Cindy Ratcliffe: Phuket International Women’s Club

Cindy Ratcliffe

Eighteen years ago there were far fewer expatriate women on Phuket than there are today. That was when the Phuket International Women’s Club (PIWC) was set up, with the aim of bringing together Thai and expatriate women to share languages and cultures and to help newcomers to adjust to the island. Mrs Ratcliffe arrived in Phuket three years later and immediately joined the club. She has been President of the PIWC for the past two years. The club started with 20 members. It now has 124.

“I’ve seen a lot of developments during the past 15 years of the PIWC,” Mrs Ratcliffe told Phuket.Com. “Our main work [these days] is about providing grants for students from low-income families or, in some cases, children who don’t have a family at all. It’s heart-breaking sometimes, listening to those kids’ stories. I’m glad to be able to help,” said Mrs Ratcliffe. “Low-income” in the PIWC context means the family has a monthly income of 6,000 baht or less – about US$180. Some students, Mrs Ratcliffe noted, are so poor that they can afford only one set of school uniform clothes, which they wear and wash again and again until the clothes are almost see-through.

PIWC members & students

Some students are orphans and have been living on their own. Somehow they manage to stay on the right track and want to stay in school. With help from the PIWC, there is hope in their lives. The 2004 tsunami saw a huge amount of funding pour into the PIWC from around the world, allowing the club to increase dramatically the number of children it gives grants to. “We have 250 students at the moment. Three years ago the number was 93, but in the six months following the tsunami, the number climbed to more than 200. We have lots of students receiving scholarships from us who lost one parent or both parents in the tsunami. “We have one boy who lived in Baan Nam Khem [a village particularly badly hit by the wave]. There were 12 people in his family. The day the tsunami came eleven of them were lost. Only he survived. He now lives with an uncle and his family and is slowly recovering from the tragedy,” said Mrs Ratcliffe, a tear in her eye. “But he still has nightmares.”

The PIWC works with more than 20 schools, colleges and universities. Children receiving support range from primary school kids to university students. Five of the students are studying medicine, 14 are learning to be nurses and several others are training to become teachers, engineers, computer experts and political scientists. All the PIWC members who work on supporting the kids do so as volunteers; they want to ensure that every penny the club gets goes directly to the kids, and none of it is spent on administration costs. The scholarship programme is carefully managed to ensure that, even if no more donations are received, each of the children currently being supported will be able to complete his or her education. It is not only the Phuket community that recognises the value of Mrs Ratcliffe’s work. In 2006 she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in recognition of her work with underprivileged children and with tsunami victims.

Dr Supaluck Kanchanamethakul: Child Watch Phuket

Dr Supaluck and 2 students

Child Watch Phuket Association works on solving problems hidden beneath the paradise surface of Phuket. Child Watch grew from a group of local teachers, Dr Supaluck Kanchanamethakul explains. “As local teachers we saw or heard about problems faced by young children in Phuket. At Child Watch we have handled all kinds of cases since we started in 1996. The problems include physical abusive of young children by their parents, their guardians or others. In some case the abuse is sexual.”

Initially, it was a hard for the team to get any information; most citizens found it easier to look the other way and not get involved. Things have changed, however. Child Watch is now handling more cases – not unexpected in the worsening economic climate in Thailand – but it is also getting more cooperation from people who know about cases of abuse and who no longer hesitate to report them to Child Watch, which can then take action to help the child, usually in collaboration with the police or social welfare officials. “We have built two day care centres to ease the burden of parents with low incomes, people such as construction workers or street vendors who can’t afford to send their kids to pre-school or to hire someone to take care of them.”

Dr Supaluck and a group of youngster

One of the centres is next to the Phuket Provincial Prison. Among the kids who attend this centre are the children of convicts, who live in jail with their parents because there is no one else to take care of them. The centre gives them a break from prison life. “If we did not look after these kids, they would be running around at the construction site or along the road with their parents. We have 120 kids under the age of seven with us at the two centres,” said Dr Supaluck. Child Watch also gives financial help to students from poor homes. From next year it will support students to university for the first time. It also organises an education tour and camp every three months. Volunteers go to poor area of Phuket to focus on homeless kids and kids who, for one reason or another, have not had the opportunity to go to school. “It is sad to see how some parents keep their children out of school and send them out to gather shellfish, bringing them a daily income of 30 baht [about 90 US cents],” says Dr Supaluck.

Each tour has a theme, such as sports or art, so that teachers and volunteer staff can help this group of kids to learn something. The tour usually lasts two days and a night or three days and two nights. Like the PIWC, Child Watch saw donations boom after the tsunami. “After the tsunami, our association got more support, including support from overseas. Somehow they heard about us even through we don’t advertise what we are doing. We simply don’t have a budget for that. All the money is needed for helping the children,” said Dr Supaluck.