Volunteering

As most of you know, I wanted to volunteer in Bangkok and visit a woman housing and teaching kids. Well, with the protests/demonstrations, SWAT team and police all over the city, I was warned not to stray to far from the tourist area (where you would have no idea the rebels just took over the government house). So I didn't. (see, I'm being safe!)
Instead, I found a local orphanage in Bali, about a 10 minute scooter ride from the Bungalows. The program they have for the children is fantastic. There are about 20 that live there full time, and 10+ local children that are "sponsored" by the orphanage during the day for schooling and food because their families are too poor to care for them. The ages range from 6 months to 15 years.
The finances of the orphanage are completely transparent - the children know exactly what is coming in and what is going out. Any money donated goes straight to the children, and they are responsible for keeping track of how much they have and how much they spend. Each child has his/her own bank account and a sponsor (from Europe mostly) that they report their finances to on an excel spread sheet once a month! The children go to school for part of the day, help with their meals, do their daily chores, play, dance and sing. Oh yeah, and most of them speak some English! They were so excited to have us there, asking us questions (the same ones over and over), but they knew how to answer them as well!
I will be going back on Friday to teach yoga and English for a couple hours, and make a schedule of when I will be teaching the following week. :) Since the retreat group will be staying in one spot for the whole time (we were going to be going to the beach for 5 days), it will be easy to see the kids as often as I want!
For those of you that donated money, I hope you don't mind donating it to these children instead of the ones in Bangkok! I can't tell you how impressed I am with this program and the foresight it has for the kids! I will keep you posted on how it goes :)