The Good Shepherd Sisters mission is to women and children who are marginalised, opressed and disempowered. There are few women more opressed and marginalised than those who work in the hotels and bars of Pattaya. Their world embraces - if that is the word - work and relationships which are so poorly paid that they verge on slavery. Either can involve prostitution. There are real personal risks in terms of violence and disease.
The work of the Good Shepherd Sisters is to put such women back in charge of their lives. No judgements are made. The ladies are given respect and thus encouraged to respect themselves. There is a wide range of educational opportunity - languages, computing, dressmaking, hairdressing. The Fountain of Life building is modern, clean and buzzing with activity. Three hundred women attend classes every day.
Why is the Trust interested? Our mission after all is to children, so why concern ourselves with prostitutes and cooks? These ladies are mothers. Their children can, if left untended, run off to become street kids, get into crime, or be victims of violence or worse from unsuitable boyfriends. Empowering the women is protecting the children.
Sisters Joan and Supaporn above are among the Sisters responsible for the Fountain of Life. Theirs is a very rare vocation, and the lives of many women and children in Pattaya would be poorer by far without their extraordinary work.
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