A heartwarming letter of gratitude from our student Kham.
A Letter of Thanks
Seeing the impact that our scholarship program makes in the lives of our students makes all of our hard work worthwhile. We recently received this heartwarming letter from one of the students we support, and we wanted to share it with you!
Dear Daughter Rising,
I am writing to thank you for supporting me for my education. I am so honored and grateful to be part of the Daughter Rising family and I appreciate your help more than I can say. Please know that I am ready to put all of my effort into studying, and I will do my best to prove to you I am worthy of your decision.
Before the scholarship I faced some financial issues. Although my focus has been entirely on my studies, I tried to find a part-time job because I did not want to abandon my parents to send me money since they hardly earn enough for living for the whole family. However, due to time requirements and other criteria of jobs, I was not able to find one last semester. Financial problems made it hard to concentrate on my studies and to reach to my full potential in my studies, particularly in the challenging Third year curriculum. In addition, my family also desperately needed money for my mother's health. My mother has cervical cancer and in need of an operation and continued treatment. Thus, during that time it was really hard time for me.
Fortunately, I got to know and work with Daughters Rising and Alexa. Your support for my school materials, visa fee and expenses during my Three months internship in Yangon helped so much as I did not receive any funds during my school break period. I love to work with Chai Lai Orchid and am really inspired by its vision. My parents are proud of me and so happy with it. And this has been my proudest moments- that I earned to support myself and didn’t need to ask for money from my parents for my school. Now they will have sometime to take care of themselves instead of working overtime at night after long tired work on the farm. If I get enough financial support, I can put most of my time into studying and reach my potential fully so I don't have to ask for money from home. I would like to thank for your support, it is really important for my education and to achieve my goal: become a knowledgeable social worker.
A Daughter Rising scholarship is a great help to me in paying for my educational expenses and allowing me to concentrate more of my time for studying. I will use this funding for direct education costs such school materials, books, uniform and Visa fee. In addition, I have received a full scholarship for my Bachelor of Arts in Social Science (BASS) degree from Chiang Mai University and a partial scholarship from Brackett for one year and I borrowed a loan from Zomia. This covers the food, accommodation, transportation and health emergency each year. This is the entire total of support source for my next coming year.
Therefore, I want to thank every one of you again from the bottom of my heart for having confidence in me and awarding me the funding for education. I pledge that I will study hard to make your confidence in me worthwhile.
Sincerely,
Kham
Sometimes this work is really hard on your heart
Victories, and Challenges
Hearing how much our scholarship support helps Kham and our other students feels like a huge victory. But the last few months have also had their challenges. Sometimes this work is really hard on your heart.
This month we worked on a rescue that involved a very young victim of sex trafficking- a young girl who was being sold by her mother. Since at 14 she was still a child, it was a struggle for us to know exactly how to help. Luckily we received amazing support and help from The Hug Project, The Hug Project is a Thai Foundation that works with the royal Thai police to conduct undercover investigations, rescue children and bring perpetrators to justice. Boom helped us act quickly to get the girl out of the abusive situation and into safe hands at a local safe house. They helped us act quickly to get the girl out of the abusive situation and into safe hands at a local safe house. We are so grateful that they were able to help us handle such a scary and complicated situation.
However her journey is not done. For survivors, it can be extremely difficult to work past abusive situations like this, particularly when abuse starts young. So while she is physically safe at last, she still has a long road ahead of her and needs a lot of support to lead a happy and healthy life. This situation brought into clear focus why our preventative work at Daughters Rising is so imperative. We work to prevent trafficking from ever happening in the first place. Undoing trauma can be a lifelong challenge, but when girls are empowered, educated and supported, they have the strength and ability to take their life into their own hands.
Seeing strong educated young women become role models
Student Outreach & Dreams Come True
After a super successful Youth English Summer Camp led by Daughters Rising team member Golo and a group of volunteers, we have been continuing to foster relationships with local schools and community groups. Golo now runs weekly youth classes and workshops in five different local villages. The students range in ages from preschoolers to high school students, and the workshops include English and life-skills lessons as well as fun games and crafts.
Additionally, the students that we support in university who were visiting Chai Lai joined in to volunteer with the workshops. These underserved communities were in many ways similar to their own. Seeing strong educated young women- who are refugees themselves fleeing violence- passionately give back and become role models was one of our dreams come true. They say, "if you can't see it, you can't be it." So having these incredible women getting degrees at prestigious universities demonstrate that it IS possible to achieve your highest goals, made our whole project come heartwarmingly full-circle.
One recent workshop was spearheaded by some friends from Bangkok who led a craft session teaching notebook and candle making! We look forward to many more fun and educational workshops and to continuing to strengthen our relationships with the local communities.
Daughters Rising sponsored students head to Chai Lai to enjoy time off from their studies
Fun on summer break
During their summer break, some of our sponsored students- Julia, Seng, Sue and Lae Lae- came to spend time with us at Chai Lai.
We might take for granted going home to visit our families on school breaks, but for students from Burma, this is often impossible. People with student visas in Thailand are not allowed to work, so travel comes as a huge financial obstacle. For this reason we invite our students to stay with us at The Chai Lai Orchid during their school breaks where we can support them and take them on adventures!
This summer they went on some fun trips in the surrounding area, volunteered with our youth initiatives and most importantly, got to spend plenty of time relaxing with each other.
Here is a peek at some of their adventures!
As always, thank you for your ongoing interest and support of our work! You are all a special part of the Chai Lai / Daughters Rising Tribe, and we would like to take the opportunity to extend to you a friends and family coupon code! Use code: SchoolDay to receive 10% off on your next booking with us. (Or pass the code on to share the love with your own friends and family!)
Thank you again for making our work possible!!