If its Monday, it must be...

Ko Lanta. Heaven is an island. Or was. the men with concrete and hotel signs are doing their best to deface it, and they have made huge strides in the past couple of years. In a few years more, Ko Lanta as it is today will have disappeared. But you don't want to hear about that.

Koh Lanta for us is Lunch Farms, two to be exact, at Ban Jae Lea and at Wat Ko Lanta. We visited a third on the mainland at Ban Klongyanud. Each of these schools is special to us because we saw them first when the tsunami was a very recent memory, when jobs were scarce and children were thin and haunted. The change that two years has made is quite extraordinary. the children are fit, healthy, happy. Their teachers tell us that school attendance is up, the standard of work is improved and grades are begining to show the improvement.

It would not be realistic to put all of this down to the lunch farms. Resources have been poured into this area by the Thai government and by a battery of NGOs. But we like to think we have made our contribution in a very direct way,by putting food in the children's tummies, enabling them to work harder and concentrate better.

All three lunch farms are making a material contribution to their schools between 25 to 35 percent of the total cost of lunches. Because this has been a learning experience for all of us, the farm have not performed perfectly, but they improve steadily, and the farm at Klongyanud in particular is a model of sustainability and community involvement. A truly successful project in these schools, we visit four more tomorrow, and I will report on those in due course.

Apologies for the lack of photographs, there are one or two minor technical challenges here. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, at least as far as illustrations are concerned. Apologies also for the lack of a post yesterday, same technical challenges apply.