A healthy meal for a refugee child: 30 Eurocents (0,45 USD)!

Please forgive us, if we did not inform about our activities for such a long time. 2009 is a challenging year. We have been battling against the crises and for the people of Burma. Unfortunately, more and more refugees are crossing the border. But: every day over 3.000 children receive a healthy and nutritious meal from our kitchen and, since a short time, also one serving of fruit and milk per week. Please help us, as the waiting list is long. Thank you!!
A ray of sunshine, your team of Help without Frontiers.

PS. We are scheduled to receive the prestigious Italian “Safe Donation Certificate”.

Thank you for your donations, also by credit card! ( Donate! )

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SUMMARY:
1. MEALS, FRUIT AND MILK: Serving over 3.000 refugee children daily
2. PROJECTS: News in brief
3. SEWING WORKSHOP: School uniforms and jackets for Ministry of Education
4. CHRISTMAS: New greeting cards
5. SPONSORS: Grateful for their help
6. SAFE DONATIONS: Our striving for transparency rewarded

Due to its transparent administration, Help without Frontier was the 5th association in South Tyrol to be awarded the seal “Secure Donations”. On top of this we are candidates for the prestigious Italian Safe Donations Certificate.

1. MEALS, FRUIT AND MILK: Serving over 3.000 refugee children daily

Our team in Mae Sot can be proud of its work. It is not an easy task to produce and distribute more than 3.000 healthy and nutritious meals every day for 12 refugee schools and 4 student dormitories. The dormitories receive breakfast and dinner as well, weekends included. The meals from our kitchen are quite popular and more and more new requests have been coming in, which unfortunately we have to decline due to lack of funds. But we are trying hard to find the support to expand the programme. Check the pictures

Meanwhile, thanks to dedicated donations, we have also been able to start our additional nutritional program “Fruit and milk”. Once a week the 3.000 children receive one serving of fruit and one of school milk (200ml). The positive effect on their health is visible with the naked eye. Milk at school. Some pictures.

The cost of one meal is 30 Eurocents or 45 US-Cents, all expenses and the delivery included. For the fruit and milk programme the cost is 15 Eurocents (22 US-Cents) per week. If you want to help us to expand the programme, than please click here.

If you are a company or organization and would like more information about funding the meals for a whole school or dormitory, than just send us an e-mail.

2. PROJECTS: News in brief

Both clinics in Pa Bu Hla Hta and in Kaw Hser are operating, but in a reduced format. The area is now controlled by DKBA, but the continuation of both clinics and 3 of our schools is being tolerated by them. A sign of hope? Read the short report

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The 3 students who last year attended the Mekong Youth Net training in Chiang Rai are now with us for the next year as part of their training programme. In the last months they have developed a training programme for the children in refugee schools, from 4 to 18 years of age. They plan to train the children in health care and personal hygiene, drug prevention, child rights, human trafficking, etc. The first sessions have been completed with very positive feedback. Pictures and short report here.

The ESC-English-Learning-Centre in No Po refugee camp could increase the number of courses and students thanks to the generous support of Hugh Cory’s family.

The children in our small dormitory in Mae La refugee camp are happy that now they have been “adopted” by Kunstdünger, a company in Italy. We also bought a sewing machine to allow the students to improve their sewing skills and earn some additional money. After having seen the skills of the girls, we ordered beautiful friendship bracelets from them, which will be sold at our booths at exhibitions in Europe. For each one we pay them 5 Baht, a lot of money.

In our schools in Mae Sot we organized drawing competitions for new motifs for Christmas cards, new t-shirts for our shop and for the Unicom calendar 2010. The artist Nyan Soe took care of this project and arranged a one week art techniques training for the students. We provided our young artists with pencils, water colours and paper. The results where surprisingly good and the jury worked hard to choose the winners, who will be awarded with little prizes.

3. SEWING WORKSHOP: School uniforms and jackets for Ministry of Education

At the moment the sewing workshop offers work to over ten refugee women. Every day more than 20 high quality school and sports uniforms and are produced and given for free to our schools. But now also other organizations have started buying for their schools. The price we are able to offer is lower then the price at Mae Sot market and includes the multicolour stitching of the organization’s logo and school name.

Also the office of the Thai Ministry of Education in Mae Sot was impressed by the quality of our products and ordered their official work uniform jackets from us. A big challenge for our team, as it requires several additional production steps. But the result was acclaimed by the MOE and we will get new orders soon.

If you are a company or organization and you would like to find out about the possibility to fund school uniforms or sports clothes for your or any other school, then just send us an e-mail.

All proceeds are invested in our workshop and allow us to produce more free uniforms.

5. CHRISTMAS: New greeting cards

Also this year we will print Christmas Cards, as last year we sold more then 3.000 sets. This year we will have new beautiful motifs painted by the South Tyrolean artist Guido Moroder, as well as by students of our schools. But you can still order our cards from last year, as we still have some in stock.

Please contact us in case of interest.

7. SPONSORS: Grateful for their help

Without the support of our sponsors, who provide us with money, goods or services to cover our administration and marketing expenses, we would not be able to work so successfully and to offer our 100% donation guarantee, which gives the certainty that all donations are invested, without any deduction, into our projects.

The announcement by the SÜDTIROL BRAND (South Tyrol) to support our activities made us especially happy.

We would also like to thank the following sponsors:

Fa. Euroform, Fa. Holz & Co., Fa. Kunstdünger, Fa. Kronberg International (Martin Hellweger), Kunstgalerie Hofburg- Kompatscher, Fa. Microstore, Fam. Niederkofler, Fa. Nordwal, OBI-Baumärkte (Südtirol), Tischlerei Senn, Marke Südtirol, Südtiroler Sparkasse, Frau Kathi Trojer, Fa. Tropical Seas, Fa. Typack, Fa. Fotolitho Varesco, Gärtnerei A. Winkler, Fa. Wolf Fenster, Shopping Malls Unicomm/Emisfero.

8. SAFE DONATIONS: Our striving for transparency rewarded

Since our very beginning in 2002 we have been aiming for maximum transparency and efficient deployment of all donations entrusted to us. It is a hard and often frustrating task, but it has given us a kind of benchmark image among organizations working in Mae Sot. If we stop a project, then it is only due to money mismanagement or lack of reliability of the local project-partners.

For our efforts we have been awarded with the SAFE DONATIONS SEAL in South Tyrol. But now we are scheduled to receive the prestigious Italian Donations Certificate: CARTA DELLA DONAZIONE ( Istituto Italiano della Donazione ). This seal is given after an in-depth verification process. In a few weeks we should have finished the auditing process and receive the certificate. We will keep you informed.

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Help without Frontiers
www.helpwithoutfrontiers.org
Registered in the Public Index of voluntary organisations of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, Italy, L.D. 20/ 1.1. of February 4, 2003