Project Mae Usu

I spent the month of March living with 128 girls from 5-15 (more details here). That month I spent in Mae Usu working with the Karen children has told me that I can not stand by talking about the needs and not work to do something about supplying those needs.

There are three most urgent needs facing these children right now:

• They need an addition of fruit to their diets to increase vitamins. This is a real shame in a land where fruit is so plenteous and inexpensive.
• They need to increase the protein they are receiving. Currently they are getting about 10 grams a day per child which is far to little for growing children.
• The girls need supervision and some security. (The boys live with the monks but the girls live independently.)

These are not particularly expensive problems to deal with but more than I can handle on my own.

• Fruit could be sponsored at a cost of $10 a day and that would provide a serving of fresh fruit to each of 200 children.
• Protein - meat or soy - could be doubled for each of the children for $10 a day.
• A mother of one of the children could be hired from one of the villages (they are hours away from the dormitory) and she could live with the children and help look after them at a total cost of about 5000 baht ($165) a month. A person could sponsor one day of supervision and security for $6.

If anyone is interested in participating in this project, please sign up below and indicate what you would like to sponsor. I will work on a way to shuffle money.

Name	Amount	What you would like to sponsor
Mark Grimes	$70	One week fresh fruit
Gayle Rogers	$80	8 days fresh fruit