake.
When the most recent birthday party was held in early
May one young boy had reached the grand old age of twelve, almost a
teenager, and he had never before had a birthday party or received a
birthday present. After dinner the children all gathered for the party
and when this twelve year old boy’s name was called he made his way up
to the stage where Suppachai, the homes director, presented him with a
large bag filled with his favourite junk food; what twelve year old boy
would want a bag full of toiletries? As he left the stage he marched
straight past his friends, found a quiet corner, sat down alone and
opened his first ever birthday gift. When he had taken a good look at
everything he then called his mates over and he handed each of them a
share of the goods. He also received an envelope with cash inside, ten
baht for each year.
Nong makes a birthday wish.
The Fr. Ray Children’s Home is now home to one
hundred and seventy children. The youngest is just five years of age and
soon to be starting school, whilst the oldest is twenty four and has
recently graduated university with a degree in Industrial Management.
The Home provides everything a parent would try to provide: enough food,
an education, health care and the love and care children need to grow
into decent members of society.
The Fr. Ray Children’s Home is one of the projects managed by the Fr.
Ray Foundation. More information can be found at www .fr-ray.org or
email [email protected]
All the children receive cash
in an envelope - ten
baht for every year.
Bo receives a new pair of shoes.
107 children complete
Sriracha sports training
Theerarak
Suthathiwong
More than 100 Sriracha-area children learned futsal,
basketball and swimming during this year’s Sriracha summer sports
training camp.
Two youngsters show off the certificates they earned
at the Sriracha summer sports training camp.
Sriracha Deputy Mayor Weerayot Srisawat handed out
certificates to the 107 students at closing ceremonies May 9 at the
city’s Gymnasium Sports complex.
The program was established to provide a healthy
diversion for children on their school holidays and keep them away from
drugs.
The training camp offered lessons and game in futsal, basketball and
swimming. About 120 youngsters applied for training, but only 107
graduated.
St. Andrews Book Week a resounding success
A performance of 'Where The Wild Things Are'
by Maurice Sendak was a
huge hit
Damon Parker
St. Andrews International School, Green Valley held
our annual Book Week on March 15-17 which saw a myriad of activities
during the fun filled educational event.
The jamboree started with a parade of characters and
it was fantastic with more children, parents and teachers dressing up
than ever before. It was great to see so many people enthusiastically
participating into the event.
Visiting author Nick Toczek impressed everyone by showcasing a a
variety of talents
This year’s variety of characters included Godzilla,
Zorro, Geronimo Stilton, Robinson Crusoe, Peter Pan and a cow as well as
witches, wizards, superheroes, ghosts, fairies, pirates and plenty of
fairytale characters. At the end of the parade a group acted out “Where
the wild things are” by Maurice Sendak with an excellent performance by
Alana Claire from Reception who stole the show as Max in her wolf suit.
During the week we had a myriad of activities to get
children reading and looking at books. We had lunch-time story telling
sessions with parents and teachers giving up their time to read to the
children. We also had students from year 6 giving up their lunch breaks
every day to read to younger children and the primary council spent
their regular meeting time on Thursday reading to their peers or younger
children outside the year 1 classrooms.
All through the week children “Caught Read Handed”
were given bookmarks if they were seen reading for pleasure. That is
reading when they have the choice to do anything they would like to do.
It was great to see so many children spending so much of their time
reading and enjoying books and we hope that they will continue to
continue reading with regular challenges from the library. On Wednesday
March17th we had the privilege of hosting author,
performance poet, puppeteer, stand-up comedian and magician Nick Toczek
in school.
The story telling sessions proved very popular with
the children.
The day started with a 1 hour show to the whole of
Primary as Nick recited some of his poetry, told stories of his life,
performed with a puppet monster and amazed the children with some magic
tricks. He had the children laughing in the aisles, and even managed to
raise a giggle from the teachers.
Following a short break Nick took workshops where he
showed pupils from the Primary School some great ideas for writing
poetry. He got them all involved shouting out ideas for rhymes which he
wrote on a whiteboard.
Author, performance poet, puppeteer, stand-up comedian and magician
Nick Toczek had his captive audience entertained throughout the day
After lunch Nick worked with the entire secondary
school, including the IB students. He took three more workshops where he
talked to the students about the power of writing and the many benefits
of developing good writing skills. The IB students thoroughly enjoyed
themselves as they learned of ways to think outside of the box and
produce some truly creative writing.
After a long day you might expect that Nick
disappeared back to his hotel to relax by the pool and take a well
deserved rest. But no, Nick came back later to give an evening
performance for parents and families. The day was a resounding success
and we wouldn’t hesitate to have Nick back if he ever visits Thailand
again!
No expense was spared in creating colourful characters
as teachers and children dressed in their favorite literary characters
joined in the fun. The older children even took time to read stories to
the younger ones.
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