A golden opportunity for at-risk kids
Centre aims to give a helping hand to those in need. By Chatrudee Theparat
Golden Hill Village in Krok Phra district, Nakhon Sawan is not only a rest area and restaurant, but also the site of Phutong Learning Centre, where juveniles on probation, the disabled and regular folks can get trained for a better future.
Inspired by a royal speech by the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Phutong Learning Centre was established in 2008 to offer training courses on Thai arts, handicrafts and royally-inspired food and sweets by Chayapa Susomboon, 57, the owner of two PTT oil stations in Nakhon Sawan and Golden Hill Village.
The centre was established in partnership with the Kanchanaphisek Non-Formal Education Centre, which offers training programmes for young people from the Ban Metta Juvenile Remand Home and Ban Pranee Juvenile Vocational Training Center for Girls, which moved from Nakhon Pathom to Nakhon Sawan.
Phutong Learning Centre offers 11 courses, both intensive and comprehensive, for free. Intensive courses take 40 hours or eight days, while the comprehensive ones take 800 hours or eight months.
The centre also provides food and lodging to the trainees.
“Although we are not a large-scale company, I’m very happy to help underprivileged people,” said Mrs Chayapa, who has also been an associate judge of the Central Juvenile and Family Court in Nakhon Sawan since 1999.
Mrs Chayapa said the centre at first organised outdoor training programmes before Privy Council member Kasem Watanachai gave her a lending hand, helping to raise funds to build it.
Mr Kasem, his wife, other members of the Privy Council and their friends also donate 800,000-900,000 baht a year to train juveniles and the disabled to be small business operators. The centre started offering comprehensive courses a few years ago.
Mrs Chayapa said she herself has spent 800,000 to 1 million baht a year to buy handicraft products and sweets from trainees in the projects and sell them at her shops at the Golden Hill Village, which runs not only a handicraft store, coffee shop and restaurant, but also a wedding studio.
Free rent is also offered to juveniles who want to run their own shops at her petrol stations. Mrs Chayapa also donates 10% of Golden Hill Village’s revenue to Phutong Training Centre.
“My business here at Golden Hill Village is self-sufficient and does not make much of a profit,” she said. “The main purpose is to help juveniles and underprivileged people.”
Under the support of Mrs Chayapa and her friends, from the start of the project until June, 3,000 juveniles and ordinary people have graduated from training courses offered by the centre.
MR Pinyosawat Suksawat, f ormer director of the Kanchanaphisek NonFormal Education Centre, initiated by Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, said the centre aims to preserve ten traditional Thai crafts: drawing,
sculpting, carving, engraving, moulding, turning, modelling, lacquering, metal beating and plastering.
Originally, the centre for males and females was run in the Grand Palace. There are now branches in Chiang Mai, Chon Buri and Nakhon Sawan.