After a devastating fire, the Rama 9 community is whole once again. Thank you so much for your support!

Last April a fire ripped through an old squatter-slum community in the Rama 9 neighborhood. In total fifty-one homes were destroyed or badly damaged, leaving 178 residents homeless, including 61 children and eleven grandmoms and granddads.

Most adults in this slum community work as day laborers, maids, security guards, motorbike messengers, and street food vendors who sell noodles, fruit and snacks from their mobile carts. On a good day these families are able to earn the legal minimum daily wage (300 baht - approx. US $10).

Like most slum residents, before the fire they were already over-burdened with household debt. Following the fire they had lost all that they had ever called their own.

The community leaders and residents asked our Mercy Centre to assist them, as we have in the past for dozens of communities throughout the city following major slum fires.

Our outreach and housing teams worked hand in hand with the community, starting with emergency aid, including food and shelter. We also helped organize the community in petitioning the government welfare and housing departments for aid in rebuilding their homes; and these petitions were succesful: the local governement did provide some support and in doing so recognized those left homeless as legal residents.

There were obstacles all along the way. Even removing the debris left in the wake of the fire was a major hurdle.

(Newly rebuilt homes. Mercy Centre was responsible for rebuilding almost forty new homes, which include plumbing, a toilet, and electricity.)

Your support for Mercy Centre provided the materials and labor to help the Rama 9 community reubild. Your gifts allowed families to stay together. Your gifts meant that the moms and dads did not have to quit their jobs, go further in debt, and move their families to a distant slum neighborhood. They could still work close to home. And their children could attend the same schools, including the neighborhood kidnergarten, which we built and operated for the community for many years. The children could keep their old friends, too, and grow up together in the neighborhood they have always considered home.

On behalf of everyone here at Mercy Centre and the entire Rama 9 community, we wish to extend our most heartfelt thanks.

A rooftop view of the rebuilt Rama 9 community.