2018 marked our 10th Anniversary
As we look back over the past year, we are filled with gratitude for the global village that has made our work possible. We appreciate the support we have received from our volunteers, our Children’s Sponsors, our base of financial supporters, and our local community.
We would like to share a few highlights with you and share our plans for 2019. We hope you will continue to join us on this extraordinary journey.
On July 4th we celebrated our 10th Anniversary with friends, family, and volunteers for an evening of music, bbq, fireworks and fun.
We have had a very busy year, as usual! We had nine students graduate from High School, our Microenterprise program received a lovely donation, our Environmental Program added a new twist on recycling styrofoam, a position was funded to run our Project Access program, and funds were raised to expand and upgrade our kitchen!
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.
Our children are beating the odds and succeeding!
Every child at Warm Heart strives their best to succeed. They understand the opportunity they have been given.
We encourage the children to go as far as they can with their education. Once they graduate High School, we assist them with applying for any available grants, and we help cover living expenses through our Higher Education Fund.
Every time one graduates another one is there to take his or her spot. Our extended family continues to grow.
Our Higher Education costs are growing, because so many of our children are succeeding.
We could not have helped as many children as we have without your support, and feel such a sense of overwhelming gratitude that words can not sufficiently express.
Your support has helped grow all of our projects.
2018 saw the most high school graduates yet! We are proud of each of them, read their stories on our Higher Education page.
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.
