FLC is a ministry dedicated to building strong communities in the Golden Triangle among ethnic minority tribal people groups with a whole-person approach to outreach, education, and development.
Once the world’s opium capital, the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia is now a major supplier of human trafficking, exploiting the desperate poverty of the ethnic minority people. Most of the tribal peoples still live in remote villages of Burma, Thailand, and Laos without basic services or infrastructure, denied civil rights and education opportunities, or even citizenship and official identities.
The use of the terms: ethnic minorities, tribal groups and hilltribes are interchangeable and refer to:
- small populations of distinct peoples with individual languages, cultures, oral histories, and rituals;
- who traditionally are or were animists residing in small isolated villages, living off the land, and;
- are minimally integrated into the dominant culture of the political nations in which they reside.
The People
We serve the ethnic minority tribal peoples, because the late Daniel Kalnin, founder of FLC, was from one of these tribal groups. The ethnic minorities of Thailand and Burma face significant prejudice, hardship, and inherent obstacles for development and success. We are an indigenous organization with most of our leaders and staff coming from one of the tribal people groups within the Golden Triangle region.
Nearly all of FLC’s fulltime workers come from a variety of the tribal people groups. Our volunteer board in the USA and advisory committees in Thailand and Canada provide fundraising and financial accountability. Short-term teams from North America provide essential support with ESL training and construction projects.
Since inception, FLC focused on a whole-person approach to help the tribal peoples understand the transformative quality of the Gospel, and improve physically with development projects. Initial outreach introduces biblical teaching along with village settlement, hygiene education, medical training, and clean water projects
The Projects
The Kalnin Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand is our base of operations, training facility, and a conference center available for other organizations.
The Barefoot Doctors Program, our intensive medical training, empowers tribal peoples from Burma to bring life-saving health care to underdeveloped regions.