It all began when our founding director, Quintin, came across an informal settlement of Burmese migrant children and offered to help raise funds for a safe dedicated learning space.
At the time, he was running a digital marketing firm in Thailand when Quintin met a group of women looking after underprivileged Burmese immigrant families. They had been brought over from Burma under false pretences of a better life by corrupt agents and now owed large debts. The parents were forced to work on fishing boats day and night, leaving the children alone in a shanty fishing village, extremely vulnerable to human trafficking and abuse. The women were trying to raise money for a school so they would have a safe place to learn during the day.
He couldn’t let the children continue their days in this risky environment, so Quintin decided to help by building a website and organising a few fundraising events in the area to build the school. As funding slowly came in, he became more and more devoted as larger obstacles kept arising. Over the next year and a half, he learned how to fundraise efficiently on zero overhead costs and gained experience working with donors for charitable causes. By the end of 2013, the multi-level school opened its doors to welcome over 200 Burmese migrant children in a safe place to learn, and continues to run successfully by the original women.
From this experience, Quintin noticed a significant discrepancy between where donor’s money was being spent and where they thought it was being spent. As most people want 100% of their donations to go to the cause, and yet large charities often have restrictions on funding and large running costs. He believed that there must be a more transparent and simplified way to allow donors to help less privileged people around the world, without the costly corporate structures of modern day large charities or unnecessary religious connotations.
That’s when Quintin decided to create Kanallan to fill this gap in the market and create individual humanitarian projects tailored to each client, and went on to build similar projects in Asia. Kanallan now facilitates individuals, companies and even charities to help underprivileged people according to their specific cause around the world.