Karen Dahl Travels to Thailand
Wisconsin Rural Leadership Program website
(Group VII Alumna) Karen Dahl, August 2000

Introduction
In January 1998, Group VII traveled to Thailand and Vietnam for its International Seminar. The visits to various non-governmental organizations in Bangkok opened my eyes to how one person CAN affect the world. We met with one particular woman who exemplified the best of individual initiative, Kru Prateep Ungsongtham Hata. A slum child who had to quit school in the sixth grade, she worked in a sweat shop twelve hours a day, six days a week but still was able to save a baht (two cents) a day to further her education. She realized that the only passport out of poverty was an education. Upon completion of teacher training, Kru Prateep returned to the slums of Bangkok and started a school for slum children.

From this humble beginning, she started the Duang Prateep Foundation which now provides day care, kindergarten classes, two orphanages, adult education, drug education and rehabilitation, cooperative banking, volunteer fire departments and farming projects for slum dwellers. She is called the "Angel of the Slums" by her people and meeting her through WRLP changed my life. I returned to the USA convinced that I could help her in some small way.

I formed the Flame of Hope Foundation, Inc., as a not-for-profit corporation with the goal of assisting the Thai people as well as other suffering people of the world. Having worked for about six years with a Russian sister city program, I realized that I couldn't "reinvent the wheel" and found that working with an already established entity in- country facilitates all programs and efforts. Karna Hanna and Greg Schopen, Group VII, WRLP, serve on the Board of Directors of the Flame of Hope Foundation, Inc. I sold my business in 1999 (a travel agency) and dedicate my life to working for and with Kru Prateep.

Since humanitarian aid is such a monumental task, assistance from the Viroqua Area Rotary Club has been an essential part of financial assistance. With some of the money that the Flame of Hope has raised, we have provided art supplies, student supplies, good used clothing, and more importantly nose surgery for a terribly tortured and battered child (Kanchanaburi orphanage) and also an in-ear hearing aid for the first child to attend the only hearing impaired student school in the slums of Bangkok.

I have traveled to Thailand six times since Group VII's International Seminar. I would like to share with you my journal of one of these trips in October, 1999.(This is an edited version of the journal, which focuses solely on the Duang Prateep Foundation)

Thailand, October 1999
My two companions and I departed LaCrosse on October 25. This was the first time that I had traveled with these women together and I was concerned that it could/would change our relationship. Boy, was I off. We met and laughed from the airport until we returned to western Wisconsin. A more congenial group has never been found! Pat Heim, the Secretary of the Flame
of Hope Foundation, Inc., is a family practice attorney in LaCrosse. Jean Helliesen, a retired history professor, is a financial supporter of the foundation. They were my two hilarious and congenial traveling companions.

As with any overseas trip, we arrived in Bangkok exhausted. It took us approximately 36 hours to get to our hotel from home! I scheduled few activities for the first day. I went to Thamassat and Jean and Pat went sightseeing on the first day there. Our second and third days were taken up with tailors, meals with friends and a long visit to the Duang Prateep Foundation (DPF). We met with the new executive director and, of course, Kru Prateep. While Monwarin took Jean and Pat for a tour of the slums of Klong Toey, I had the singular opportunity to record a radio interview with the "angel of the slums". She is shy yet forthcoming about the mission of the foundation. As usual, she was a delight to visit. Visiting with Kru Prateep is like visiting a saint on The Mount!

Our candid discussions concerned the New Life Center in Kanchanaburi as well as the other center in Chumphon. There are 100 places at the two centers, 80 of which are filled and 415 children on the waiting list! It is amazing that the New Life Center in Kanchanaburi is not even completed but the situation is so dire that they have placed 30 children there already.

A construction site is more desirable than the slum streets. The New Life Center is now housing the original 15 children, both boys and girls, who survived torture, disfigurement, abandonment and some are orphans as well. The additional children are girls, some orphans of AIDS families, and from other equally sad situations.

Thanks to the Wisconsin Rural Leadership Program alumni and the Viroqua Area Rotary Club, I took enough money to purchase school supplies for approximately 150 children. The balance of the 150 children will receive supplies from other sources. The fishpond for which our Rotary Club donated money last visit is still unfinished due to lack of funds. The money is being combined with other donations to complete this important food source. The Flame of Hope Foundation, Inc. is an off shoot of my trip to Thailand with WRLP in January 1999 and is presently working to alleviate the suffering of these children.

There are so many needs, too few resources. Each child's face is a perfect story of love and trust. Life may not be ideal in an orphanage but it is salvation for these little souls who had nobody and nothing to rely on in their previous lives. The slums are not a place for wee souls to survive alone. I return energized and ready to face the future working for Kru Prateep and my "little babies". We have so much; they have so little. Think of our good fortune, our precious families and say a prayer for a better life for these little people. It is with your help and resources that we have the ability to provide some assistance. As I have said repeatedly, I cannot save the world but I can make some children's lives a little better - all with your help.

Update
In March, 2000 there was a fire in Klong Toey (Bangkok) and forty three families were burned out of their homes. One of the kindergartens that DPF runs was destroyed. Through the Flame of Hope Foundation, we raised thousands of dollars to provide the school supplies and materials necessary to reopen the school.