How we started
ChildTRAC originally began as a project at the Disaster Tracking Recovery Assistance Center (D-TRAC). D-TRAC was founded after the 2004 tsunami in Phang Nga province, Southern Thailand, after it became obvious that the hundreds of aid organisations and thousands of volunteers who had arrived from all over the world to help the relief efforts were neither co-ordinating nor communicating nor sharing information. D-TRAC was a unique type of relief agency because it provided aid in the form of critical information, not material or monetary assistance.
ChildTRAC was commissioned to conduct various research projects, or share findings with USAID, Thailand PLAN, Save the Children UK and Sweden, UNICEF, the American Red Cross, the Finnish Red Cross and the Thai government. These projects eventually outgrew the objectives of D-TRAC and so a new independent organisation was created: ChildTRAC.
Why we started
After the tsunami occurred, thousands of children were displaced and separated from their families and or caregivers. One year later the placement and well-being of many of these children was still unknown.
ChildTRAC teamed up with UNICEF, and with the support of the Ministry of Social Development and Humanitarian Security in Thailand (SDHS), started the 'Children of the tsunami, Where Are They Now?' project. ChildTRAC was able to trace, locate and screen the placements and well-being of almost 2,000 tsunami orphans in the 6 tsunami-affected provinces in Southern Thailand.
Whilst collaborating with UNICEF and Save the Children to examine the living conditions and well-being of Thai children affected by the tsunami, ChildTRAC also looked in to the state of Burmese refugee camps to evaluate how migrant children were being cared for. ChildTRAC discovered that children without birth registration documents or formal identification do not have access to public services and often go unrecorded in official statistics. Migrant children are of particular concern as they are usually refugees or displaced children living in a Thai society that refuses to see or acknowledge them.
What we do today
ChildTRAC is both based in Thailand and the Netherlands. Officially registered in the Netherlands as an independent non-profit, non-government organisation. ChildTRAC seeks to continue its work in Thailand by providing training, research, aid and care for underprivileged children regardless of religious, ethnic or social background.