You might be wondering, what is BDR?
BDR stands for Baan Dem Rak. It’s the affectionate Thai name that we call our community centre by. The name encapsulates our vision and our heartbeat, to be a home full of joy to our community.
Baan means home, while Dem means filled. I’m sure you can guess what Rak means?
In this series, we will invite various writers to share their experience of serving with BDR, regardless of the length of their service. This will be an ongoing series and we hope that you, as our reader, will have an insight to our work here, and be inspired to be a part.
BDR’s invitation
If you are a YWAMer and looking for a location to send your mission team, please do contact us; we are more than glad to host you or connect you to other YWAM ministries in Thailand.
Being part of YWAM Chiang Mai and YWAM Thailand, we also love to engage with DTS teams all around the world. If you are looking for a ministry experience with underprivileged children, adults, and families, we would like to invite you to support our work through your teams.
Current Programs
English Program: We have a weekly English class for children from about 5 to 12 years old. This is a very interactive, fun way for our kiddos to learn English!
Homework Help Program: This time every week our children are welcomed to bring their school work that they need help with and get assistance from our staff. During this time we also teach guitar, worship songs, and have bible study for any kids that are interested.
Thai Classes for adults: We are running Thai language classes for members of the community who are migrants and are struggling to acquire the Thai language. It enables them to work better with their colleagues and bosses, and opens up doors for relationships to be built with us.
Soccer Coaching: Gathering those kids and teens interested in improving their soccer skills together while also using this as a time to strengthen our relationship with them!
Free Time Program: Weekly time for kids to come and play sports, do art or just hangout!
Teen Youth Group: Weekly time for our teens who are interested in growing in their knowledge and love for God to gather together and study the Word and worship Jesus!
Sunday Bible Program: The whole community is invited to come and listen to a story from the Bible and then break up into age groups to talk about the story and enjoy dinner together!
Our Latest Update
Due to security and safety concerns, we have started to move our staff who are living in the community centre to another staff housing. As we do more intervention work, the inherent risk of perpetrators coming to do harm to our staff gets more significant.
We have found a good-sized house with a number of rooms to let our staff stay in. It helps them to feel safer at night, and also more empowered to do intervention work when necessary. Boundaries between work and living space will be better as well.
Now that we are paying rent for an additional house, we are also raising more funds to keep afloat. We will also be using this house for mission team housing in the future when borders open and mission teams come in. The income will help to finance the staff housing as well.
If you are keen to partner with us in championing the safety of our staff, feel free to contact us!
