A Helping Hand For Bangkok's Homeless

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A helping hand for Bangkok's homeless

By The Nation

BANGKOK: -- Gentle efforts are being made to forge unity among homeless people in Bangkok to try to help them fight for their basic rights.

The Human Settlement Foundation Thailand is copying a scheme that was successful in Japan, which involves visits to homeless people's sleeping areas by core leaders, with an offer of hot soya milk and drinking water.

Suchin Iam-in visits areas where fellow homeless people sleep on a daily basis, adjacent to Hua Lamphong train station, where a large number of people hang out during the day and sleep at night.

He mostly approaches new faces who show up, says hello and offers them a drink.

This strategy is adapted from the Japanese project, which saw coffee and cigarettes offered to homeless people. Hot soya milk and drinking water are offered in Thailand, but the name "Coffee Visit" is still used by the Foundation.

Suchin, who is better known as "Uncle Dum", said he had volunteered to be a "coffee server" for the foundation for many years, after he came to realise from his own lessons in life that "nobody really wants to help poor and homeless people, unless we help ourselves and each other".

Homeless people's access to state welfare and basic rights is even lower to that of the urban poor, such as slum dwellers, because homeless people have no personal or house registration details to identify themselves to any authorities.

The foundation has used the 'coffee visits' to forge bonds with the homeless and try to encourage them to become pro-active and fight for their basic rights.

Foundation manager Nopphan Phromsri said the homeless were regarded "fully underprivileged" compared to poor people of any kind.

"They have zero access to state welfare, including crucial healthcare, let alone rights to education or other benefits at higher levels," she said.

Apart from paying courtesy to homeless people and winning over them, the coffee visit also allows them to gauge the number of new homeless and obtain other statistical information about them.

A survey by the foundation in late January found some 1,092 homeless people, 29 of whom were young children. This is up from the 630 homeless reported in 2001.

The foundation is working jointly with the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration to build shelters while encouraging homeless people to stay and live together as a group.

-- The Nation 2010-03-02

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