In the port area of Bangkok is Klong Toey, a shantytown where 100,000 people live, including many internal migrants. The nuns there launched an initiative to distribute meals in a context made even more impoverished by the pandemic. “Our school is a few blocks away, and we accept the invitation of Pope Francis: we allow ourselves to be challenged”.
Bangkok () – It is the largest slum in Thailand and one of the most populous in Asia. Today it has also become an area that houses migrants who arrive from the “peripheries” of the country. We are referring to the marginal neighborhood of Klong Toey, which continues to be synonymous with poverty and degradation, crime and drug addiction, despite the ambitious urbanization projects (unfeasible or elitist, according to many) and the importance of the port area of Bangkok for which is the center. A fluctuating and restless humanity (it is estimated that 100,000 people live there) is concentrated in an area of less than two square kilometers. Services are scarce there, but volunteer and religious groups try to alleviate the difficulties, starting with education and access to health for minors and the elderly.
The pandemic has hit this neighborhood hard, both health-wise and economically. And this makes relief initiatives more urgent than ever, following the lifting of social distancing in Thailand. In this context, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Bangkok, in collaboration with the small community of Xaverian missionaries – present in the neighborhood for a long time – have begun to distribute meals for about 200 people a month, at a symbolic cost of one baht (less than three euro cents). The work is intended to be a response to Pope Francis’ call to reach out to the poor who live on the margins of society.
“We don’t have to go far to meet them, as our school is just a few blocks from the biggest slum in Bangkok,” Sister Orapin recalls. The nun recounts her experience to Radio Veritas Asia, and adds that what prompted her was Pope Francis’ invitation “to leave homes and schools to serve the poor who live on the margins of society.”
The project is not limited to assistance, recalls the nun. It is also a “dialogue of life”, of support for basic needs but also of understanding of problems and, finally, a channel of interreligious dialogue with and between a majority Buddhist population, where the convergence of people from different parts of the country has fostered the meeting and coexistence of different religious creeds.
The Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus also visit families, following the Xaverian experience. Although the social activities that they carry out in Klong Toey are different from their usual and appreciated work in Bangkok in the field of education, they respond to a requirement: to reach where there are needs and where solutions are lacking.
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