FULL UPDATE ON THE CURRENT SITUATION IN KAMALA, SURROUNDING AREAS & PHUKET. PLEASE READ IN FULL....

Good Morning Everyone, My apologies for the lack of continuous updates during the last day or so. This has been for a few reasons but I now want to give you a full update on the situation in Kamala, the surrounding areas and Phuket, as a whole.

I'm happy to say that the situation has lessened slightly here & yesterday it was announced that as of tomorrow Phuket will no longer be in lockdown. The airport is reopening, any sub districts still left closed will also reopen & people can start to go back to work. This does not immediately change the situation but it does mean there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Many of the workers in Phuket are migrant workers & many tend to come here from the North of Thailand to work in the tourist industry. As of around 10 days ago 5,000 people per day were approved to leave the island to go back to their provinces. This means there are less people on the island now than even a week ago

For the purposes of full transparency I wanted to let you know that a couple of days ago I began to notice the same faces in the queues across the 3 restaurants in Kamala who have all been distributing the free meals. This made me feel a little uncomfortable being fully aware that there are many, many people who are not being helped at this time & that the same people were being fed more than once in one day.

The situation began here a good 6-7 weeks ago & there have been many people, like myself who have been helping to raise money & feed Phuket from day one. I only started less than 2 weeks ago but having started this it has meant I have been able to make some new connections & get some good guidance on how to move forward with all your kind donations to ensure it is all spent on people who really need it & today it has been decided the strategy will change.

There are many camps around Phuket (like the one pictured below) These camps are full of workers from Northern Thailand but mainly Myanmar. One of these camps is right on my doorstep! There have been teams of volunteers driving around for weeks looking for these camps, establishing how many families & therefore people are in each camp and then instead of meals, food parcels have been put together and delivered with dry goods such as Rice, Noodles, tinned fish etc so that they can cook & eat for more than one day. Today I met someone from the camp on my doorstep & discovered it has not been visited & therefore has received no help at all & that there are 20 families living there. Right now I do not know how many people in each family or how many babies but I will go to visit later today with friends to establish this and your donations will be spent on food parcels for these families.

I believe what has been raised so far will stretch much further by doing it this way & I also believe it can go to help more than one camp.

The restaurants in Kamala are still receiving their own donations and sponsors & they are still serving more than 1,200 - 1,500 meals a day and are doing an amazing job!! The people who receive these meals are genuinely in need & they will make their own decisions on how much longer they will continue to cook the meals.

For me, for now, I believe that together we have raised enough to make a massive difference here & I feel until all of your kind donations have been spent in the correct way. No more should be sent. It is really difficult to say if the tiny improvements I am seeing are a sign of a positive change or just a lull & that a second wave will come, only time will tell !?!?!

So, I want to send a massive Thank You to each & every one of you for taking the time to share this story & to send money. A very special shout out goes to Ben Murphy who has single handedly managed to raise around 50% of the total raised so far!! One day you will meet those you've helped Ben :) A special Thanks also goes to Jane Halls for your amazing hula hoop challenge

I will continue to keep everyone updated over the coming days while we buy the goods for the food parcels, package & distribute them. As well as talk to other volunteers in other areas helping similar camps. Meantime, please do not send any more money. I will look into how I can pause the GoGetFunding page in case a second wave does come

I hope everyone is happy with this update & you will all agree on the change of strategy. Feel free to message me privately with any questions etc

Thank You

Honey x