For the second year in a row Scandinavian Ladies, their international friends and ISB High School ‘Kids Action for Kids’ Club organized a Scandinavian themed Christmas Bazaar to raise funds for surgeries to Thai children born with a cleft palate, a cleft lip and other facial deformities. This special fundraiser event took place in Nichada on a sunny Saturday, just before the first advent.
The long-waited day finally arrived with excitement for two reasons: firstly, will all the hard work from the past months pay-off and secondly,… will the Santa Claus find his way to Nichada? The preparations had started already in May, following up with product testing, several crafts workshops for children and adults, raffle tickets selling and a lot of baking among other things. The working team really wanted to make sure this year’s bazaar would be even bigger and better than last year. But really, no matter a person’s age, the possibility of seeing Santa Claus face-to-face was probably again the most thrilling of all.
The bazaar did, in fact, look amazing by spreading to several stalls upstairs of Nichada Plaza mall. Just the crafts stalls with flowerpots, lanterns, julegubbar, ornaments, reindeer families, wooden Christmas trees, Christmas prints and so on took several tables. During the whole day the Café hardly had one table free as cakes, cookies, Norwegian style hot dogs disappeared to mouths of visitors, of whom some spent several hours at the bazaar being entertained by the different activities.
In the end of the day the Bazaar Leader Anne Gry Ranchill could not have had a bigger smile on her face: “The idea was to create some Nordic Christmas spirit to Bangkok and have many people share this unique experience with us. Now I can tell, this year we had a record number of small and bigger visitors joining us for playful games, creative workshops, Christmas treats, and for bringing season’s greetings to others with gifts and decorations. What came to Santa Claus, he did find his way to us on time despite all traffic congestion in the Bangkok air space. It seemed the Santa Claus had waited for seeing the children as much the children had waited for him – Santa’s corner was constantly filled with shy smiles, heartening hugs and secretive whispers to the Santa’s ear”.
The bazaar team sends its warmest thanks to all generous people and companies for their incredible contributions. The Scandinavian Christmas Bazaar and Raffle were able to raise a net result of THB 1.265.821, which with Dtac’s match will be enough to give to 101 children born with a cleft lip and/or a cleft palate the much-needed surgeries. This result is very significant to Kids Action for Kids’ work in helping the less-privileged children whose healthcare system does not support them, and whose families cannot afford the corrective surgery.
A very warm THANK YOU to all of you and Happy holiday season!
Watch a short-film of the four brave families who let Kids Action for Kids share their stories with you. Please meet Lak, Ou, Google, Rin and Ohm:
Follow Kids Action for Kids’ current projects:
www.kidsactionforkids.org and Facebook www.facebook.com/kidsactionforkids
FACT BOX
One out of every 700 babies in Thailand is born with cleft lip or cleft palate. These kids are often unable to eat, speak, socialize and smile, and their families can often not afford to pay for an operation. Kids Action for Kids (KAFK) organization works in close cooperation with Operation Smile Thailand (OST), which takes care of the medical part, and Dtac, which matches every Thai baht it raises. Since founded in 2009, KAFK has conducted more than 500 surgeries in Thailand. Currently KAFK is in process of completing 120 surgeries at Maharat Nakorn Ratchasima Hospital in Korat Province. In 2015 KAFK’s goal is to raise funds to double the number of surgeries. KAFK will continue with 120 new surgeries in Thailand, and enter Myanmar and target 120 surgeries there, too.
