A sad day for sponsor and student alike.

It is rare but not by any means unusual that parents or carers of some of our scholarship students demand money from MERCY whenever contact is made with them. There are a variety of reasons but generally they centre on the need to pay gambling debts, drugs or drink and generally it is he children who suffer.

This week UK sponsor Richard was visiting Pattaya and asked MERCY to arrange for him to visit his sponsored student Prateep  who he has been sponsoring for a few years. During making the arrangements for the visit the child’s carer, a lady who had taken in three siblings demanded money from Suky of MERCY saying that she did not want the money that the children’s sponsors had donated to be used for their education but wanted the money to put in the ‘bank’ for them. Naturally this was refused.

Subsequently the carer was visited by Suky and Sudjai of MERCY and the email reproduced below from MERCY confirms the outcome we had all feared.

 

“You recall I sent you a summary a few days ago of how things stood with regards to Prateep and his siblings (Thanachok and Krissana) Subsequently Sudjai and Suky went over to see the woman taking care of them, and it has been established that the owner's business is now doing very well, and she no longer needs the help to cover the scholarships for the children.

That's good news, of course, because it means that other needy children can be helped. However, I think it will be hard for the sponsors, when they've just made inroads into a relationship with the children, which isn't easy to do initially. 

 

Richard, bless him, understood, but I think we all felt sad (including Prateep, who'd been told that he wouldn't be seeing Richard again) for both he and Prateep. Clearly, the boy had been 'instructed' to request a bicycle, and no matter what Suky said, she couldn't get him to budge from this. Richard was wonderful - he agreed to go with the request and after lunch at Fuji (because Prateep wanted sushi) we went up to the cycle shop at Naklua and got a red one for him. 

 

Being Thursday I didn't get to see the "Farewell" when they returned Prateep to the house, but it can't have been easy for them. Richard took it as being part of life, but I felt sorry for Prateep, who is probably wondering what he's done that he should be 'punished'. As we told you earlier, there seems to be a great deal of 'dog in a manger' attitude.

There is another bit of good news for Prateep though. It seems an older sister (about 16 years of age) has now come to live on the compound with them, together with her 'husband' and young baby! We didn't even know he had an older sister, so hopefully it will help him feel part of his family again”

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