Today we spent some time at the Duang Prateep Foundation, located in the Klong Toey slum. One of the founders actually came and presented to us herself about the foundation, it's goals, and services to the people living in the slum. Among the many projects running, there is a Kindergarten program where the children are educated using the Montessori Education Method. This program includes not only basic education topics such as letters, colors, and numbers but also functional topics such as learning how to slice a banana and place it on a plate using proper utensils. The kindergarten was very well organized, very clean, and the children were enjoying what they were doing. Another project running is the Youth Leader Development project, which helps to give children with drug problems or histories of drug problems/criminal records a chance to learn how to be a leader in their communities and guide others away from using drugs.
We also toured a section of the slums, which were mostly one to two room structures, which may or may not have had doors depending on the resident. We could not tour the entire area, as the rains from the night before had flooded them so badly some residents had water in their bedrooms. These were a bit of a change from the rest of Thailand we have seen so far. The walkways were very narrow, and shared by the dogs and cats also living there. After seeing these, it became even more evident that the established kindergarten was in a way a place of refuge for the children.

For more information about this organization, visit http://www.dpf.or.th