Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind was founded in 1993  by Mr. Pecharat Techavachara as the Foundation's chairman. Our purpose is to encourage the blind to receive medical rehabilitation, education, training and employment without burdening the society. Many blind people live in more rural areas where there is a lack of education and opportunities. Many of them are unable to find jobs, only able to depend on their families or close ones for financial stability. Some of them are even abandoned at temples. Nevertheless, their only one wish is to live equally among everyone else in society. For this reason, Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind was established in 1994 at 77 Chan Kao Soi 5, Chan Kao Road, Chong Nonsi Subdistrict, Yan Nawa District, Bangkok, with a goal to teach Thai massage to the blind, which at that moment was a popular career of many people. After completing the courses, the blind are allowed to work at the foundation, with many of them going out to work on their own. Training courses teach them foot massage, IT skills, how to work in a call center, how to walk with a walking cane, to read horoscopes etc.

          In 1998,  in collaboration with the Office of the Vocational Education Commission, Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind opened Vocational Certificate and High Vocational Certificate at Nakhon Luang Polytechnic College. Then later on, Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind collaborated with the Office of Non-Formal and Informal Education of Yannawa District to open teaching courses for middle schoolers and high schoolers at the Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind on a yearly basis.

          In 2007,  Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind collaborated with the Institute of Thai Traditional Medicine to organize seminars, with an aim to increase the potential of the visually impaired masseuse, by inviting instructors with knowledge in various fields from public and private hospitals to educate them.

          In 2009, Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind was certified as an official institution, allowed to open a training course for Thai Traditional Medicine Assistants (330 hours), from the Professional Standards Committee, Thai Traditional Medicine. The training has already been open for 13 years, with more than 10 classes graduating and a total of 349 graduates.

          In 2012,  Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind was certified to be an institution, allowed to open training courses for Thai massage (800 hours), from the Professional Standards Committee, Thai Traditional Medicine.  The training has already been open for 10 years, with 118 people successfully completing the course. These people were able to take the exam to obtain a license of Thai Traditional Medicine in Thai massage from the Thai Traditional Medicine Council. The number of people who successfully passed the professional license exam was 60 people in total.

          In 2016,  Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind was certified as an institute to open training courses in Thai healthy massage for the visually impaired (255 hours), according to the Health Establishment Act B.E. 2559 of the Department of Health Service Support, Ministry of Public Health. We had opened a total of 4 training courses with 128 graduates.

          In 2019,  Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind was certified as an institution to open a training course on foot massage by the visually impaired (80 hours), according to the Health Establishments Act B.E. 2559 of the Department of Health Service Support, Ministry of Public Health. There were 4 training classes with 70 graduates.

          In 2020,  Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind joined the activities in the Blackmores Run & Move 2020 event, in which we opened massages for athletes who came to run in the marathon event.

          Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind joined the National Herb Fair, which was organized by the Department of Thai Traditional Medicine, Ministry of Public Health.

          In 2021,  Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind organized a screening and surveillance project for COVID-19 of Thai massage from the visually impaired at Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind Sanam Chaikhet Branch.

          In 2022,  Foundation for the Employment Promotion of the Blind collaborated with Department of Health, Ministry of Public Health to organize free massages to the attendances in the Thailand Friendly Design Expo.

 “When talking about Khun Pecharat Techavachara whom many people called him “Uncle Pech”,
he is a compassionate person who create a career to more than a thousand blind people. He is highly regarded as a closed person in a family who had greatly helped every one of us.”

Prof. Wiriya Namsiripongphan
Lecturer of the Faculty of Law, Thammasat University
Member of the Independent Committee for Education Reform

In the foundation’s marching song, it sings, “teaching a person to find a fish is better than giving him a fish”, reflecting what Mr.Pecharat had been doing for many blind people for almost 30 years.