The Camillian Home for children living with disabilities (Lat Krabang) has established an agricultural learning program suitable both for children living with disabilities and for people interested in getting a source of food that is sustainable and self-reliant. The new project, “Happy Farm,” is in collaboration with the St. Camillus Foundation of Thailand and Sharing for Life Foundation Lat Krabang. It aims to cultivate eight farming areas in a property offered by a generous benefactor for a period of fifteen years. The Happy Farm is located along Khlong 13, Prachasamran Road, Nong Chok, Bangkok. The total land area cultivated is about 500 square meters.

Happy Farm is an agricultural learning and demonstration farm where it has rice fields, fishponds, an organic vegetable garden, a variety of trees, and a waterfront pavilion. It is an agricultural learning center for our children living with disability, the community, and the general public.

Children living with disabilities are children who have significant problems with communication, comprehension, vision, hearing, or physical functioning. Persons with disability and their families often face embarrassment, discrimination, and misconception from the general public. Some of them are vulnerable because they have been abandoned or orphans.

The Camillian Home offers an integrated approach to providing medical care, adaptive equipment, therapy, and, importantly establishing long-term personal relationships. Because of our innovative and respectful approach, our 31 residents children from the Camillian Home for Children Living with Disabilities are role models for 500 children living with disabilities in the surrounding communities of the districts of  Bangkok.

With our agricultural initiative, we give the children a therapeutic mediation like horticulture which help motivate their mind and body, and a learning center so they can be proud of themselves for being protagonists of agricultural development by providing healthy fruits and vegetables to themselves and to the community. The activities helped the children to gain concentration, motor movement, and self-esteem. They are very motivated and enthusiastic about this project to learn. The training sessions are given by agricultural experts. In addition, on a nutrition aspect, we are teaching the community and our children why eating fresh fruits and vegetables that are cultivated in a sustainable way is very important for our health.

The children are proud of themselves for their success in growing vegetables and plants by themselves. They are role models to other children in the community. Whatever our personal background, we can do something with our hands and mind, to be a better person with good values and willing to contribute to society.