Beneath the luxury condominiums in Bangkok, often right beside the glitzy shopping malls, you will sometimes come across a guarded, gated camp of corrugated tin shacks. These camps are for the migrant workers, mostly from Cambodia, Laos, and Burma, who come to Thailand to build high rise towers for a minimum daily wage. We operate schools on these sites for the children living in the camps. These shacks and our schools are the children’s entire universe.

A four-year-old breaks with tradition at her mother's cremation, but for a change no one really minds.

Our foundation's co-founder and director, Fr. Joe Maier, turned 75 last week. And while he might have preferred a low-key simple birthday, we found great cause to celebrate. Hundreds of Mercy staff, neighbors, friends, and, of course, all our Mercy children took part in the festivities. True to spirit, Fr. Joe made sure the celebration was really about our children. Ice cream was served from a giant bucket, and every kid who wanted a second or third cone was not denied. Top photo: Fr. Joe receives a gift of a red rose from Nong Fon, a blind Mercy girl, with co-founder Sister Maria beside her. Below, ice cream and dance.

Today we celebrated the Loy Krathong holiday in our 23 kindergartens. According to tradition, we float our Krathongs (small vessels that contain our worries, troubles, sins, etc.) down a river. But since no river flows through our kindergarten playgrounds, we used inflatable plastic pools. Our school children were happy, even without a river. To them it's all magic!

We are pleased to show you a new video about Mercy Centre and our new sister charity Mercy Centre Australia (www.mercycentreaustralia.org) produced by Getaway, Channel 9, Australia. As the video communicates so well, we welcome interested visitors to our Mercy Centre! Please watch it here.