What a glorious day at Mercy Centre! Today 532 slum children received their diplomas at our annual Mercy kindergarten graduation ceremonies.

Somehow Nung Ning's music soothes the decades and the old pains of these elderly ladies and brings back the beautiful memories of yesteryear.

And they hold Nung Ning tight like her mum used to do, their breath strong with garlic and betel. And to Nung Ning it's the sweetest scent in the world because it reminds her of her mum

Some street kids call her “Teacher.” Others, especially the younger ones, call her “Mom.” To many kids who have known her for years, she takes on the honorific title of “Big Sister.”

Since we opened our first preschool forty-one years ago, we’ve built and operated dozens more. We build them in the poorest neighborhoods, where children have no access to a preschool education and no place to learn their Thai ABC’s or play with other children. Today, counting our Mokan “sea gypsy” school in Ranong, we operate 23 kindergartens for poor children, with a total enrollment over 2,500 students and an alumni population approaching 45,000.

Our children celebrated Children’s Day this Saturday in perfect fashion – playing hard, eating ice cream and cake, swimming at local pools, roughhousing (pretending to be kung fu fighters), skipping rope, jumping and diving and cart-wheeling all around, and then, as the sun went down, finding even more ways to play harder and have even more fun.

Unbelievable excitement!

This morning over 300 slum kids, ages three to seven, battled for victory in their first ever team competition during our Mercy Kindergarten Sports Day. The kids were divided into two teams – The Pink and The Blue – in contests that ranged from relay races and musical-chairs to tug-of-war face-offs. The cheers and chants were deafening!