Children of the Forest (CoF) is a non-governmental organization based in Sangklaburi, Thailand that provides stateless children and families with the necessary resources to build a self-sufficient and fulfilling life. Without Thai identification, stateless persons lack access to affordable education and healthcare and are at high risk for violence and exploitation. CoF provides opportunities for migrant children and their families to break their cycle of disadvantage through no-cost schools, healthcare coverage, and protection services. Their approach is guided by CoF’s principles of investing in youth, protecting vulnerable persons, reaching out to communities, and adapting to their needs.
British CoF founder Daniel Hopson was living and teaching in Japan 25 years ago when a student told him about a place he’d visited in Thailand called the Children’s Village, a healing space for children of drug-addicted parents. While traveling in Thailand himself, Hopson decided to visit the Village.
“I was taken around by a social worker and saw their vocational activities, saw their teaching, saw the children enjoying washing their clothes and swimming in the evening in the river, the beautiful natural setting, and you could just sense that they were genuinely healing and that just by being there, by the support from the staff, by the natural environment, that they were moving through their trauma.”
What really stuck with him was the conversation he had with the social worker at the end of that day, when he came to realize that she'd grown up at the Village herself, had attended their schools, gone on to university, and come back to be a social worker there. He recognized not only the incredible change that had been made possible for her, but also the ripple effect it had on so many other lives.
That's when Hopson was inspired to leave the corporate world and follow a new path. He went back to Japan for a year to save up some money and then returned to the Children’s Village, where he volunteered for over two years, primarily as an English teacher. He began visiting the border region with Burma, where he encountered so many children who lacked access to formal education and many who were living in unsafe situations or had been abandoned by their parents. Hopson and his colleagues wanted to help these children join the safety of the Children’s Village, but the children didn't have the proper documentation to leave the border area.
Seeing such an urgent need for schools and protective services, Hopson thought, why not bring a similar safe haven to them? With some help from his parents to purchase the land, he and a few other volunteers began their new project with a school. They thought maybe a dozen children would show up, but somehow word got out through the villages and plantations, and they had 150 children on the first day.
"So we were a school from day one. It wasn't really planned, but the need was there.”
And the seeds for Children of the Forest were planted.
