The Human Development Foundation (HDF) began on an early morning in 1972, when Fr. Joe and Sister Maria took their first walk together in the slums beside the Slaughter House. They greeted everybody, as they have countless days since, and asked, do you have enough to eat? Are your children in good health? Is there any way we can help? Fr. Joe had just arrived from Laos as the Parish Priest in the neighborhood, an enclave of poor Catholics who earned a subsistence living butchering pigs for the market. The parishioners lived and worked in the slaughterhouse of Klong Toey, Bangkok’s largest slum community.  Sr. Maria came daily from her Convent and began teaching Catechism to the Catholic children. She actually taught the children where they played… in a seldom-used holding pen for pigs.

In 1972 Slaughter House kids did not go to school, and the few who did failed dismally and dropped out. The one or two schools available begrudgingly took them in. Teachers singled them out as what not to be. 

Sr. Maria and Fr. Joe turned a slum shack into a one-baht-per-day preschool for every child in the Slaughter House, children of all religions. No child was turned away. Thus began The Human Development Foundation - Mercy Centre. Today there are twenty-two Mercy Kindergartens with over 2,000 slum children going to school. Alumni of the first Slaughter House kindergarten are teachers, business owners, executive secretaries, nurses, street vendors, taxi drivers - diverse occupations. Dead-end, throw-away slaughter house kids no longer.

The HDF Initiatives and Achievements:

1972- First HDF - Mercy School opens in the Slaughter House neighborhood.

1975 – Our street children outreach program formally begins.

1976 - First shelter for street children opens. 

1977 – We begin operation of Klong Toey's first free outreach health clinic for the poor.

1981 – Our housing program commences. Hundreds of landless families begin moving into self-built homes co-financed and co-constructed by HDF for the indigent and elderly and those forcibly evicted. 

1982 – Father Joe establishes prison visitation program for the Archdiocese of Bangkok and begins 27-year tenure as Prison Chaplain at Bang Kwang Maximum Security and Klong Prem Lat Yao Federal Prisons for men and women. 

1982-89 – Our housing program continues to expand. Mercy preschools are operating in over 20 slum communities. We keep an open-door policy in our shelters for abandoned slum and street children. Following devastating slum fires, The HDF-Mercy Centre rebuilds entire squatter neighborhoods. We continue organizing slum communities, begin credit unions and women’s groups, working together with community organizations and government.

1990-94 - As AIDS enters Bangkok’s slum communities, we pioneer AIDS awareness and education in a door-to-door two-year campaign to talk about AIDS and the dire needs of children and adults afflicted.

1994 – We open Bangkok’s first free AIDS hospice. Fr. Joe becomes Founding Member of Asian Coalition for Housing Rights.

1995 – We help found the Thai Confederation of Street Children.

1997 – Our Klong Toey Women's Group and Savings and Loan opens, providing low interest loans and empowering poor women through financial security.

1998 – Mercy Preschool System continues expansion: over twenty-five preschools throughout Bangkok.

1998 – The HDF-Mercy Centre opens Thailand’s only Legal Aid Centre dedicated solely for poor children.

1999 – We organize the Klong Toey Handicapped Group, uniting the physically handicapped in seeking their rightful benefits and gainful employment.

2000 - New home for mothers and children living with HIV/AIDS is opened, Her Royal Highness Princess Galyani Vadhana-Krom Luang Naradhiwas Rajanagarindra presiding at opening ceremony.

2001 – HDF-Mercy Centre Homes and Shelters are rebuilt and expanded, former Prime Minister, His Excellency Khun Anand Panyarachun, UNICEF Representative to Thailand, presiding at ceremony.

2004 – HDF-Mercy Centre opens the Janusz Korczak School for Street Children, providing basic literacy and trade skills for children who have no other place to go to school. 

2005 – In response to the devastation of the massive tsunami, The HDF-Mercy Centre initiates emergency relief and housing projects; and transfers its slum-community organization skills to the Thai southern provinces affected. Working together with 20 villages, by end of year 2005, The HDF with community carpenters co-built and renovated over 500 homes damaged or destroyed; provided long-term education assistance to 500 students; manufactured and installed over 3,000 industrial-size water jars for individual homes; repaired and replaced fifty village wells and school water tanks, and installed twelve water purification systems; built over 250 toilet facilities for schools and homes; and created income-generating projects for the destitute. We form a federation of twelve primary schools along the sea coast, where its teachers selected Mokan (Sea Gypsy) children for education sponsorships who were the poorest of the poor. 

2007 – HIV/AIDS Homecare Program expands to reach over 450 patients throughout Bangkok.

2007 – We rebuild two poor neighborhoods - over 100 homes - after devastating slum fires. In other neighborhoods, 30 homes for elderly poor are renovated. By 2007, The HDF has built and renovated over 10,000 homes for the poor.

2007 – Bangkok Metropolitan Authority awards three Mercy Preschools with certificates of excellence as exemplary schools for poor children. 

2008 - Mercy boys, ages 9-13, move to a farmhouse in a patch of countryside just 30 minutes from Mercy Centre. Our boys grow their own rice, fruit and vegetables; catch their own fish for dinner; and gain skills and self-esteem while improving their performance in school.

2008-9 - In a joint signing ceremony between parents, community leaders, and slum kindergarten school representatives, the HDF-Mercy Centre formally entrusts eleven former Mercy preschools to the care and mangement of their own slum communities. These communities are now able to oversee their children's preschool education and preparation for entry into primary school. The hand-over demonstrates the power of a preschool to transform and strengthen poor communities.

2012 - Our HIV/AIDS teams begin teaching and mentoring HIV/AIDS NGOs and government organizations, holding workshops throughout Thailand, Burma, and Laos.

2016 - Expansion of construction camp schools for the children living in construction worker camps, primarily the children of migrant workers from Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar who have no documentation and cannot attend public schools.