Chiang Mai’s street children usually come from a cold family life lacking love and care. Sometimes, their parents have died, some parents are in prison for drug abuse and some have left their impoverished mountain homes and move into the city, lured by the chance of making money. Often, these street children fall prey to child traffickers.
Many of Chiang Mai’s street kids come from the Thai-Burmese border in Mae Sai. Once in Chiang Mai, they are usually found begging for change or selling flowers in tourist areas. The majority of these children has no education, no nationality and is often exploited. They are at high risk for using drugs, becoming prostitutes and contracting HIV. In 2006, there was an estimated 500 to 600 street children in Chiang Mai and Mae Sai.
The Volunteers for Children Development Foundation has been helping the street children in Chiang Mai and Mae Sai since 1997. We help children in emergency situations as well as helping them long term.
Today, we believe one of the solutions to this problem is giving the children a legal occupation and training them to be able to lawfully provide for themselves. Our new vocational skill training project teaches them how to create and produce sellable art work. The product and medium depends on what each child is particularly interested in doing. Not only does art give them a way to earn income, but it also helps the children realize their self-worth, allows them to be creative and it helps them during their often long and difficult rehabilitation process.
All sales from our art gallery/gift shop, which is sponsored by Give2Asia, go towards benefiting the children. 30% of all sales go towards our education fund that help get the children off of the street and into school, 30% goes directly to the child artist and the remaining 40% pays for the supplies. The children that we are targeting in this project are between the ages of 10 and 18 and, additionally, we will train youth aged 19 or 20 to be youth leaders to help train and assist the younger children.
