AKP Supports Women and Children at the Wildflower Home in Chiang Mai

By: Emily Etue, AKP SE Asia

THAILAND | Located in rural Chiang Mai, Abercrombie & Kent Philanthropy (AKP) supports the Wildflower Home, a temporary shelter to mothers and their young children coming from crisis situations, such as pregnancy out of wedlock, domestic abuse, and severe poverty. The home provides mothers with health care access, education, and emotional support to help them move them from crisis and poverty to steady jobs or continuing education after leaving the Wildflower Home. The home is managed by two Catholic nuns dedicated to helping vulnerable populations in Thailand.

Rehabilitating the women is a step by step process:

  1. Healing: for the first four days after a woman arrives they do not do any laborious work and are encouraged to wean off any medication/drugs they may have been taking.
  2. Incorporation: The woman begins working alongside the other mothers on daily chores and begins to feel accepted in the new home.
  3. Education: The woman starts learning about basic Thai Laws and Rights.
  4. Passion: The woman narrows her focus on what work she wants to pursue after she leaves the Wildflower Home.
  5. Re-integration: The woman is assisted by Wildflower Home to find work, leaves the home, and is checked-in on from time to time.

During their stay at the Wildflower Home, the mothers stay busy and work to build their confidence to be self-sufficient once they leave the home. The mothers spend their days working at the various agricultural projects on the home’s property, including AKP-funded mushroom farm, which is now the largest source of income at the home. The mushroom farm also teaches financial planning, collaboration, and project management.

AKP’s partnership with the Wildflower Home continues to grow and evolve. Guests can now experience harvesting mushrooms and other vegetables from the garden and assist with cooking traditional Thai food with a few of the women at the home as they prepare lunch for all of the women and children.

Thanks to the support of generous A&K guests, construction of a new mushroom farm began in September 2018. The new mushroom farm will allow the women to earn even more income from mushroom sales. Construction is expected to be completed by November 2018.

New Mushroom House Construction