Childlife-A future for street children
Farewell visit to Childlife Mae Sai, Augsut 10th 2003
In my function as 2nd chair man of the charity “Kinderleben Eine Zukunft für Strassenkinder in Mae Sai e.V.”.I had visited
Mae Sai several times. The last time had been from March 18th - April 2nd 2002. Back then I went to Thailand to manage the final
details for realizing the dream of ChildlifeVision 2002 and officially open the construction works for it. Then later in the year from
03. bis 30.10. 2002 I returned to check on the progress and talk about further changes to the plan. In October 2002, still from Mae
Sai I ordered a further 7.000 Euro to be transferred for the construction works. This means that by then we had payed 23.000
Euros towards the construction works-an deviation of 7000 Euro from the original 16.000 Euro budget that we had agreed on.
Towards the end of 2002 we faced massive problems in the cooperation with Childlife Mae Sai and had to freeze and then
terminate our support for Childlife Mae Sai. This website has not sufficient space to go into the manifold and complex set of
reasons and background that had led us to that extremely difficult and painful decision. We therefore decided to look for
another project in Thailand that would need our support and was willing to cooperate with us in a more reliable manner.
In July and August 2003 I therefore went back to Thailand, this time
to take a closer look at the project "School for Life", that also is
located in Northern Thailand as well, close to Chiang Mai. There I
had talks about a future cooperation with and support from us.On that
occasion Jens Kronberg, who then was the offical coordinator for the
main sponsor INA and also serves in the main board of Kindeleben
Mae Sai e.V. was able to arrange a rather spontaneous visit to
Childlife in Mae Sai. For me personnaly this was the perfect chance
to officaly end our cooperation with Childlife face in an open and
direct manner , talking face to face. For me this was especially
important following the months of silence from Childlife. On the 10th
of August on the long way to Childlife many pictures came up in my

When we arrived the weather was gloomy, and what I once had announced as "We have a dream" appeared gloomy and murky as well
head of the last years in which I ,amongst others, had worked day and night in order to help Childife to have a
future at all. We had started supporting Childlife from its humble beginnings when they had absolutely nothing
and had watched it grow with our support over the years. I respected Ngaow’s (the project leader) wish not to
talk about the past at all and spent the time small talking and taking leave emotionally and mentally from Childlife,
which over the years had become such an important and dear part of my life and my heart .
After three hours it was time to say goodbye. I could feel nothing of the resentment anymore of the last months. This was illustrated that Ngaow , as a nice gesture, invited me to join the offical opening ceremony of the new area in November. This small sign of goodwill and respect came as an suprise after the many months of resentment before. On this last visit I took pictures to show all donors and sponsors where their money went to and to thank them once more for their generous support. Bernd Fiedler
Farewell pictures Jens and Ngaow
Home
 back
pictures