Saving Grace!

• Grace International School is a 12-year old English-speaking school in Chiang Mai, Thailand that serves missionary families and Christian workers representing more than 50 missions agencies from across the globe.

• Grace International School serves more than 600 children in grades K-12 in addition to special needs children and students from local Thai families.

• The school serves in a strategic area from which one-third of the world’s population can be reached via a three-hour plane ride.  In fact, the sending organizations represented by students at GIS currently serve in 20 surrounding nations – one of the highest concentrations of Christian service and outreach in the world.

• Grace International School is facing a serious challenge to its ability to continue operations – literally, a desire by the local Thai neighborhood to evict the school and its students from its current facilities.

• A lawsuit by a wealthy neighborhood group has resulted in a court decision that Grace must vacate its current secondary facilities and return the property to the group – despite the fact that the property was legally purchased more than a decade ago.

• While the school is currently appealing the decision, the appeal may only delay the inevitable.  As a result, Grace must quickly prepare to vacate the property, to establish an interim plan to continue educating missionary students at all levels, and to establish a plan to sustain and expand Grace International School in a new location as soon as feasible.

• The Grace International Educational Foundation (GIEF) is a US-based foundation that has been established to aid the cause of missionary education, primarily in Southeast Asia.  Established in 2008, GIEF has helped Grace International School in its efforts to recruit teaching and professional staff, as well as to raise funds for scholarship assistance and other projects.

• GIEF is launching the “Saving Grace Project” – an emergency assistance fund to help Grace International School meet the challenges of eviction, temporary relocation and preparation for a permanent site relocation and expansion to accommodate the educational needs of the growing community of missionary families and Christian workers in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

• “Saving Grace” is a short-term project to raise $2.5 million by no later than March 31, 2011 to meet the emergency needs of Grace International School in this time of crisis.  The purposes of the funding are in three primary areas:

1. Temporary Classroom Facilities                                     — $  500,000
2. Architect, planning and campaign preparation         — $  400,000
3. Land Purchase and Preparation for new campus      – $ 1.6 million

TOTAL                           — $ 2.5 million

• These funds will be used to establish temporary classroom facilities for Grace International School’s secondary students. These classrooms will be constructed on the current site of Grace’s elementary campus using materials that can be re-purposed for construction of a new, permanent site.  The funds will also permit the purchase of approximately 20 acres and the hiring of architects to design the new campus buildings, which will permit the permanent relocation of the entire elementary and secondary student body to a new campus with room for expansion to serve some 850 – 1,000 students.

• Grace International School must make plans today that will meet the urgent, short-term need for classroom facilities pending the court-ordered abandonment of its existing secondary campus and the displacement of approximately 385 students faculty and staff.  At the same time, as many ministries are expanding their presence in Thailand and Southeast Asia, there is a rapidly growing demand for the high-quality, fully accredited, Christian education offered by Grace to missionary families and Christian workers.  The school MUST expand and grow – something that any temporary relocation simply will not accommodate.

• “Saving Grace” is more than a fundraising project…  It is about continuing a special ministry that provides quality, Christian education for missionary children.  “Saving Grace” is not only for the short term, urgent need for temporary classroom space…  It is also with a vision toward the future – to expand and meet the growing needs of Christian families and their children.

• Grace International Educational Foundation is committed to help meet the urgent need of the school as well as its commitment to serve the community of Chiang Mai for decades to come.  The opportunity to have a significant impact for Grace International School is just the tip of the iceberg…  For every investment of time, of prayer, of financial support is multiplied in the lives of  nearly 600 young boys and girls, their families, the committed missionaries who are the school’s faculty and staff, and their witness to the surrounding Thai communities and in the neighboring nations across Southeast Asia.

• Your partnership with Grace International Educational Foundation will play a critical role in this urgent effort, impacting hundreds, thousands and even millions of lives in Southeast Asia.