Saowalak meets Cherie Booth QC
Saowalak, Cherie Booth QC
and Dame Tanni listening to Andrew 's speech
Whether someone is born disabled, or someone’s life is changed as the result of sickness or accident, someone moves into a different, restricted world. The tendency of someone’s family, someone’s parents, is to protect, to save people with disabilities from harm, to keep them away from the world. This desire to protect is probably stronger for the families of girls than of boys, but it affects all disabled people. The result can be isolation and loss of confidence in someone’s own social and work abilities besides a positive attitude toward their life can be disappeared.
When I first went to the Redemptorist Vocational School for the Disabled I had never met another disabled person. I had no real confidence that I would ever work, support myself, have friends have a proper life. The school changed all of those things. Immediately I arrived I met other girls and boys with the same or even severe problems than my own. I realised that I was not the only girl in Thailand with disabilities! The school taught me so much besides the curriculum subjects. It taught me to be positive about my life, to focus on what I can do, on what I can achieve. It taught me to think about the rights of disabled people to be considered when new buildings and transport systems are designed and also about the responsibilities that go with those rights. The responsibility for me, as a disabled person, to show that I can do a useful job, that I can support myself, that I can live independently, without the financial or physical support of my family. Our teachers are themselves people with disabilities. Their message is not ‘do what I say’ but ‘do what I do’ - they set a real example for each of students. I never forget my teacher’s word “you do not let anyone to take advantage of you because you are disabled you should hold your head up high, you have a necessary potential to do everything.”
The ethos of the Vocational School is positive, affirming, empowering. We learn that we can not just compete in sport, we can win – we can even represent Thailand abroad. We can get good jobs – almost all our graduates find real work. We can help other disabled people by going out into society and showing that people with disabilities can make the same contribution as other people; maybe we just have to try a little harder sometimes. We are very proud that forty of our fellow graduates are teachers, eight of them in government vocational schools for the disabled.
Because disabled girls tend to be more protected than boys, we have a special need of access to the very important source of encouragement, education and confidence building which is the Vocational School in Pattaya. It is very unique in Thailand, probably in the whole of South East Asia. We are taught at the school that there are three important ‘e’s’ education plus employment is equal empowerment. Empowerment is not something a beautiful policy but something we can touch, something is real, and something is tangible. For persons with disabilities, it is an education. Furthermore, Empowerment restores our self confidence, self respect, and self esteem e.g. But for girls there is an all-important fourth ‘e’ – equality, especially equality of opportunity to access to education. At present time only 37 out of 200 students can be girls because there is no proper accommodation for more. The new building will make room for 100 girls – nearly three times as many. Over twenty or thirty years of use the building will change the lives of more than 1,000 young women with disabilities. I do believe education is a door of opportunities for persons with disabilities to seek a more fulfilling life in an able body’s world and seek a better quality of life in the future. If persons with disabilities are empowered, they can empower others. Disability is only personnel description. It is not a description of capability. They all deserve the same chance that I have had from the school, and I promise that they will make just as good use of that opportunity. Thank you for your help in making that possible.
See more details in Engliah please go to
http://www.fr-ray.org/dynamic/view.php?src=30/300000&lang=enhttp://www.pattayaorphanage.org.uk/news/news_pattaya.cfm?entryPoint=defaultand
http://www.rvsd.ac.th/index_thai.php in Thai version
If you are interested in suppoerting the new grils' building, Please contact
Pattaya Orphanage Trust
124 North End Shouse
Fitziames Avenue
London W 14 ORZ UK
Tel 020 7602 6203
Or
Suporntum@rvsd.ac.th
