Dear everyone,

 

I am really thrilled to let you know that over the weekend the SAW Children's Xmas fund reached its goal of £1000!!!

 

Thankyou all for your extremely generous donations – I have been really moved by the amount of support and thoughtful enthusiasm, and the kids will benefit a lot from your collective warmth and generosity.

 

Anyone who hasn’t yet donated but still wants to, please do – the more the merrier (literally!)

 

Myself and the Safe House coordinator will start Christmas shopping this week, so I thought I would let you all know what's on the list:

-        Blocks, puzzles, Lego and Duplo

-        A variety of balls – a fun and effective way to develop gross motor skills and hand-eye coordination (neither of which are my forte..)

-        Burmese picturebooks. Most of the children are undocumented migrants and ineligible to access the Thai education system. However, the kids who were born here are able to start at Thai school from the age of 5. As Burmese is not a part of the curriculum, they have to have evening sessions with a tutor to learn how to read and write in their own language. The SAW staff said it would be helpful if the younger ones could be exposed to Burmese script before they start school, but the books are not easy to find so I am going to try to get some from one of the education-focussed NGOs.

-        Art supplies including crayons, pencils, textas, coloured paper, glitter, glue, scissors, watercolours, paints, butcher paper and sketch pads (for the older kids). I am going to do some drawing and painting activities with the 0-5 year olds, and will think about possibilities for setting up more regular, structured art classes for all the age groups.

-        Sneakers for the kids in 2 SAW soccer/football teams – this will mean they can play in the upcoming series of games organised by members of the wider Burmese migrant community.

-        A DVD player. 2 of the shelters have an old TV but from what I’ve observed Thai daytime television leaves a lot to be desired (esp. the soap operas). The staff say it would be great for the kids to watch some English-language movies because it would help with their English (they start learning it in both the migrant and Thai schools from Year 1). So far I’ve picked out Finding Nemo, Aladdin, the Lion King, the Jungle Book and Shrek. I hear In the Night Garden is all the rage for the under-5s at the moment so might try to get a copy of that too… Any other suggestions would be welcome!!

-        New towels and blankets.

-        String, skewers, sticky tape, construction paper and a hole-puncher for a homemade kite-making session – as per Adna’s request  :)

 

Please let me know if you have any other ideas. And thank you all again. I will post another update in the lead-up to Christmas.

 

In the meantime, have a lovely week!

 

 

– Zoe