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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...