Hi Friends,
Last month, we were able to get out of the city to rest and relax as a team for a few days. We had two group debriefs, and personal debriefs held by Cornerstone Counseling, which is a Christian counseling center committed to serving Thais and cross-cultural workers. We also made time to have fun together by going to a waterfall, feeding elephants, and eating lots of delicious food (the team’s favorite activity).
View Completed a Baking Course
We are super proud of View, who successfully completed a 5-week baking course! This course covered various types of pastries and cake decorating skills. View’s dream is to open a tiny business selling baked goods. Finishing this course was just one of several steps towards this dream. The social workers are working together with View to create a good business plan. Recently, View even helped instruct other students in baking and often lights up when any baking orders arrive. Please be praying for View’s next steps and probable transition out of Dton Naam later this year. Starting a business is a lot of hard work right now, but we are confident View can do it!
Outreach
We’ve also been working on a questionnaire specifically for transgender and LGBTQI respondents. The questions vary greatly, but cover many aspects of their lives and how covid has effected them as individuals as well as their families. We will be going to three different red light districts within Bangkok to search out old and new contacts. Many ladyboy bars are still closed, which means we need to adapt our outreach strategies to where they might be working on the street and online.