July 4, 2008 – July 4 2023

“As we celebrate Warm Heart’s 15th Anniversary, we can’t help but reflect on how far we’ve come and it’s all thanks to you and your generous support. Today, we commemorate this milestone by sharing four powerful videos that Anne Bannister created for us showcasing the incredible work your contributions have made possible. Our heartfelt thanks to Anne, and every single one of you that have been on this journey with us over the last 15 years!” ~ Michael and Evelind

Warm Heart Children’s Homes

First in a series of the Warm Heart Children Stories: Nit
In a heartwarming story of success highlighting the importance of our Children’s Home. Our first video in the series showcases Warm Heart graduate Nit, who came to us from a rural village for the opportunity to attend school when she was just 15. Provided with the opportunity to learn English, Nit went on to attend university in Bangkok and will be pursuing her masters degree in Europe starting this year. Nit exemplifies the qualities we hope to instill in our students, and we hope this video makes you smile.​

The Biochar Project

Our teams are currently working in Africa to scale up our program, having recently visited Uganda and The Gambia amongst other nations to work to educate farmers and train verifiers across the continent. As the harvest season also approaches in Thailand, efforts are in full swing to get the word out here as well. Watch this short video as Aom, our Biochar Project Manager, describes what we do and how Biochar is a scientifically proven solution to combat climate change while preserving public health and alleviating rural poverty.

Access to Care

We would like to highlight the work of Soda and the rest of our Access to Care  team who provide services to the disabled and elderly in Thailand’s Phrao region. In this video, Soda shares stories about what motivates her work in public health and elder care. We invite you to watch this inspirational clip!

The Upskills Program

The Upskills Program has been in development in recent years, and we’re excited to share the progress with you. This video showcases our wonderful instructor Finn, who works with our kids every day of the week to teach valuable “soft skills” preparing them for stable jobs in the future. Each day after school, our kids spend an hour learning English, mindfulness, and other pre-professional skills. Tune into this week’s video to learn more about how Finn makes it happen!

​Reflecting on 15 Years of Impact!

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the remarkable milestones we have achieved over the past 15 years. We are immensely grateful to the multitude of volunteers, donors, and our dedicated staff, whose unwavering commitment has fueled our growth and success. Thank you for your enduring support, which has been instrumental in our journey.

Children’s Homes

The Biochar Project

Access to Care and Wellness

Highlights of Warm Heart Projects

The Upskills Program

We started with 15  students in 2021, during the pandemic, and now includes adult education classes for students returning to school,  shopkeepers, public health workers, and our own Warm Heart children. The program is evolving as we learn how to best meet the needs of the community.

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Microenterprise

The positive impact of Warm Heart’s Microenterprise program has been in creating market opportunities and generating income for women artisan cooperatives.

Total sales amount of $150,000, which has supported seven women’s groups over the years, involving a total of 50 individuals.

The program has also supported various groups and provided micro-loans to individuals, enabling them to establish businesses and meet their financial needs.
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Visit Fashion Accessories by Warm Heart to see all of the beautiful products we have available!

Safe Swim Program

Drowning is the number one killer of children in Thailand. Warm Heart has partnered with CMIRC to teach the program developed over the past four years in public schools in Chiang Mai and Phrao. The target age for training students to swim and learn water safety is 4th grade.

Generous grants from the Australian Embassy’s Direct Aid Program (DAP), the British Community in Thailand Foundation for the Needy (BCTFN) and an anonymous donor, have supported the training of 650 students from 12 elementary schools in Phrao from 2019 through 2022.
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The 2023 classes are underway, with 350 students signed up. That gets us to 1000 students trained in water safety!

Major Milestones

From Weeds to a Campus to Serve Our Community

When we started 15 years ago, we began with a piece of land, a lot of brambles and a few fruit trees. We started with bamboo and bricks, learned how to make adobe brick, experimented with recycling polystyrene waste to make bricks.

Today we have 20 structures that serve our children, staff, programs, and our community: Our main office, our education center (library, computer lab, community meeting center), our volunteer office, 4 dorms for the children, a kitchen/dining room, Dr. Shafer’s office (built with polystyrene/cement bricks!), Michael and Evelind’s home, and our microenterprise showroom. Plus, volunteer/staff housing, the biochar production area and drying shed, a pigpen, a chicken coop and storage for the farming tools.​

Each year we add a piece, fix a piece. Last year we installed solar to reduce our costs and carbon footprint. The year before that we were able to purchase a school bus to transport all the children in one trip!

This year we continue with a big project to upgrade our water system to collect rainwater for our fields – Over several years we have expanded our farmland by enriching the soil with fertilizer made from biochar and manure or compost.
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Now we need enough water for the fruit tress and vegetable gardens to increase our yields and grow a greater portion of our food.

This was all made possible with the support of generous partner organizations and donors like you.

Building a Brighter Future Together

Our Journey

Fifteen years ago, our journey began by listening to the needs of our community. We discovered that marginalized children from remote hill tribe villages were in desperate need of a safe haven and access to education. Breaking the cycle of generational poverty became our mission, as we recognized that education held the key. We also recognized the importance of increasing incomes for families and providing care for the growing elderly population and individuals with disabilities who had been left behind. Strengthening our community required a multi-generational, holistic approach.

Along the way, we embarked on numerous projects—some successful, some not. However, at the heart of it all was our unwavering commitment to the children who came to live with us or attend our partner school in Phrao, and to the community in which they were growing up. We provided several young people a chance to grow and learn in a safe environment, helped adults in the community to find meaningful work at home and the elderly to age with dignity.

We also turned our attention to the natural environment, looking for ways to reduce air pollution in our communities and encourage sustainable agriculture to address food poverty. Our biochar and agricultural program led us to Malawi and Kenya, where community leaders began to adopt some of the solutions we cultivated here.

Our Road Ahead

As we contemplate the road ahead, we have identified three key areas of focus for our future:  Access to Education, Sustainable Livelihoods, and Access to Care for the Elderly and Disabled. We understand the significance of treating each area separately to ensure that we can find the right individuals to lead these initiatives and establish the most effective organizational models.

Warm Heart will continue to support Access to Education for the children who live in our home campus, as well as for those we support at local schools and in further and higher education. Additionally, we plan to expand our Upskilling Program, which will open the doors for more young people around Phrao to gain critical employability skills.  Our investments in education have a lifelong impact on our children and they in turn bring knowledge, skills and a commitment to their communities. 

Our Global Biochar Program and regenerative agriculture initiatives allow us to support Sustainable Livelihoods in several communities around the world. Our biochar program has given rise to Biochar Life, a Public Benefit Corporation. Through this venture, we aim to continue supporting smallholder farmers by providing biochar training and facilitating access to carbon removal credit markets. Warm Heart remains dedicated to training thousands of farmers, enabling them to enhance crop yields and develop drought-resistant techniques using biochar. As the global market for carbon credits matures, Biochar Life will expand its reach to farmers, enabling them to further increase their incomes by sequestering carbon in their fields.

Warm Heart will also continue to support sustainable livelihoods through our microenterprise initiatives, supporting small business entrepreneurs and connecting them with global markets.

In the realm of Access to Care, we are actively exploring opportunities to train caregivers and collaborate with local government programs to expand their reach. As with the other areas of our activities, we are eager for these initiatives to become self-sustaining.  Programs that provide access to care not only uplift the lives of those we serve. They also provide essential support for whole families, create new jobs, and enhance the life of the community at large. By demonstrating the value of these initiatives, we are paving the way for future generations to take them forward.

Sustaining our Future

While the biochar business shows promise in contributing to our annual budget and supporting our core work with children, we will continue to rely on charitable contributions and grants for our programs. We are ever grateful to everyone who has supported us along the way, yet we must continue to expand our base of contributors while at the same time finding new ways to maximize the impact of donations through initiatives that lead to community self-sufficiency, job creation and opportunities. 

​At the same time, we are aware that in the near future, we will need to turn over the operations of Warm Heart to a new generation of local, community leaders who are already emerging. Warm Heart’s impact on lives is long term and multi-generational. Over the next decades, the work we have done over these past 15 years will continue to have benefits for the communities we serve, leading to a brighter future.

Please join us as we mentor the next generation of leaders at Warm Heart and continue to meet the ever-changing challenges that life will bring for rural smallholder farmers, their children, and grandchildren.

Thank you for your continuing support!

Your ongoing support is invaluable in driving meaningful change and creating a lasting impact. Together, we have the power to celebrate 15 years of unwavering community support and strive towards a better world. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to each and every member of the Warm Heart family for being an integral part of our journey.

Before you leave, we invite you to visit our donation page. By making a contribution, you can experience a profound sense of pride, knowing that your support will continue to transform countless lives.
Help us amplify our reach by sharing our inspiring videos with your friends. You can send them to our Youtube page Warm Heart’s 15th Year Anniversary , or share this page with them.

The post 15 Year Anniversary appeared first on Warm Heart World.

Look How Far We Have Come in 14 years!

Children’s Homes

Young Smart Farmers

Drowning Prevention Class

Warm Heart partners with the Chiang Mai International Rotary Club’s Water Safety program. We work with all the local schools and coordinate the Water Safety and Drowning Prevention class for all 4th graders. We had to close the program in 2021 due to COVID. When we began again in 2022 both 4th and 5th grades were included to catch up for COVID year. To date we have had 650 children graduate this life-saving course.

Higher Education

Core Competency Skills

After 6 months, we concluded the first cycle of our Upskilling Program. Finn worked hard together with 20 graduates from Phrao and many of them have gone out to the cities and found jobs.

Microenterprise

Elder Care

Our Project Access program received a generous grant from Brothers Trust to purchase a vehicle. We now have good reliable transportation for our Home Visits.

Volunteers are able to come again!

Environment

Biochar – Stop the Smoke!

We have gone solar!

The Solar project is being installed, but the electric upgrades took us $5000 over budget.  We have a much safer campus for our children but need to fund the gap.

We are so grateful for the many donations that came in to make this dream possible.

We can save $7,000 per year switching to clean energy with solar!

We have come a long way, baby!

Warm Heart would like to extend our deepest appreciation to our family, friends, supporters, our partners and sponsors! You have been instrumental in making all of this happen! You have helped us move mountains!

Together we can ensure these kids have a brighter future!

The post Annual End of Year Report 2022 appeared first on Warm Heart World.

Despite the restrictions we have all faced from the pandemic, we were able to move forward in most of our programs.

Environmental Program

Restore the Earth

“Stop the Smoke” biochar project saw tremendous growth in 2021. We kicked off the season with a Dinner Concert at the Shangri-La hotel in Chiang Mai, to raise funds for our Restore the Earth agroforestry project.

We have 16 rai of agroforestry started in our first year.

The soil was prepared with 25 tons of biochar before planting.

We purchased and planted 2,000 tree seedlings, with expectations that 40% will survive and thrive. Next year we will buy more trees to plant.

Malawi and Kenya

In Africa, the program continues to rapidly expand. In Kenya and Malawi in 2021 we trained 5688 farmers in 115 villages so far plus the 3119 from last year, for a total of over 8000.

It is quite exciting to see the progress, and we have many inspiring videos of what is happening in Africa on our Performance of Biochar in Africa page.

The Democratic Republic of Congo joins our team

In July we were contacted by Pastor Mahamba Wa-ibera Evariste from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He asked for training so he could train all the small farmers in DRC. He was connected with our group in Malawi, and he has been busy ever since!

He reported he had 550 farmers attend the 13 trainings he conducted during August, September, October and November in the villages and Beni town rural area:

He has also participated in 38 radio shows, and with his Facebook and WhatsApp posts he is able to reach many thousands more people in many villages and towns of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

We are very happy to have him as one of our team leaders!

Biochar Trust

When we first began the Stop the Smoke project we knew it was important for the environment to convince the local farmers in Thailand to stop burning their crop waste. We shared with them the value biochar could add to their soils, and offered to buy any excess biochar they could make.

In Africa, the situation is a little different. Their soils are so bad, the biochar has made such a significant difference in their crop production that they are very eager to make biochar to use, and very willing to share the information with each other to help increase food security with their neighbors.

But the benefits of biochar go way beyond reducing the smoke that is fueling our climate change problem. When buried in the ground it is sequestering pure carbon, removing it from our atmosphere.

We have been working diligently to create a program that will help small holder farmers everywhere to be able to tap into the huge market of carbon credits. Crop waste burning is a global problem. Providing the financial incentive to stop burning and use crop waste to make biochar will help increase participation, with the goal of ending the practice of open field burning.

We are always excited and happy to have people like Sister Miriam Paulette and Pastor Mahamba Wa-ibera Evariste join us to help expand the Stop the Smoke project worldwide. Visit our Biochar Trust site to learn more.

Children’s Empowerment Program

Sponsorship

In 2022, we are looking forward to a “normal” world again!

We have lots of new kids arriving to replace the bunch that graduated last year. They all need sponsors. And the kids who have sponsors would love to meet them.

Why not make 2022 the year that you vacation in Thailand? Isn’t it time to meet your child?

Visits would certainly be the greatest gift our children could imagine followed only by getting a sponsor.

So if you are a sponsor, please make this a Happy New Year by visiting. If you are no a sponsor yet, please make this a Happy New Year for one of our children hoping to have a sponsor!

Higher Education

So far everyone has excelled and we are delighted to continue investing in their futures. Online Classes have been the norm but with vaccination rates up, there has been time for home visits. Sadly despite their overwhelming academic achievements, in-person graduation ceremonies continue to be delayed due to the pandemic.We supported 28 students in higher education this year – 16 in high school and 12 at University (8 boys and 20 girls).

Vo-tech

Praew is in her senior year at Phayo Technical high school and plans to apply to university in Chiang Mai.

Nipa is finishing her third year in Tourism and has been making good progress in her English.

Attitaya and Kai both started their first year of high school at Nappanich Vocational Technical College.

University

Tanqua, now in her fourth year of nursing school was initiated into the National Nursing Association

Naan, Jaa, and Op graduated from high school and have been accepted to university programs. 

Naan is studying at the Payap International School of Nursing in Chiang Mai.  So far she has been studying online from Warm Heart. She studies from early morning until late evening but has been a great help with the colds and fevers that come with the change in the weather. (It does get chilly at night this time of year.)

Jaa is at Chiang Mai Rajabhat University studying to be a Science teacher. 

Op is studying law at Phayoa Lanna University.  She says her time in the Military Reserve got her interested in law.

Naan is still studying nursing from early morning until late evening but has been a great help with the colds and fevers that come with the change in the weather. (It does get chilly at night this time of year.)

Post-Grad

Soda, Faa(Sky), and Earn have completed all their university coursework and await only their final diplomas. (This can take a while.) Soda and Faa are already employed in the area they studied.

After Soda’s December 2020 graduation, with a degree in Public Health Nursing, Warm Heart was lucky to be able to hire her as project manager of our Elder’s Program where she now works full time caring for the elderly and disabled in our community. 

Upon graduation in March, Faa found a project management position in one of Phrao’s sub-district offices.This is a one-year contract through a government program that funded her university (Maejo) to place graduates in local public administration positions.  As a project manager, she also mentors students at a youth center setup to encourage entrepreneurship among high school dropouts.

Mint graduated from the 2-year San Patong Vocational College (University level) and was accepted to complete her last two years of university at Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna Phitsanulok.

Akanit started her second year working at the Jesuit Refugee Service. It’s based in Bangkok, but with COVID office closures, we have enjoyed having her nearby in Chiang Mai. She has started to repay into our higher education fund while saving for grad school. She started researching master’s programs in social work and just sent us a spreadsheet with her top three choices – all in Europe. We are hoping for a scholarship.

Core Competency Skills

Our Core Competency Skills project kicked off in September under the direction of our program manager Finn. Initially 10 students enrolled in our new program. Details of the program are listed on our Core Competency page.

Finn has also been teaching English and Presentation skills to the Warm heart Children during their school break,

Microenterprise Fashion Accessories

One bright spot was a substantial order from the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University for a repeat order of the 250 face masks that we did for them last year and a 75pc tote bag order. 

Once again, our international design and production management team (Josephine in Spain and Tangmo in Switzerland and Warm Heart staff on the ground in Phrao) sourced the product, adapted the design to available materials and ensured quality control. 

We delivered on time and budget despite the disruptions in global air and sea transportation.

We are also looking at new ways to market biochar to consumers.  We recently displayed fun designs in air fresheners at a local crafts fair.

Elder Care

One of our Warm Heart graduates, Soda, is now the program manager for our Project Access.

Soda has impressively added over 50 new patients into her rotation while continuing to visit old ones.

Thanks to her hard work we are happy to announce that our program has managed to provide regular at-home visits to a total of 65 people on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis depending on the evaluation of their needs.

On these visits Soda ensures that medication is being taken, wound care maintained, and that food and daily care are being provided by family or neighbors.

Spikes in COVID stopped visits for weeks at a time, but Soda still delivered food and other supplies by keeping her distance.

When the situation eased, she took people for doctors’ visits, helped patients who had emergencies, and visited those confined to the hospital.

Beyond providing medical services and basic care, Soda has been a shoulder to rely on for many patients and their families – making sure they feel heard and supported.

With 2021 marking the first year we’ve set goals for this program we are happy to report that we are on target to meet our goal of 400 visits and meals provided this year. 

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2021 Special Projects

Malawi Special Project

In 2020 you helped Sister Miriam Paulette purchase a sewing machine so they could make face masks for the community, and an incubator so they could increase their chicken flock.

The incubator was so successful they had a new problem, they needed to build a chicken coop to house all the baby chicks!

Once again you stepped in and helped fund the material to build the chicken coop.

Giving Tuesday

Last year our Giving Tuesday project was raising the funds to buy a school bus.

Our current source of energy comes from coal and is very unreliable.

This year we have a chance to install solar power and reduce our impact on the environment.

We are very happy that we were able to raise the funds to begin this project and look forward to having clean, reliable energy.

Highlights of 2021

Media Coverage 2021

Citylife

Citylife has been very supportive of Warm Heart’s Stop the Smoke project. in 2021 they covered 3 stories about our community efforts to raise awareness and funds for the Stop the Smoke campaign.

Warm Heart Foundation’s Simple Solution, March 2, 2021

Businesses, activists, leaders and the concerned are coming together to find solutions to the pollution

Support the effort at the Stop the Smoke dinner, March 18, 2021

Chiang Mai comes together to support Warm Heart Foundation’s Stop the Smoke agroforestry program.

Varee students inspired by Warm Heart Foundation in inspiring workshop, March 24, 2021

Warm Heart Foundation continues to educate youth about biochar as a solution for smoke pollution

We can not even begin to express how grateful we are for your support. May all of us do wonderful things for others this year and make the world on December 31, 2022 a better place than it was on January 1!

The post Annual End of Year Report 2021 appeared first on Warm Heart World.

Looking back at what was an incredibly challenging year for everyone we are thankful for all we accomplished. We could not have done it without you!

Environmental Progress

Stop the Smoke 2020

Shangri-La Hotel Chiang Mai sponsored the Biochar program in Mae Chaem to support farmers making biochar rather than open field burning of crop waste; and as a result:

• Unemployed villagers made biochar and earned $10,000 (298,589 Baht) in new income in two months;
• Prevented 313 kg of PM_2.5 particles from polluting the air;
• Averted the emission of 54,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (methane and NOx); 
• Sequestered 150 tonnes of CO₂ and
• Fertilized hundreds of intensively planted kitchen gardens that produced tonnes of nutritious, organic vegetables.

Learn more about the Shangri-La “Stop the Smoke” project partnership.

Plans for 2021

While we will continue in 2021 to work towards expanding our farmer base of biochar producers, we are also taking steps to reduce the amount of corn waste on a bigger scale. 

The Restore the Earth project takes on another area of environmental destruction, reforesting steep hillsides with water saving, income producing trees. High demand for corn led to deforestation and loss of watershed.  The corn harvests resulted in massive increases in open field burning, creating GHGs and heavy smoke with PM2.5 particles.

• Reduce the area planted with corn, which results in less GHGs and PM2.5 emitted through crop waste burning while at the same time:
  • Reforesting barren slopes
  • Stop soil erosion
  • Recreate watersheds
  • Restore soil
  • Rebuilding habitats, bringing back biodiversity
  • Help farmers diversity their crops and sources of income
  • Improving their quality of life through clean air and soils
  • Increase farm incomes

Malawi Special Project

Sister Miriam Paulette, who heads our Malawi Biochar Project came to us with a request to help her raise money to buy two sewing machines so they could provide the community with facemasks to help stop the spread of Covid-19 in her community. You stepped up and helped fund this program.

Sister Miriam was also hoping to raise enough money to buy an incubator to help bring new food sources to her hungry community. She thought that would take a miracle. Guess what, she received her miracle with full funding!

Children’s Empowerment Program

School Bus

Getting the children back and forth to school has always been a challenge. With so many children we needed to make several trips each morning and afternoon to get them all to school. When our red truck died, we turned to you for your help.

We are so appreciative of all the generous hearts that donated to our School Bus fund. We raised the money needed and have found the perfect bus! We can now carry all the children to school safely in one trip!

Higher Education

2020 was a year of obstacles to be overcome, but we did succeed in our higher education goals. With your enduring support, we had a total of 21 students studying at high schools and universities.

Graduations

We started out looking forward to five of our young women graduating from vocational colleges and universities. We were able to attend the celebration for the graduation for three of them at the end of February, before the first lockdown. All five formally graduated by June and have found jobs to support themselves while they wait for the pandemic to ease and the economy to slink back.

New Schools

Luckily the school year finished in March, so our four younger graduates from middle school were able to prepare for high school. Two went to our District High School and two got scholarships to go to Vocational college in Chiang Mai, studying to be electricians

Planning for University

Our three high school seniors are applying to university in nursing, teaching, and sports education.

Thanks to you, their dreams are becoming reality.  Together we are nurturing the future leaders of our communities.

Read more about our Higher Education successes.

Core Competency Skills

Warm Heart is making progress with our development of a community-based computer learning center that combines online with hands-on job training for disadvantaged rural youth in North Thailand.

We have completed local business surveys to identify core customer service and soft skills to include in our training.

High drop-out rates leave rural youth vulnerable to trafficking for jobs outside their rural agricultural communities.

With core competencies in customer service, English, computers, and hospitality, students will meet the entry-level requirements of major employers as they recover from the COVID19 lockdown.

Young Smart Farmers

Our children’s vegetable gardens continue to be a source of great pride. The children are learning the valuable skill of producing food through sustainable farming practices.

With rainy season it was time to plant the gardens and the initial crops harvested.

There were lots of peppers and cucumbers and some of the fruit trees were bearing rose apples, “custard apples”, longan and lemons and limes. The mangoes were eaten green before the children had climbed down the trees from picking them!

Safety Swim Classes

Drowning is the #1 killer of children in Thailand. Warm Heart has partnered with the Chiang Mai International Rotary Club (CMIRC) to teach the program they developed over the past four year at public schools in Chiang Mai. 4^th grade is the target age to train students to swim and water safety. 

Through generous grants from the Australian Embassy’s Direct Aid Program (DAP) and the British Community in Thailand Foundation for the Needy (BCTFN), we trained 296 students from 10 Phrao elementary schools in 2019 and 2020. CMIRC and BCTFN have committed to continue with the Phrao 4^th graders in the next school year.

Microenterprise Fashion Accessories

Our Microenterprise program was also hit by the pandemic.  The hotels and boutiques where we sell in Chiang Mai closed.  As flights were grounded, we had to work around shipping restrictions. Luckily, we had some stock in the US and one of our volunteers carried some  orders to ship.  Our new Japanese menswear customer accepted delivery on a beautiful collection of scarves, braving the pandemic shutdowns in retail. Our international team (Josephine from Spain and Tangmo from Switzerland, sourced materials and coordinated with our staff on the ground in Phrao to develop a new line of products, face masks with imprinted logos.

Working with Sprott School of Business in Canada we were able to produce and deliver our first special order for the year end. You can read the article Sprott published about this collaboration below in our Media Coverage section!

Working with Sprott School of Business in Canada we were able to produce and deliver our first special order. You can read the article Sprott published about this collaboration below in our Media Coverage section!

Elder Care

During the height of the lockdown in Phrao we had to be careful how we stayed in contact with our elderly clients. Networks with neighbors were developed to help stay in contact.

There is such a need in the community for Elder Care. In 2021 we will be looking at ways we can sustainably expand our elder care program. Watch for announcements and progress in this area.

Volunteer shortage – Art contest

Our volunteer force was severely impacted by the Pandemic, which left us with a skeleton crew for most of the year. One of the highlights volunteers were able to accomplish with the children was to organize a new art contest. The children love participating in the contests, and they blew us away with all of their creativity. Visit our Art Contests page to see all of their inspiring work in the “Peace Now” art competition

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Warm Heart Board of Directors

In April of 2020 elections were held, we now have a new President and Vice-President. Evelind and Michael are working closely with our newly elected Warm Heart Board of Directors President Dana Brown and Vice President Jason Highberger. Together they are developing plans that will help Warm Heart grow stronger and move towards sustainability in 2021 and beyond.

Corporate Sponsors

Warm Heart gained 4 Corporate Sponsors in 2020, and we are extremely grateful for their support. Shangri-La and Kad Kokoa support our Environmental projects, while World Centric and Technomix support our Higher Education program.

We thank them for their support, and encourage other corporations to join us. We have possible sponsorship available in many areas, including Elder Care, Children’s Homes, Biochar Market, Operating Expenses.

Kad Kokoa produces a special chrysanthemum and dark chocolate candy bar as a benefit for Warm Heart Foundation. Indulge your tastebuds while supporting Warm Heart!

Media Coverage 2020

Warm Heart received some great media coverage in 2020.

Citylife

Staff at Citylife wrote a very comprehensive article about Warm Heart. We appreciate their support.

Great.com talks with

Warm Heart was invited to participate in a podcast with “Great.com talks with”. In the podcast Spirit Rosenberg interviewed Board President Dana Brown and Founder Michael Shafer about Warm Heart Worldwide’s biochar projects. They discuss training local farmers in Northern Thailand, Malawi and Kenya to make biochar instead of burning crops.

Interesting topic. Did you know that in developing economies, people raise 10 billion tonnes of food annually and generate 20 billion tonnes of crop waste in their fields in the process?

Burning crops generates huge amounts of climate gases, including, PM2.5, one of the most dire particulates for human health. It’s no wonder that is so hard to breathe in many places at certain times of the year!

By making biochar, farmers themselves have an impact on climate change and the health and wellbeing of their communities. Biochar is a truly versatile product as well, which can be used for cooking, to increase crop yields and to remove harmful waste and bad smells. There are all sorts of opportunities for farmers to improve their lives and turn their biochar into an entrepreneurial venture. Learn more about the exciting work we are doing in this area: https://warmheartworld.org/biochar-training/

View the Podcast.

Sprott School of Business

Sprott School of Business published a great story about the support given to Warm Heart’s Fashion Accessories project through their special order of Sprott Logo face masks. This has opened a new market for Fashion Accessories, and we are looking forward to working with new clients wanting logo designed face masks. Contact us for more information.

Conscious Carma

Conscious Carma is a new platform to applaud Corporates, Individuals, Societies and Governments who are taking conscious initiatives towards a sustainable and equal world.

We were very happy they chose the Shangri-La/Warm Heart project for their kick-off edition of their online magazine.

The post Year End Report 2020 appeared first on Warm Heart World.

Dear Friends,

As we reach the end of 2019, Warm Heart wants to thank you for your overwhelming support and to report to you about what your dollars have accomplished. You have changed the world. Honest.

All four of the Warm Heart projects that you have supported have outperformed, accomplishing major goals without yet reaching their full target budgets. They are now expanding their visions.

Empower Young Girls (now the Higher Education Fund Project): Target $50,000

All minority children face high barriers to getting an education. Their villages seldom have schools. When they attend Thai schools, they seldom speak Thai and rapidly fall behind.

Thailand has among the worst urban-rural distributions of educational resources in the world, so the education they can get is poor.

If they qualify for university, they often cannot attend because families cannot afford housing, food, and university uniforms, books and supplies.

Our Children and Education Program began in the hope of getting minority children beyond the mandatory grade 6.

Today we have 16 children at university.

The Higher Education fund that you support permits our children to attend university by providing interest free loans to cover any costs that remain after scholarships and so on.

Graduates are already paying off their loans, but it will be a long time before loan repayments cover new loans.

Help expand “Young Smart Farmers” organic gardens: Target $16,000

Across the developing world, poor farmers raise low value staple crops because they cannot afford costly traditional refrigeration for higher value vegetables and fruits.

We know this problem because it plagues our communities and forced us to go to the market constantly because we could not keep food for more than a day.

With your support, we created super-insulating, homemade bricks from ground Styrofoam cement and built a model, low cost cold room for storing produce.

Our children know the whole process. With your support, we then expanded our organic gardens to make full use of our cold store. As we did so, the children learned all about organic farming.

Stop the Smoke: Target $25,000

Worldwide, crop waste burning by small farmers produces hundreds of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases, smog precursors and PM2.5 (nanoparticles that kill more people in the developing world annually than dengue, hepatitis, HIV, malaria and TB combined).

Stop the Smoke aims to do that – stop it before it even exists, by teaching the world’s poorest farmers to convert their crop waste into valuable biochar.

With the funds you have donated, Warm Heart has completed preparations for the first, profitable village-scale biochar social enterprise.

The business starts when the harvest ends in January, 2020. Then we hope to replicate it across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Sustainable Farming to Relieve Hunger in Malawi: Target: $10,000

The Warm Heart Malawi Biochar Project has outdone itself.

It has trained almost 2,500 farmers, made biochar training a regular part of student activities at the National College of Medical and Health Sciences, Zomba Campus (100 public health nurses per training), and will train the corrections officers and soon-to-be-released prisoners at every prison in Malawi when the harvest is in.

The project also established five training centers in Central and West Kenya. Your support has been essential to the Project accomplishing all of this.

This is the single most cost-effective Project I have ever seen.

I hope that you will encourage friends to support it. Malawi is the poorest country in the world and the farmers the Project helps are the poorest people in Malawi.

To all of you, again, thank you, thank you, thank you.

We so appreciate every single dollar that you have donated.

You have given us the ability to conduct projects we once only dreamed of.

The people you have helped us to help themselves and to help still others thank you, too.

Your donations are not just stones in a pond that create spreading ripples of goodness; they are stones skipped across the surface of a pond, launching ripples of help every place they touch down!

Thank you,

Michael, Evelind, and the entire Warm Heart team

The post Annual End of Year Report 2019 appeared first on Warm Heart World.

Children remain our top priority

Warm Heart is all about the kids.

Our children come from backgrounds least likely to succeed. They come to us malnourished, unable to speak the local language, some from homes of violence, drugs, alcohol and crime, or abandonment. To escape a life of poverty one alternative for them is a life in the sex trades.

What these children need is a chance to build a better life for themselves. Their basic needs are simple: a roof over their heads, access to education, and to not have to worry about where their next meal will come from. At Warm Heart they receive this, along with a lot of love, guidance, and TLC.

Environmental Program

New this year, our team designed a simple process for making bricks out of recycled styrofoam. We made a video, posted it to YouTube, and have had over 780,000 views. We are building our own office with the bricks that we have made.

Our biochar program remains a high priority. We are moving forward with developing a sustainable social enterprise model to promote widespread use of biochar, one of the best options to help reverse global warming.

We added Cool the Climate, a 5 part series of articles written by Dr. D. Michael Shafer. Originally released on Linkedin, the articles propose an actionable plan to reverse global warming.  We complied all 5 articles into a free downloadable Cool the Climate PDF.

Young Smart Farmers came to Warm Heart and helped our kids prepare and plant an organic garden to help feed our mob. We have had one harvest so far and look forward to many more!

With burning season upon us, we will be focusing our efforts locally to help “Stop the Smoke” again this year. 

Microenterprise

Our Microenterprise Program has flourished with the business acumen and design sense of Josephine Bow, who has been coming to Warm Heart every fall for the past 7 years.

She works with the weavers, sewers, and jewelry makers to design new collections each year.

Josephine built the sales outlets with wholesale orders, online shops, local gift shops and private events.

During the year she manages the sales and inventory from her base in Spain, with Evelind and Warm Heart staff on the ground, visiting the stores and producers.

Britta van Wedel is here working on her fifth collection of fashion bracelets, testing designs and training our women’s group of bracelet makers.

She and Britta have been working until midnight to get the details of this year’s collection set up and ready for online and store sales. You can view and purchase any of our Microenterprise products on

Fashion Accessories by Warm Heart.

Along with the fabulous collection of jewelry donated to Warm Heart were many loose beads and pearls. We have created some stunning new necklaces, also available on our website.

Community Support in 2018

• New Sponsors – We are grateful to welcome several new Sponsors to our extended family! We still have a few kids waiting for their own sponsor.
• Brad Chamberlain organized an evening of music to help “Stop the Smoke”, and raised 29,800 baht for Warm Heart.
• Crowdfunding for Warm Heart in Korea – Our Volunteer Chaewon Han’s campaign was successful in raising Higher Education funds.
• Chiang Mai Estate Sale – Friends donated 10% from their sales for Warm Heart
• Building Futures Thailand held fundraisers for the Children’s Homes and set up the Ebay Charity Store to sell Lisa’s Legacy jewelry.
• Students from Prem Tinsulanonda School and the British Early Years Centre in Bangkok raised funds for the children and community at Warm Heart  
• Local Chiang Mai Events –Brad Chamberlain organized an evening of excellent music at The Edge and Johnny Jenn’s popular podcast both raised awareness and helped fund the “Stop the Smoke” campaign
• Our supporters on Facebook ran fundraisers for birthdays and in memory of a beloved friend.

Future Goals for 2019

We are always looking for ways to build streams of income to help fund and run Warm Heart Children’s Homes. A few of the projects we will be working on in 2019:

Environmental Learning Center at Warm Heart 

The Environmental Learning Center at Warm Heart is a self-contained, hands-on, experiential learning center dedicated to climate and environmental problem solving and located at a low carbon footprint facility nestled among the mountains and small farms of North Thailand. Our initial target will be high school and college level student programs.

We now have site drawings and initial building layouts from our Architect Partner This will grow organically as groups come to learn and work on the phased-in project.

Vocational Training

Warm Heart will focus on establishing a strong vocational training program to benefit our children and those in our community looking for a better life. We have several projects in the works:

• The Director of e-Learning and Development of a major international hotel chain has agreed to provide us with the basic skills competency industry specific technical curriculum (theory and practical) and the English content.
• We have a commitment for a coding course to be developed with 10-13 year olds to develop English and coding skills to make the students employable as they graduate from high school or go on to higher education
•  We will also have access to a vocational training platform that is a portal for various organizations to make their online training widely accessible.

We need your help

Once again, we turn to you, our friends, family, and supporters, to help us get through another year.

One option is to sponsor a child, several children are still in need of sponsors.

Please open your hearts and your wallets, your contributions to Warm Heart are tax-deductible.

Monthly donations are extremely appreciated, no matter what size. It helps us to budget when we know there is a commitment.  

Again, we thank all of you for your support. Warm Heart thrives because of you.

The post 2018: The Year in Review appeared first on Warm Heart World.

Warm Heart celebrated our 10th Anniversary on July 4th, 2018 with a big party!  We would like to thank Franck Legale for hosting our event at The Edge.

We had great live music from local bands throughout the evening, all arranged for us by our friend Brad Chamberlain. His band Jen Yai, started off the show, followed by Backstabbers, and finishing the evening with the Odd Gods.

Brian Pern from Pern’s Restaurant provided the food and cooked up a tasty BBQ (using biochar charcoal, of course!), including vegetarian burgers and vegetarian dogs. We also had scrumptious vegan food  available from Free Bird Cafe. To top things off Chiang Mai Beer donated a keg to our party too!

Raffle Donors

Our raffle prizes were incredible!  We would like to thank everyone who donated a prize to our raffle. Winners were so excited by their prizes, you helped make our event fun and special!

Wyndham Vale Sewing Circle – Handmade Quilt (value THB 3,880)

137 Pillars – 60-minute Signature Spa Treatment for 1 person (Value THB 3,000)

Amy D’Apice – Mixed media original painting, matted and framed (Value THB 3000)

137 Pillars – Classic Afternoon Tea for 2 persons (value THB 1,415)

Flight of the Gibbon – 2 Gift Vouchers (value THB 4,199 each)

Pern’s Restaurant – 2 Gift Certificate (value THB 500 each)

David Kerr – 1 hour 15 minute massage (value THB 1,500)

Fun Time

All in all we had a great evening (despite the torrential downpour shortly before the evening began!)

All of our volunteers came to the event, and enjoyed a night off helping us celebrate our 10th Anniversary.

Warm Heart Staff also participated in the celebration. The party was open to the community, which gave us a chance to meet a few new friends and introduce them to the work we do at Warm Heart.

We raised 40,000 baht  at our 10th Anniversary party to head into the new year.

Thank you everyone who came to help us celebrate. Here’s to another 10 years!

The post Warm Heart Celebrates 10th Anniversary appeared first on Warm Heart World.

We are so grateful to all of our supporters, with your help we have been able to establish the following programs over the past 10 years:

• Our Children’s Homes – we are able to provide a loving home to disadvantaged hill tribe children, and provide them an opportunity for life-changing education. Today, 43 kids live in our Children’s Homes and attend local schools. We sponsor another 35 at a local, government boarding school, have 3 kids away at vocational-technical high schools and 14 at university.
• Environmental Program – we continue to make progress with our biochar program. In 2017 we received the “Energy Globe National Award” for Thailand for our training program teaching farmers how to benefit from biochar, and we are working on educating the world on the powerful side effects of biochar, and its ability to help us Cool the Climate and reverse global warming.
• Microenterprise – Our Women’s Artisan Co-ops continue to produce beautiful products which are available for purchase at our Fashion Accessories by Warm Heart store. We have expanded our Microenterprise program to include environmental projects. Our informational video “Repurposing Styrofoam” has had over 300,000 views on YouTube.
• Project Access – Our home visits to the elderly and disabled provide dearly needed companionship for the most needy.
• Volunteers – We are so fortunate to continue to draw hardworking, dedicated volunteers to help us run our programs. Over the past 10 years we have had over 200 volunteers from around the world. We continue to receive the high honor of being rated as Top-Rated by Great Nonprofits.
• Rak Din – Our biochar sustainable social enterprise has launched and continues to grow.

Our programs are all based on the community needs in Phrao. We came, we asked, and sought out and developed solutions for the biggest problems.

We have worked with many Strategic Partners over the past 10 years, without there help we could not have achieved as much as we have. A special thanks from the bottom of our hearts to

• Kris and her team at Building Futures Thailand,
• Yoshimi Horiuchi and her Always Reading Caravan,
• Sallo Polak and his Philanthropy Connections,
• Lee Maastricht and the Wheelchair Project for helping to provide wheelchairs for those in need,
• and to our many partners at Engineers Without Borders that have worked on several projects to help the local community of Phrao.

Awards

The post A Look Back: Warm Heart 10 Year Retrospect appeared first on Warm Heart World.