Ava’s House — Building a Village of Care

Ava’s House is a small children’s home based in Chiang Mai, currently supporting around 30 children. The children come from underprivileged and marginalized communities in the Chiang Rai mountains, including Akha and Lahu hill tribes.

Many of these communities face limited access to quality education and are often shaped by difficult living conditions. Without intervention, children — especially girls — are at risk of early marriage, or exposure to drugs and alcohol at a young age.

Ava’s House responds by bringing children into Chiang Mai, giving them access to education, stability, and a different set of possibilities.

What makes Ava’s House different is its commitment to depth over scale. The home intentionally limits the number of children it supports in order to provide real care, attention, and emotional support for each child.

The challenges Ava’s House faces are both visible and invisible.

On the surface, there are resource constraints — funding, staffing, and long-term sustainability. Supporting children over many years requires consistent care and stability.

At a deeper level, the communities Ava’s House works with are highly marginalized. They face systemic discrimination, geographic isolation, and environmental instability — including flooding, earthquakes, and severe air pollution during burning season.

There is also a fundamental tension between care and survival. In many of these contexts, families are focused on immediate survival, making long-term planning and education difficult.

Ava’s House exists within this tension — trying to create long-term pathways in environments shaped by uncertainty.

My role in Ava’s House is to support fundraising, donor relationships, and strategic development.

I also designed the Co-Parent Program — a model that rethinks how support is given.

Instead of traditional donor relationships, each child is paired with a “co-parent” — someone who builds a personal, ongoing relationship with the child.

This includes:

• Writing letters
• Visiting when possible
• Supporting birthdays and milestones
• Staying connected over time

My role is not to run Ava’s House, but to support the ecosystem around it — working closely with Deng and Tang, the family who leads and cares for the home.

The approach is grounded in a simple idea: it takes a village to raise a child.

Rather than treating support as transactional, we focus on building long-term relationships. The Co-Parent Program is designed to be non-extractive — we are not “presenting” the children for fundraising, but creating genuine human connections.

This shifts the model:

• from donation → to relationship
• from charity → to community
• from short-term support → to long-term presence

Trust is central. Both for the children, and for the adults who choose to be part of their lives.

Interestingly, this approach also transforms the co-parents. Many rediscover a sense of meaning and connection through their relationship with the children.

Ava’s House is gradually reaching a level of financial stability, allowing for more consistent and reliable care.

More importantly, the children themselves reflect the impact of this work. Visitors often remark that they are some of the happiest children they have met — a signal that the environment of care is working.

There are also longer-term outcomes beginning to emerge:

• children continuing into higher education
• stronger sense of identity and confidence
• expanded life pathways beyond what was previously possible

These outcomes are not only measurable — they are deeply human.

This work has reshaped my understanding of care, responsibility, and long-term commitment.

Unlike other projects, Ava’s House is not something to “solve” or “complete.” It is an ongoing relationship.

One of the key learnings is that meaningful support cannot be rushed or scaled too quickly. It requires presence, trust, and continuity over time.

It has also reinforced the importance of building systems that are relational at their core — where care is not abstract, but lived and practiced daily.