On Tuesday 19th December 2017 – Surachai Chantimathon (Nga Caravan), Hugo, and Mai Siplor will perform a benefit concert in aid of Rohingya refugees who have and continue to experience persecution on a massive scale. The benefit concert will take place at 7pm in the Sri Burapha Auditorium at Thammasat University’s Ta Prachan campus. Tickets cost 200 baht each, and are available either at the door or through Socialgiver.
100% of proceeds will go to helping the Rohingya: buying urgent supplies, making food and clean water available, and in the long-term, creating safe environments and makeshift schools to allow kids to be kids, and make sure they can retain hope for a better life.
To provide some perspective of what donations and contributions towards this concert will achieve: just 125 baht will provide one delivery kit to help a woman give birth safely, 1,000 baht will contribute towards a food parcel containing one month’s food for a family of seven, 2,000 baht will provide for 25 pairs of childrens’ sandals, 3,000 baht will provide a month’s worth of nutritious peanut paste for four severely malnourished children.
Background
Since August 2017 ‘clearance operations’ in Rakhine State, Myanmar – where the Rohingya originate – have killed an estimated 3,000 with over 2,000 of these taking place in just three days between 25-28th August. Mass murder, torture, and the burning of their villages has prompted a mass exodus with over 600,000 people fleeing across the Myanmar/ Bangladesh border between August and the end of October. This is the equivalent population of not only the cities of Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai but the entire province of Phuket as well – completely abandoned in two months.
Such a huge surge in arrivals into refugee camps in Bangladesh has prompted panic and confusion. Arrivals are living in hastily built mud huts with limited access to clean water, sanitation, or toilets massively increasing the risk of disease outbreaks.
Proceeds from the concert will go directly to the Mother Child Concern Foundation (MCCF), working in partnership with the UK-based Children on the Edge (COTE). Funds raised for MCCF have already been used to build new latrines and provide emergency medical supplies to wounded or sick arrivals into the Bangladeshi camps. MCCF and COTE are working together now to make sure that children in the camps can retain some sense of normalcy in their day to day lives.
Funds from this Benefit Concert will be directed towards the establishment of more of these ‘safe spaces’ and makeshift schools to ensure that children will be able to have the future that was so brutally stolen from them back home in Myanmar.
For more information about the event, please contact [email protected].
If you can’t make the concert but would still like to help with relief efforts, you can make a donation to this cause via Socialgiver.
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