“This space is the best ever!”

An abandoned space next to residential area of Karen Burmese communities was turned into a “Creative Space for Children” and launched late January 2014 by a group of migrant community members and Foundation for Child Development (FCD) with support from ILO-IPEC. The community is located inside a fish market compound by the seaside of Samut Prakan Province, south of Bangkok in Thailand. In the experience of FCD, establishing creative spaces for children is an effective way to raise the awareness of parents and communities on the importance of age appropriate child development.
 

This creative space services approximately 500 migrant households with 300 youth and children. As parents are involved in intensive labour, these children are often neglected, lack parental care, and do not access education, health or any other services and therefore are at risk of being subjected to child labour. Furthermore, only a small number of the children in the community have access to Thai public school in the nearby area. The rest are typically left wandering in the community, with smaller children being attended to by their older siblings or other community members.
The “Creative Space for Children” comprises of play areas such as a playground and sand box area. There is a small pavilion that houses an open library, which can also be used as a non-formal education classroom. There is also a rest area for adults so that community members can meet after work. In addition, the space allows for holding many kinds of child development activities including health and child care campaigns.

“It took FCD some months to mobilise the employer who owns this space and for him to agree for us to make use of the place”, Mr. Chetta Munkong, FCD Manager said. “This child friendly space was created through the participation of community members, employers, shop keepers, local health and education officials and the children themselves and in fact it is the community who said how they wanted to use this space, they designed it so to make the most use of it for everyone, and they set up a community committee to take care of the space” he continued.

 

“I am very glad that we have this kind of place for children. And I can see that the children are happy today,” said Joy, 20, a community volunteer participating in the process of creating the child friendly space and the opening ceremony of the space on January 26th. This project was introduced to Joy, a domestic worker living in the community, in September the previous year when she decided to spend her days off usually Sunday’s to help to develop the space.


“I think it is very important that children have a safe play area. I have a nephew, and without this area, he and his friends would play arou nd the community area, and there are so many dangerous spots. Children can drown in the stream nearby for instance” Joy added.