Thailand: Mother’s Day at the HFCC
12/08/2021 - News
Mother’s Day is a highly special occasion celebrated across the globe for honoring mothers and their love for their children. In Thailand Mother’s Day is celebrated on , August 12th, Her Majesty Queen Sirikit’s birthday. It’s a national holiday in Thailand. Schools in Thailand typically host a Mother’s Day ceremony. On the special day, mothers come to their child’s school and each child kneels at his or her mother’s feet, paying respect to mom for all that she has done for them. Young children create their own handmade card to gift their mothers. A traditional Mother’s Day gift in Thailand is jasmine- a flower that resembles motherhood.
The Holy Family Catholic Center on August 12 also stops on this feast day. Usually for the occasion the Center welcomed all the mothers of the little guests to spend two days of joy with them between ceremonies, dances and songs. But this year it was not possible given the problems and restrictions linked to Covid-19, in fact in recent months the cases in the South-East Asian country have grown exponentially (between 1 April and 11 August 788,126 were confirmed new infections and 6,701 deaths, against 28,863 cases and 94 deaths in the previous 15 months).
Although the mothers were unable to reach the Center, all the children and girls welcomed to the mission were able to gather around Noy, their “foster mother”.
Known as “Noy”, which means “little”, or “cru Noy”, little teacher. Since 1987 she has been a pillar of the Center and of Bankonthip, the cutting and sewing school born within the Holy Family Catholic Center. Her real name is Suvaraphon Yindeengarm, in 1975 from Bangkok she went up into the mountains, in the north of the country, as a teacher in the village of Ban Pong, she learned the Akha language and matured her vocation to dedicate her life to the children of the place. Now everyone knows her also tanks due to her exceptional communication skills. She has raised humanly and professionally hundreds of girls who have gone to the Center and attended the cutting and sewing school; she also involves them in the daily life of the Center empowering them. All of them now have their own life, a family, but the memory of “Cru Noy”, of that “foster mother” is always alive in their hearts.
