A Boy Who Needs Surgery-Part 1

I mentioned in an earlier post a class I had with a friend from Thailand. During the lesson my students learned about a 5 year old boy who was staying with his grandmother a couple of years ago. One day she left some acid out that she used to polish the stones and the boy drank it believing it was water. This left him with a badly burned trachea and unable to eat solid foods.

My friend in Thailand is arranging for operations to clear scar tissue and fix the situation. The boy has had 5 operations and will need about 5 more. Each operation costs about $300. If the boy was Thai, he would be able to get the operations for a nominal amount of money. Unfortunately, he is from Burma and can not get Thai government support.

Because the parents are afraid the boy will eat something that will spoil the work done in the first 5 operations, he is not going to school.

I knew that some of my students wanted to help the little boy, so I had a meeting to organize some fundraisers for the boy. The kids seem to be enthusiastic about the idea.

I am going to have a series of lessons about problems that children in developing countries face. I am hoping that at the end of the series of lessons, the kids will have learned something about kids in developing countries and the power they have to help change their lives.

I had a meeting with the Principle, Vice-Principle, and some other teachers about the idea. As it turns out, my school likes the idea because it will help the students enter a good university.

Hopefully this is the first part of a good story.