CMF partner Anji Barker (Urban Neighbors of Hope) was recently interviewed for an article that appeared in two Indonesian newspapers about the precarious living conditions of young children who grow up in Klong Toey, the largest slum in Bangkok, Thailand. Anji, her husband Ash Barker and their family live and work in Klong Toey.

In “Children in Bangkok Slums Facing Dire Plight,” writer Nirmal Ghosh details the depolorable living conditions, the drug use, the general feeling of hopelessness and especially the rampant child abuse that are part of everyday life in Klong Toey, as in many other urban slums. A sizeable number of children are growing up in an environment of violence and exploitation while being deprived of basic necessities, he says.

Anji Barker, who teaches children age 3 to 6 in a school in Klong Toey, sees the situation firsthand every day. During the past 10 years she has watched gang fights quickly become violent, with teenagers wielding machetes and even guns.

“Little toddlers watch these gang fights,” she said. “They grow up in the slum with violence on a daily basis. They are exposed to drug use every day. When they role-play, they role-play what they see. Some say they want to grow up to be gangsters. At the age of 3, the children use the rudest Thai swear words you can imagine.”

The slum has both government and privately-run schools, but the absentee rate is high. Anji Barker understands why that’s the case.

“If you are 6 years old and don’t want to go to school, who is there to make you when nobody cares for you?” asks Barker. “Here, the incentives have to be for the children to want to go to school, not for the adults to send them to school.”

To learn more about CMF’s partnership with Urban Neighbors of Hope and our other ministries in Thailand, click here.

After weeks of waiting, our team finally got to return to the Grapevine in Bangkok, Thailand, just across the “death road” from Thammasat University. After an unusually wet monsoon season, flooding came to Bangkok (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15867661) starting in October from the north and affected an estimated 12.8 million people, including our team, campus, campus house and students. Thankfully, there was enough warning for our people to get out and find high ground. A special thanks goes out to the Muang Thai Church and former Globalscopers Andy and Jen May for helping out and housing folks for us during the almost 2 months that our team was displaced.

However, as you can see, there is a lot of work left to be done and unfortunately a lot of furniture, decorations and household items will need to be replaced. Probably the most expensive casualty was the soundboard. This past week our team, Michal Ruth Penwell, Beth West, Grace Curtright and Bank Light, worked diligently to clean all of the dirt, mud and mold from the entire campus house. We just received an update that they were almost done cleaning, just a little bit in the kitchen to go. Monday afternoon they were headed to the mall to buy paint, carpets, bookshelves, a kitchen pantry, kitchen utensils and surge protectors. They are also going to be scouting out couches, tables and chairs.

By our best estimates, it looks like about $6000 will cover all of the things that need replacing in the Grapevine. Would you be willing to make a one-time donation to help the Grapevine recover from the floods? The new semester starts January 9 and our goal is to be ready to go by then. Any amount would be greatly appreciated and would help us continue to reach college students in Thailand for Christ and bring His Kingdom here on earth. If you’re interested in giving, you can give on this site at http://cmfi.org/bangkok-thailand (look for the urgent box on the right). Please pass this along and share the news on facebook with anyone else who might be interested in helping us out.

When Michael Tomczak went to Thailand recently as an exchange student to work with the Globalscope campus ministry team in Bangkok, he never expected to be sitting in the mud in the middle of the night surrounded by Thai classmates on the edge of a four-foot sandbag barricade that is the last line of defense between a flooding country and it’s capital city. However, as the devastating floods continue, that where he and other members of the Grapevine team have been hard at work for three straight days.

Beth West, a member of the Grapevine team, sent a quick report this weekend, in between stints with Michael at the sandbag barricade and shelter. She had high praise for the “new kid,” who “not knowing Thai, jumped in and worked all day to protect a country that isn’t his alongside people shouting instructions he can’t understand. After three straight days of work, everyone knows his name, that he will do anything you ask, without a word of complaint.”

Meanwhile, Beth also reports a growing camaraderie among the workers at the flood zone. After the final exams were posted many students at Thammasat University went home, but those who remained are taking care of the 2,400 plus victims at the flood shelter on campus and building a floodwall at the canal near the river.

“We’re building ridiculously awesome and close relationships with the students,” she writes. “Maybe we have seen each other before in passing, but we’re now bonded together with water, sand, sweat and energy drinks. Everything on my body hurts, but that’s about par for the course here. We’re been working around the clock. I just got up from four hours sleep after 20 hours of work, and that schedule will continue for at least a few more days until the real flood surge comes.”

Beth West, a member of CMF’s Globalscope Bangkok campus ministry team, shared news this week about the devastating floods in north and central Thailand, and reports that the waters are moving further south every day.

“Right now the team and I are safe and will continue to be all right, but many people have lost their homes and more than 300 people have died,” writes Beth.

Much of north and central Thailand is under one to two meters of water right now. The historic province of Ayutthaya, home to a number of Grapevine students, has been especially hard hit. Students report that their families are safe, but their houses are uninhabitable.

The flooding is expected to move into the Pathum Thani province just north of Bangkok where the team is located by this weekend (Oct. 16).

“Today the roads are wet but passable, though transportation is hard to find and stores are beginning to run out of stock as people make preparations,” she said. “For the past few days we’ve been working side by side with our Thai neighbors to create sand bag walls.”

Thammasat, the university where the team ministers, is hosting flood evacuees in an old gym and may soon open up shelter in the stadium just across the street from the Grapevine facility. “Yesterday I went to the shelter to volunteer with a student. We spent a lot of time looking for extra space and clearing and cleaning rooms to make sleeping space for the estimated 1300 plus people who will come to the shelter,” said Beth. “We plan to take a group from Grapevine to volunteer, and hopefully those students will return to help as they have time.”

At their Wednesday evening Bible study, the group focused its prayers on Thailand and the flooding victims. The staff also cut the cost of the free dinner they serve for the students each week and used the remainder of the budget to purchase canned goods to donate to the relief effort. Students brought donations of clothing, towels and toiletries, and packed bags to take to the donation site.

The team appreciates your prayers and concern. “Please continue to pray for the people who have lost their homes and family members, as well as the organizations, volunteers, and government agencies trying to help the flood victims,” writes Beth. “Please also pray that our community at Grapevine, both Christians and non-Christians alike, would take full hold of the opportunity to spread the love and peace of Christ in a tumultuous situation.”

“Helping Hands,” a microfinance assistance project run by Urban Neighbours of Hope, a CMF partner organization in Bangkok, Thailand, was recently featured in a story in the Bangkok Post newspaper. The article about a popular cook from the slums who was given a fresh start by the organization highlights the work that Ash and Anji Barker have been doing in the Bangkok slums for the past 10 years.

Thanks to her grant from UNOH, Saiyuud “Poo” Diwong was able to leave her subsistence-level, 16-hour-a-day business as a street food vendor to open a cooking school in her Klong Toey community of Bangkok. The funds allowed Diwong to purchase new pots and pans and rent a tiny kitchen to begin her classes. Although the classes started small, Diwong has since taught hundreds of expatriates and foreign tourists to cook Thai dishes at her school. In fact, The Helping Hands Thai Cooking School is one of the Bangkok experiences most recommended by tourists on the travel website tripadvisor.com.

Over the past three years Diwong has moved and expanded her kitchen to accommodate more students, exchanged cooking tips with star chefs, and written a cookbook, which she is promoting with a four-week tour of Australia. Her experience has also prompted her to share her success. She not only encourages others in the community to change their lives by starting their own businesses, but also provides financial support by donating 10% of her net profits to the Helping Hands project to pass on to others.

Urban Neighbours of Hope began in 1992 when Ash and Anji Barker moved to a multicultural neighborhood in Melbourne, Australia, and began looking for ways to love God and serve their neighbors in practical, life-giving ways. There are now 9 UNOH neighborhood-based teams living and serving Christ among the urban poor of five large cities. UHOH Bangkok started in 2002 and serves three neighborhoods in the city’s largest slum, Klong Toey. They minister in the communities through education, sports programs, music and English lessons, microfinance projects such as Helping Hands, relief programs and prison visitation.

CMF missionaries in Nairobi, Kenya, and Chiang Mai, Thailand, have recently begun experimenting with aquaponics ventures that may sustain both plants — such as tomatoes and cabbage — and fish that can be eaten or sold for a profit.

Aquaponics is a combination of hydroponics (growing plants in water) and aquaculture (raising fish in small ponds). The end result works much like a pond. Fish live in a pond, and ponds can also sustain plant growth, such as water lilies. The waste from the fish provides the nitrogen fertilizer that the plants need to grow. The end result is a mutually beneficial system that can provide both edible protein and vegetables.

Keith Ham in Kenya is making his first attempt with the hydroponics portion of the system on his back porch, with good results. Jeff Prus in Thailand also has a prototype at his home in Chiang Mai, and is raising both plants and fish. Eastside Christian Church in Fullerton, Calif., a major sponsoring church for CMF projects in Nairobi, has set up a prototype on church property that is drawing a lot of interest from church members.

Other supplemental farming systems are also in use in Nairobi. Three greenhouses were recently set up at the Missions of Hope International boarding school at Joska. CMF Executive Director Doug Priest toured the greenhouses in March and reports: “Outside the greenhouses were normal gardens. The tomatoes in these were pretty sad, but inside the greenhouses, which were simple plastic over metal framing, the tomatoes were spectacular! The idea here is to use the tomatoes to help with the diets of the children, teachers and staff at Joska.”