Poor Children Pay High Price for Thai Currency Crisis

Southeast Asia’s economic crisis isn’t just hammering the region’s financiers and workers.

Dozens of slum children may lose a lifeline because donations to the Bangsaikai Temple’s day-care center have evaporated, say the Buddhist monks who run it.

The monks give 120 youngsters, ages 2 to 5, sanctuary from the mean streets of 12 tough Bangkok slums while their parents toil in sweatshops and factories.

The center, established and managed by the monks’ Saeng Thien (Candle Light) Foundation, depends on donations. Since the currency crunch hit last July, however, most Thais can no longer afford to give.

A gift of $48,000 from Thailand’s late Princess Mother in 1984 enabled the foundation to start programs to feed, clothe and educate slum children.

Until recently, the monks were managing 15 projects to help the poor. But with donations drying up, the monks have discontinued all but the day-care center, with its orphanage that is home to nine children.

It takes the equivalent of $27,000 to run the center and orphanage each year, the monks say. But the foundation’s bank account is almost empty.

Supplies are running low. Noodles and omelets are the only meals the center can afford to give the children, although some say they are lucky to be eating at all.

The children depend on food given to the monks during their morning walks through the city begging for alms. Chances are slim that they will be able to continue their education.

But even the center’s cut-to-the-bone operation may be too much, and the children and their families may have to fend for themselves.

“If the center no longer exists, the parents will just leave their children home without care and education,” says the temple’s abbot, Samai Jintakosako.

Even worse is what awaits them outside--drugs and possible exploitation.

The monks are praying for a benefactor to keep the Candle Light Foundation’s center from flickering out.