Sattahip do-gooders give cash, supplies to family living in old school, but not new home

0
1424
The five children wai their benefactors, thanking for their help.

Sattahip residents came out in droves to donate cash and household goods to a family living in an abandoned school, although no one supplied them with proper accommodations.



Please Support Pattaya Mail

Viral social media posts that led to Thai-language news stories about a grandmother with lung cancer and her low-income day-laborer daughter caring for five kids in closed Ban Nong Ya School brought out a stream of do-gooders who visited the family Nov. 24.

The kids cleaned up their room to welcome their new beds, rice and dried food, toys, and other necessities.

Since the story broke, people have donated 140,000 baht for the education of the five children ages 6-17, new mattresses, rice, food, toys and daily supplies. But no one has come forward to give them an actual home instead of the empty school where they have lived for seven years.

During that time the group has lived on food donations from monks in a temple in the Nong Ya Noi Community in Plutaluang while the kids attended Wat Khao Kantamart School.

Matriarch Fatima Suttisom, 53, welcomed guests despite the frail condition while daughter and mother Sutasinee, 28, worked for minimum wage at a construction site.

She promised to use the donated cash to keep the children in school and do her best to give them a good quality of life.