Blog
Always Be Ready When the Opportunity Comes
Sawangjit Busuwa, or Jit to her friends, grew up in a lower middle-class family of pineapple farmers in Nakhon Panom province in northeast Thailand. Weekends would see her pitch in on the plantation harvesting the fruit alongside her parents. On weekdays, she would be...
No Longer ‘Blocking Out’ Life
Since failing to make it to university after high school and moving to Bangkok for work in 1995, Kanokon Matchimo (Riang) has experienced divorce twice, become a single mother, and shuffled through a range of jobs, most of which she did not like. Now a janitor at an...
Life’s Getting Better
She hopes to be a teacher one day, but when Aye Say (Mai) was growing up in Myanmar her family had a different life path for her. Attaining educational qualifications was not important they felt. They wanted her to be a farmer. Mai’s time in school would often get...
From Dreaming About The Future to Planning For It
We ended 2023 and started the new year on a high note, thanks to Girls Opportunity Alliance. With a grant from them, we conducted ‘Preparing for Success’ training for 1,506 junior high school girls in northeast Thailand between November last year and this January....
All Under One Roof
We capped the year 2023 with one of our most ambitious projects to date. For the first time, key stakeholders involved in the reporting of gender-based violence (GBV) in schools met under one roof in Ubon Ratchathani province. We’d hoped that by bringing together the...
From Ubon to Washington DC
July was a whirlwind for me. In the course of several weeks, my team and I made our way through over 10 schools and reached out to more than 2,000 high school girls in northeast Thailand including Ubon province. We trained, distributed self-learning kits and collected...
“I WANT TO BE A TEACHER!”
Our stay in Ubon Ratchathani, Amnat Charoen and Sisaket provinces this summer was revelatory in many ways. Apart from learning that schools were cited by most high school girls as the place they had experienced violence, on a more positive note, we also gained...
Schools are not that safe!
This summer we embarked on the road to Ubon Ratchathani, Amnat Charoen and Sisaket provinces in a project funded by the Irish Aid In-Country Micro Projects Scheme. Part of our work involved giving 1,200 high school girls a self-learning kit on identifying and dealing...
FOSTERNG A SAFE AND AN INCLUSIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Some 20 minutes outside of Ubon Ratchathani city centre, Warinchamrab School is a progressive institution we’ve worked with for several years now and have always had a good experience. It’s no different on this day when we had special visitors. The school was abuzz...
“ALL GENDER IDENTITIES DESERVE RESPECT” SAYS CANADIAN AMBASSADOR
Early last year we took on a challenge with support of the Canadian Embassy in Thailand. We’ve never done something quite like it: mainstream gender inclusivity education in select high schools on a pilot basis. Could we do it? Well, there’s no turning back since we...
PRATTHANADEE HITS NEW MILESTONE IN NORTHEAST THAILAND
On the ground in Ubon Ratchathani for more than a decade now, we’ve trained over 30,000 high school girls in the province and surrounding areas on dealing with gender-based violence and abuse
Back On The Road In Ubon!
By Pratthanadee Staff | Bangkok, Girls, Women After having our wings clipped for the last two years by the pandemic, we’re happy to report that we’re back on the road in Ubon Ratchathani. For close to a decade, we’d run workshops for teenage girls in poorly resourced...
Financial Literacy Keeps Them Afloat During Pandemic
Nong and Jin, students at Pratthanadee Foundation, share quite similar life experiences.Both have husbands who not only didn’t show up in the marriage but also left them with debt and the sole responsibility of taking care of the children and extended families. Their...
WE MAKE LEMONADE TOO!
In over two decades of our work, we had to deal with political and economic ups and downs in the kingdom. But they never lasted long. Thailand, known for its Teflon tenacity, always bounced back. The Covid pandemic, coming up to its two-year mark soon, is however a...
Women like Duang are Thinking Ahead in a Post-Pandemic World
When the factory she was working for suddenly started giving line workers more days off, Duang became apprehensive. She had come to Bangkok when she was just 17, dropping out of school in Chaiyaphum province. She had worked in jewelry manufacture ever since, setting...
Women’s Day: By investing in herself, Nang lifted others around her
Nang has always known to depend on herself for survival. Originally from Khon Kaen province, she dropped out of secondary school because she needed to work to supplement her family’s low income. Like many other women before her, Nang moved to Bangkok in search of...
มีคนทำร้ายร่างกายกันตรงหน้า ทำไงดี ??
เราสามารถทำอะไรได้บ้างหากพบเจอหรือเข้าไปอยู่ในเหตุการณ์ความรุนแรง
? ตั้งสติแล้วโทรแจ้งตำรวจและเรียกคนเข้ามาช่วย …
วิธีรับมือเมื่อถูกทำร้ายร่างกาย
? ตั้งสติแล้วพาตัวเองไปอยู่ในสถานที่ปลอดภัย
? โทร 191 จากนั้นโทรแจ้งสถาบันการแพทย์ฉุกเฉินที่เบอร์ 1669…
แฟนเก่าตามรังควาน ทำไงดี!!!
ในช่วงที่ผ่านมาทางมูลนิธิได้รับการติดต่อขอความช่วยเหลือทั้งทางโทรศัพท์และกล่องข้อความเฟสบุ๊คถึงกรณีถูกตามรังควานและข่มขู่คุกคามจากอดีตสามี…
Your first newsletter of 2021!
Sawadee pee mai! We hope this email finds you and your family well in the new year. Just when we thought we were almost out of the woods on the pandemic, a second wave of Covid-19 infections surfaced in the kingdom. We have had to stop physical classes temporarily at...
‘Makeup’ Your Life Thailand
The Pratthanadee Foundation recently hosted makeup artist Ms Sasinipa Siripitukdet and her crew at our office. They held their "Makeup Your Life Thailand" workshop for our students from the ‘Better Me’ class. Everyone was provided with a full set of cosmetics and...
LIFE LESSONS FROM THE SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS
I graduated in March 2020 and I was so looking forward to entering the workforce, like the rest of my university mates. Then life served up a giant curve ball and knocked me off my feet. The Covid-19 pandemic hit, a partial lockdown followed, making it difficult for...
Graduated Finally!
Last year, we kickstarted a project sponsored by the folks at JD Sports. They were drawn to our mission of empowering underprivileged girls and women as this dovetailed with the causes they were passionate about. The international sports fashion retailer, which opened...
FON AND JOY
Oranuch Wonggo or Fon is originally from Nakhon Pathom, a city some 60 kilometres from Bangkok. She became a caregiver at a young age, looking after her ailing father when she was just 16. Fon continued her studies while taking care of him and graduated with a...
Q&A with Watinee Khutrakul (Poom)
Q: How was your experience teaching during the lockdown? A: We had classes via video calls as classes were suspended. The students had a lot of free time in their rented rooms and so I thought this was a great opportunity to review what we had learnt. In addition, I...
Q&A with Suppapong Sooksangchaya (Lek)
Q: How does it feel to be back in class? A: It’s great! Being able to resume a face-to-face class with my students makes me feel much more in control. I feel that I can handle the class more effectively. I can move around the room, approach each student who may need...
Q&A with Ed Tauscher
Q: How does it feel to be back in class? A: It feels wonderful to back in class! In-person teaching benefits all students and teachers. Classroom participation helps students learn English and there is no substitute for it! Q: What are some of the challenges you face...
Q&A with Panida Ottesen
Q: How does it feel to be back in class? A: It is really wonderful to be back in class and see everyone at the foundation again, both the staff and the students. In class, we can see each other's faces and I can better assist the students when they start to show...
Q&A with Claudia Vratilova
Q: How does it feel to be back in class? A: Good! During the lockdown I taught via LINE – making teaching videos and having Q&A sessions with some of the students. This was a useful fill-in in the absence of classes but not as effective as face-to-face...
HOLDING ON AND LIVING WELL
Arun Naulnom, or just Arun to her classmates and teachers at Pratthanadee, is originally from Phetchabun, a province close to the north of Thailand. A single mother of two, she’s been cleaning homes for over 20 years. The freelance domestic helper earns about 35,000...