How We Help
The Human Development Foundation, a non-denominational, community-based organization, began in 1974 with the works of Father Joe Maier and Sister Maria Chantavarodom in Klong Toey, Bangkok’s largest slum. Their first project was a one-baht-per-day kindergarten. Within the next two years, they opened Klong Toey’s first outreach health clinic as well as a shelter for street children.
Fires devastated slum neighborhoods sometimes two or three times a year, and the HDF helped rebuild them.
Over the past thirty years, the foundation has continuously initiated projects to help the poor. When a pilot program worked in one neighborhood, it was expanded to another, and in this way, with a staff of 280 dedicated men and women, the HDF now reaches out to friends in over thirty slum communities in Bangkok.
Mercy Centre
Mercy Centre is a shelter for street kids, a home for mothers and children with HIV/AIDS, a respite hospice for adults with AIDS, a community meeting place, and a serene haven in the slums with small gardens and playgrounds. Originally built on a forsaken piece of port authority property, Mercy Centre has stood as a sign that somebody actually cares—first a shack church school and a rented slum house for street kids, then a crowded AIDS hospice—always changing and always the same for thirty years. In 2000, it was rebuilt through a generous gift to accommodate our expanding services to orphans, street children and children with HIV/AIDS.
Father Joe Maier, Founder and Director
Father Joseph Maier, C.Ss.R., has lived among the poor in Thailand and Laos since 1967. He settled in Bangkok in the early seventies where he served as the priest to a small Catholic parish in the Slaughterhouse neighborhood of Klong Toey and started the Human Development Foundation for his poor neighbors of all religions. He holds advanced degrees in Theological Studies and Urban Planning as well as an honorary Doctorate in Social Administration from Thammasart University in Thailand. He is also the recipient of the Most Noble Order of the Crown of Thailand, the Koman Kim Tong Foundation Award, and the Bangkok Community Service Award for outstanding citizenship. Father Joe still lives in Klong Toey—in his Mercy Centre—where his work here first began.
For more information about the Human Development Foundation:
Phone: (662) 671-5313
Fax: (662) 671-7028
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.MercyCentre.org
The foundation is always in great need of public and private donations, gifts, grants, and school and child sponsorships.