Children's home
 

Before Baan Unrak

Donata Dolci (Donata Dolci/Didi) started her professional life as a secretary in a small accounting firm. She started practicing meditation and it was through this that she decided that she would like to devote her life to serving humanity. After continuing her education, she went to Israel for two years and worked with the mentally disturbed in a psychiatric facility. She worked in several countries following this, eventually arriving in Sangklaburi, Thailand to organize an agricultural project for refugees in the area.

From the Agricultural Project to Baan Unrak

While working on the agricultural project, an abandoned wife asked Didi to help her take care of her child.

“Both mother and baby suffered from severe malnutrition and other sicknesses. I thought I could provide some temporary help. I knew that she wanted to give the child because she wanted to go back to her bar life in Bangkok. I did not know what to do. I asked my neighbor and the children in our house. Everybody said, “Take it Didi, take it.”

Word got round that Didi looked after abandoned children. Mothers and sometimes fathers brought their children.

Didi started the home with her Norwegian friend Oddrun Skare in 1991, both of them full-time volunteers for the Neo-Humanist organization.

“When a child is brought to our home I see in them a great potentiality. I already imagine their bright future. I see light and I see beauty. I take a child when I see that otherwise he or she cannot develop that potential.”

Since then, the home has gone from strength to strength, expanding rapidly.  Learn more about the history of our home.