New children

We constantly get requests about us taking in new children. It is a very difficult task to chose our children, while we wish we could take in all of them we are only able to care for a few. The BCM staff encounter many children in severe and complicated life situations. 

Most of the children are poor. For BCM to take in a child we assess if the child is in a particularly vulnerable situation either at the risk of their own safety or where the basic wellfare and care fail them. Too many children live in an unstable and unsafe existence during their early years and the needs definitely exceed our resources. But what we are able to do matters. 

Recently we were at a point when it was time for 11 of our older children to move out and as we speak 11 new, younger children have come in under our care. They are all between the ages of 6 - 11 years old.

These children lived under severe life conditions on the countryside and were under poor care. The girls are especially vulnerable. Very rarely they are given the opportunity to attend school and unspeakably often they fall prey for people who would sexually abuse them, weather it is an uncle, a neighbor or father. 

We face many challenges in the process of taking these children in. Many of them do not have Thai citizenship because of their ethnicity and therefore they have no rights in the Thai society. They also don't know the Thai language or culture. Al of this makes hard time for them interacting with other children and going to school.

As more and more time goes by though we can see that they are adapting better and better to the life at BCM and in school. They are happy about the good food, their new friends and that they can feel safe without worrying about being beaten or abused.

At BCM we have a mentoring system where the older children look after the younger ones and help them with whatever they need. This has proven to be very helpful and it contributes to the warm family spirit at BCM.