Sawai

Thailand has a geography ranging from tropical forests to flat plains but its position leaves it open to disasters such as the Tsunami of 2004. The BBC give us some of the basic information on a country which has seen many ups and downs in the last few years. UNICEF map the current position for you. The government took control in a bloodless coup in 2006 but we'll leave you to make your own mind up as to whether the now largely army controlled media is good or bad for them. The timeline of their history amply describes their colourful past and makes you ask how Thaksin Shinawatra can appear to have millions to spend on football at Manchester City but leave the country of his birth with so many problems.

Destruction of some of the forest areas has affected the local livelihood and led to projects like that on the left where we see a worker on a forest rehabilitation project run by Plan International.

Sawai himself lives in the north east of Thailand towards Laos. Home for Sawai and his family is a small wooden house with a corrugated metal roof. The latter allows them to collect water all year round by the use of a rain attachment and a barrel.

Plan International has developed a large, global network of support for children. From this, they were able to introduce us to Sawai. The organisation was started in 1937 by a couple of journalists shocked by the orphaned children in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Today, the organisation operates at a number of levels in 45 developing countries. They get involved by working with governments, development partners and communities to help to improve specific facilities in deprived areas. They key point is that everyone can buy into the local projects to safeguard the future of the community and, in particular, the children. When a local family is involved in these projects, people like us get the opportunity to sponsor their children for the duration of the community project. These projects are based around five key elements that support the development of the children and, hence, the future of the community. These are health, education, livelihood, habitat and building relationships. Nobody can argue with that and Plan International does a wonderful job across many parts of the world. Pretty obviously, Mr Kite thinks that it would be great if you got involved, too. Read about sponsoring a child here.

The Extended Family

The Buryi family in Belarus

Luis-felipe in Colombia

Nidia Lourdes in Ecuador

Nzilani-nduku in Kenya

Omar in Senegal

Hui in China