The story of Khru Prateep’s life is also the story of countless individuals and families whose lives she has helped bring to the public eye, enabling positive change and empowerment to otherwise unknown and helpless lives.

Born in Bangkok’s Klong Toey slum to laborer parents, Prateep Ungsongtham, not being registered at birth, was ineligible to enroll in public school. After 4 years of private school, her parents couldn’t afford to pay for further education for her. So, at age 11 she started working, while continuing her studies at night school.

In 1968, aged 16, Prateep and her sister Mingporn, started a school under their house, enabling slum children to get some education for the token sum of 1 baht a day.

In 1971 the expansion of the adjacent Bangkok Port led to evictions of many families. Prateep helped the community negotiate with the government. When Prateep's “One-Baht-A-Day” School was also declared illegal, the community and the media alerted the general public to the plight of the slum dwellers, urging a greater sympathy and eliciting objections to the government’s actions.

In 1977, the One-Baht-A-Day School became a Bangkok Metropolitan School, known as the Chumchon Moobaan Pattana School, with Khru Prateep as the head teacher.

Aged 26, Prateep was awarded the 1978 Ramon Magsaysay Award for her extraordinary efforts and goodwill work in the slum. She used the US$20,000 prize to start the Duang Prateep Foundation (DPF).

Demanding the government’s attention to slum problems, the DPF took initiatives to implement programs focusing on education and supporting families and communities to deal with problems such as evictions, fires and drug addiction.

In 1981, Khru Prateep received the 3rd Rockefeller Youth Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Mankind. The prize money helped establish the Slum Child Care Foundation. In the same year, the foundation’s kindergarten program expanded to 15 metropolitan communities.

Khru Prateep also set up New Life Project (NLP) centres in Chumporn and Kanchanaburi provinces for boys and girls respectively with drug and/or family problems.

Prateep initiated the Klong Toey Anti-Drug Volunteers Association, fostering the HIV-Aids Protection and Control Project, and the school lunch project, which expanded to other communities. Progressively, her work emboldened a network of communities in Bangkok and other provinces to lobby the government about their problems.

In 1994, Khru Prateep founded the Co-Operative for Development in Klong Toey, helping the poor to save money and avoid loan sharks, which became a key asset for the slum community through the 1997 financial crisis.

Elected as a Senator in 2000, Prateep set out to reduce interest rates for post-crisis housing loans, and brought to conclusion the decade-long chemical fire settlement.

In 2004 the Queen Silvia of Sweden presented Prateep with the World’s Children’s Prize and the Global Friends’ Award'' for her 35-year-long struggle for the rights of Thailand’s most vulnerable children'.

When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hit Phang-Nga Province, Prateep mobilized the youths at NLP (Chumporn) to take relief to the people at Khao Lak, which suffered massive destruction and loss of life. Within three days, the DPF built a drop-in centre for 70 children, most of them made orphans by the tsunami. That project eventually became the “Baan Tharn Namchai Foundation” in 2011.

Advocating for social justice caused Prateep political conflicts, both with the government in 2010 and events following the 2014 military coup.

Recent projects initiated by Khru Prateep include adoption of the Montessori Education Method and an English language program in the kindergarten, a community garden project where children learn to grow and cook vegetables, and a music project that brings classical music to the slums.

The DPF’s work also helps children in rural Thailand, where many cannot afford basic uniforms and schoolbooks, and is currently helping 1,300 children with scholarships.

Today the economic and political landscape presents more challenges than ever. The previously undesirable plots of land on which the slum sits are now at a premium, fostering the latest eviction plan by the Port Authority. This crisis has sharpened Khru Prateep’s resolve to improve communities and strengthen her long-term commitment to the poor.