An open letter from Alana McGowan to her supporters

Thank you alll so much for your responses to the picture gallery on my nursery which featured on the BBC, I was very touched by the overwhelming kindess from people who dont know me though felt driven to respond and offer help. Thank you also for your kind condolenses regarding my family members.

I thought I would give you more details on the nursery so you can get a clearer idea of what its all about and how it is being run. I have also attached some more photos so you can get a clearer picture of how the nursery looks. As you can see from the first picture the land was originally just flat grassy area, to begin with I had students from a technical college here in Krabi who had agreed to do the building labour for free, they helped to draw up the plans and draft a budget for building materials. The government had to take these students and attach them to other projects around the country which was absolutely no problem as there was/ and still is huge amounts of rebuilding to be done. So I hired a team of local buillders which ended up almost doubling the original budget, but they done a fantastic job. The building was constructed in about 6/7 weeks inc 2 toilets and 2 showers. The painting of the nursery was done by 2 friends of mine, one who flew over all the way from london to do the murals inside and 1 who has spent a lot of time in Phi Phi and was delighted to draw the murals outside. The painting was a lot of hard work and took a team of 7 of us 2 weeks to complete, though the end result as you can see was amazing. The playground which I installed was from a company in Phuket who kindly gave me 40% off due to the tsunami link, which was extremly kind of them. The playground equipment was pretty expensive, but the quality meant safety which was my main concern that the equipment was strong and secure.

At the moment we have 32 children registered at the nursery, 26 are from from Phi Phi Island and now stay in temporary accomadation here in Krabi, the other 6 are local toddlers from around the area of the nursery. I have hired 3 F/T teachers...though I may increase this to 4 and I have one full-time cook. All staff were from Phi Phi and like the children have now been displaced and have to stay in Krabi town. I did 2 huge shopping trips in Phuket to fill the nusrery with toys, furniture, book etc though supplies of books, pens, crayons etc are always ongoing. The nursery is completly free for the parent, there is no charge for anything at all, with my funds I will supply everything neccesary for this nursery to operate. This includes staff wages, food, water, electricity bill, water bill, as mentioned above staionary and books. There are also so many other small things which I supply that you may not think about though add up every month these include nappies, shower gel, shampoo, baby wipes, soap, toothpaste, toilet paper. Each child has their own toothbrush, towel, flipflops, school bags. Each child has their own T-shirt t-shirts which has the logo of the nursery on them.

Other ways the funds are being spent at the moment are to build a wooden fence aound the nursery for added security, fixing the sewage pipes around the building, we also have quite a serious problem at the moment where everytime it rains heavily the sand surrounding the building slides down the bank. I hope to fix this problem really soon, but just to give you an idea of how much things are costing, to fix these banks will cost around 60,000 baht. So there is a lot to do and and the work is always ongoing.

As mentioned earlier all 3 teachers and the cook are from Phi Phi Island which is what I really wanted, at this time there are very few jobs around so I feel really delighted the nursery is able to bring 4 people back into employment. 1 teachers is trained to teach young chilldren and the other 2 dont have specific training but are fantastic at what they do. Every Friday I have a group of teachers from a fantastic private nursery come to ours to talk with our teachers and advise/train them on teaching techniques etc this has really been a fantastic help and improved the learning side greatly.

At frist some of the children were understandibly very upset once their parents walked out of the front door, though within a few days the kids had settled down and now they are completly at home here and so comfortable to be there and most importantly its obvious that they feel safe her and have fun.

I hope this gives you more of an idea of how the nursery works.

Sunshine Nursery
Miss A. McGowan
sort code
20-35-93
Account #
30185345
Barclays Bank
(Fulham Broadway Branch)


Above our the bank details for those of you where wondering how you can contribute towards the nursery. I sincerely appreciate your help to keep my nursery going and helping these amazing kids from Phi Phi. As my Nieces were half Thai and from Phi Phi aswel it makes me so proud to see all of thier little friends running around enjoying themselves in a safe environment after the terrible time they have all been through.

Also for easy online donations please feel free to use Pay Pal. Just go to www.paypal.com and follow the instructions from the SEND MONEY tab to donate to my email address alanamcgowan@hotmail.co.uk. It is so simple to use and I think this way will be a lot more convinient for some of you esp from America.

So I thank you all again for your help from the bottom of my heart.

Alana McGowan




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