History

Cyclone Nargis

In May 2008 Frank Dirks visited Myanmar (Burma). His goal was to explore the country and have a vacation. However, that turned out completely differently. A week before Frank arrived, Cyclone Nargis had swept the south delta region of the country. The storm and accompanying tidal waves left one million people homeless. One hundred thousand people had drowned and tens of thousands of children had lost one or both parents.

Frank met a monk in the capital Yangon who had been in the disaster area. This monk told of terrible scenes that took place there. The children, who had lost their parents and relatives during the cyclone, were placed in camps. At night, men climbed over the fence and robbed the children for prostitution and child labor abroad.

Frank's first sponsorship activities

Myanmar is a Buddhist country and many monks and nuns were concerned about the suffering of these children. They decided to take in the orphans in their monasteries, to feed them and to offer them the opportunity to go to school. The monk Frank spoke to said he wanted to do the same at his school. Touched by this good work and by the suffering of the children from the disaster area, Frank decided to help this monk.

After his visit to the Phaung Daw Oo Integrated Monastic Education School (PDO High School), Frank was able to purchase two houses on the edge of the school compound with the support of many donors and sponsors from the Netherlands. This residential group was given the name The Golden House. There were initially about seventy children who had lost one or both parents. Due to the inspiring leadership of the staff members, it quickly became a close-knit group. The staff members live permanently with the children and have ensured that the children have been able to process their trauma, regain their vitality and want to work on their future.

World Child Care Foundation

In order to ensure that all the work for this group of children runs smoothly, Frank has set up the World Child Care Foundation with a number of volunteers. Frank handed over the gavel after five years.

In the first years, the foundation focused primarily on the residential group The Golden House. Since 2018, we have also focused on the boys' new residential group, which is called The Hostel.

As the children got older and finished high school, there was a need to help them with their further education. In 2014 we started solid English education and meta skills training. Our English & Life Skill Program was named Bridging. Every year 150 young people and young adults participate in this program. It has now become an important second pillar of our foundation work.

Several foreign foundations are active at the PDO High School, where 8,500 underprivileged children and young people receive free education every day. The strength of the work of the World Child Care Foundation lies in the focus on a limited number of projects. What we do, we do well, thoroughly and with passion. It is possible that the foundation will support other projects in the future, but only if the current projects are in order for a long period of time in terms of policy, organization and finance.