Tamar Bakery / Guest House non-profit for profits
The problem with religious evangelical NGOs is they have no viable solution. They are on a mission to make money. They are on a mission to profit from the vulnerability and the poverty of Thai girls. For Daniel Vaupel and his wife, the directors of the Tamar Center in Pattaya, this is just a career decision. It is an opportunity to live in the beautiful oceanfront city of Pattaya. Who wouldn’t seize the opportunity to scam millions of dollars off of religious people and pretend that you are solving a problem for young Thai girls? Let’s take a look at the mission the Tamar Center has set out. The paragraph below is from the Tamar Center website.
“At Tamar Guest House, our vision is that all bar girls and ladyboys leave the bars in Pattaya, Thailand, get a new life, become Jesus disciples, and have a marketable vocational skill to support themselves and their families. We want each woman who works in the Tamar Guest House to leave a Jesus disciple, be emotionally whole, and be able to obtain and hold a job using the skills learned while at the Tamar Guest House. This will be accomplished by teaching the hospitality industry including reservation management, event management, front desk operations, concierge services, housekeeping, laundry, maintenance, and reception services. Each woman will also be trained in people skills, professionalism, how to dress and customer service. Other training will include accountability, listening skills, communication, problem-solving and teamwork.”
A few issues to address. You will notice that they include ladyboys in their statement on their website. But the fact is, they do no outreach at all to bars that ladyboys work in. Western volunteers do not believe in transgender rights and are really against gays. The Tamar Center stands against the gay and transgender community. How do I know this? Read how they post twice in this paragraph that they want the women to be “Jesus disciples.” Once again, they “want each woman who works in the Tamar Guest House to leave a Jesus disciple.” Evangelical and Western religion teaches that homosexuality is a sin. There is very little to no outreach for ladyboys or the gay community in Pattaya. When the Tamar Center fake English teachers arrive for their volunteer St. Valentine’s Day outreach, you can bet there will be no outreach to the gay community.
The Tamar Center has a dead-set belief that Jesus is the only way to life. The Tamar Center leaders use religion as a control method, causing these woman to deny their Buddhist upbringing. Daniel and his wife know that they can force women to obey their commands and work for an unlivable wage if they convert them to Jesus. The Tamar Center has waged an attack on Buddhists. They use the poverty and vulnerability of Thai women to enhance their bank accounts.
The Tamar Center gives a description on their website about the girls they mostly work with. These girls are predominately from Issan.
The majority of women come from Issan, the northeast region of Thailand. Issan is the poorest region of Thailand and has a population of about 22 million, most of them work in agriculture. People live off the land, mostly in the form of rice farming. The price for rice has been very unstable in the last years and rice farming is very hard physical work. Flooding and other issues have also affected the harvests, and there is widespread poverty in the area, and many people are in debt. Most young men leave the countryside and head for the cities in search of work and financial security.
Many girls marry young, and often, the marriage falls apart, and they are left as sole caretakers of their children and aging parents. They are faced with a heavy financial responsibility and with very little education and work experience, there are not many options for them. They hear the stories from women who have met a husband in Pattaya, and they are looking for the same fairytale ending. They are desperate and so Pattaya seems like a dream destination for them. But upon arrival in Pattaya, the truth catches up with them very fast, and they realize that their only real option in Pattaya is to prostitute themselves.
This doesn’t sound like a good living experience for the girls of Issan. But how is providing an unlivable wage helping the villages, the communities, and all of the children and parents still living in Issan? Daniel and his wife make a lot of money working for this bloody sham of an organization. They are taking advantage of girls who come from the poorest regions of Thailand. They are mainly farmers and rice producers. How does helping teach them to work in a bakery or a hotel help the 21,300,000 people living in Issan? There are very few bakeries and hotels in this region of Thailand. An estimated 40 percent of Thailand’s population comes from Issan. The Tamar Center is a good idea in theory, but it’s a scam center for Western Jesus missionaries to come and make money. They provide no substantive change to the communities these girls come from. The Tamar Center admits these women are desperate and they will look into any form of making money as possible. Daniel takes advantage of this opportunity to line his own pockets. The reality is, that the girls don’t want to leave the bars, and they don’t want to leave the life they have chosen in Pattaya. Why, because they make more money than working for Western Jesus people. If the Tamar Center could provide a livable wage and help these ladies make money for their families in Issan this would be a good thing, but IT’S A WAR AGAINST BUDDHISM AND A WAY FOR CHRISTIAN JESUS PEOPLE TO MAKE MONEY.