"Grandpa Teacher" and his volunteers give slum children a chance

80-year-old "Kru Puu" (Grandpa Teacher) has been teaching slum children for free since 1994 and has assembled a group of 800 volunteers to help.

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This is an introduction to a much longer Bangkok Post feature story. You can read it in full here: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/special-reports/1279507/graduating-from-the-slums

Graduating from the slums

Dumrongkiat Mala

'They love to draw and have amazing imaginations, but their favourite class, surprisingly, is science," said Dheraratana Chuamnaj, teacher to around 100 children. The children live in the slum areas of Bangkok and some come from families with drug problems.

For these children, going to a summer camp or a famous cram school is almost an impossible feat. However, Dheraratana, a sprightly octogenarian known by the children as "Kru Puu" (Grandpa Teacher), has been giving them an opportunity to do both.

Sorso Volunteer, an unaffiliated volunteer group, has become a learning and grooming haven for these underprivileged children. A host of people from different walks of life such as business owners, government officers and freelancers come to teach life skills and be a part of the change in the lives of children.

A volunteer helps a young girl with her reading.

"These children are very enthusiastic about creative activities. Since they cannot afford to go to workshops and cram schools like children from more affluent families, we teach them basic knowledge like mathematics, English language and science as well as some other skills like drawing and music as a part of developing their personality and building confidence," said Dheraratana.

The group has been working on creating alternative tools of education and running volunteer programmes every weekend, where people have been teaching art, life skills and performing arts to children for over 20 years.

A drawing activity.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

One day back in 1994, Dheraratana was passing Sanam Luang on his way home when he noticed that there were many homeless children sleeping or using illicit substances around the park.

A recently retired teacher back then, he realised that these children had no future and needed to be educated by someone, so they could get off the streets for good.

"The day after I saw them, I started buying snacks and candies for them in order to gain their trust because it was hard for them to trust a stranger as most of them had been abused by adults before they escaped their homes to live on the streets," he said.

Day by day Dheraratana got to know each child better. He found that most of them were illiterate and came from slum areas in Bangkok, so he decided to teach them how to read and write for free every Saturday and Sunday.

"Children love to draw and have amazing imaginations, but their favourite class, surprisingly, is science," says Dheraratana Chuamnaj.

"I had been teaching at Sanam Luang for a couple years, but the number of homeless children there had not declined even though some had already left, so I realised that I was solving the downstream problem because the core of the problem was their living conditions in the slums. If I could fix the problem at that end, the children will not have to leave their homes," he said.

Since then, Dheraratana has changed his working direction upstream. He established Sorso Volunteer to provide underprivileged children from the slum areas in Bangkok with interactive study materials, counselling and extracurricular activities to keep them in school and make learning fun.

Starting with three volunteers in 1997, they had grown to 800 volunteers by last year.

Recent research by the Foundation for the Better Life for Children reported an estimated 20,000 children on the streets of Thailand's major urban centres.

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