Program Director
Wannee Kidswad

Mandate
Protection, Caring, Education, a Future full of Opportunities

Number of Children
Currently 170 children.

The Care We Provide
The HDF operates five Mercy homes for children. Every child who comes to live with us comes from somewhere, a home, a village, a place full of relatives, people they call Aunty and Uncle, Grandma and Grandpa. Our goal with all of our children is to return them to there home whenever possible, in those cases where the home environment is loving and nurturing. We raise the children in the religious faith of their parents and teach them to respect all religions. Our children attend Catholic Mass and Buddhist ceremonies. We have programs that teach our children art, computers, dance, and physical education. Each Mercy Home also includes social workers, cooks, tutors, and coaches. We send them all to school and nurture and love these children as part of our family. Since all our children have suffered severe loss, rejection, or abuse before they came to us, our first and most important efforts must always be in helping restore and rekindle the simple joys of being a child in each of them.

The Orphanages Include:

• Home for boys, ages 13 to 18
• Home for boys, ages 6 to 12
• Home for young children, boys and girls, ages 3 to 9
• Home for girls, ages 9 to 18, located nearby Mercy Centre
• A safe-house for children in grave danger.
• (We also have a special home for Mothers and Children with AIDS - detailed as a separate program.)

Origins/History
In 1976 HDF opened a home for nine street children who depended on Father Joe and Sister Maria for survival. Our capacity to care for such children grew with each child we took in and our reach expanded every year. Twenty-five years later in 2001, we opened our fifth home. The following year, the Ministry of Justice, in a unique arrangement, also began assigning children to our care as an alternative to incarceration.

The Challenges
Our greatest challenge never changes. That is, to ensure our children, who often come to us after experiencing enormous infancy and childhood deficits, are each able to be children once again on their way to leading a fulfilling family life in adulthood.

Success Story
A three-year-old slum child named Benz was abandoned by his parents and somehow (nobody will ever know) ended up living alone in extreme degradation and sleeping among pigs in the slaughterhouse market of Klong Toey. Months later, when our social workers found Benz, he was severely malnourished with life-threatening infections. Nursed back to health at his new home in Mercy Centre, Benz is now a normal, mischievous nine-year-old boy with many friends at Mercy Centre and school, and an asset to his team on the soccer pitch.