Giovanni Contarin was born on the 19^th of November 1956 and raised in PioX Treviso Italy. He was ordained as a Catholic Priest at St Lorenzo parish of Poggiana di Riese PioX Italy in 1983.  

Prior to his arrival in Thailand on the 12^th of August 1985 he spent time at the St Camillus Hospital Karungu- Kenya (nyanza province) Africa and in India on two six monthly tours of duty.  

On arriving in Thailand he settled down to study the Thai Language which he told me he found difficult to master but master it he did. He started the first HIV/AIDS hospice in Bangkok not far from the old airport in Don Mung. Finding staff and setting up a facility like this on a shoe string budget can only be described as difficult to put it mildly but then came the big problem. 

The big problem being that elements of the local population in that area were very resistant to this facility being in their area because of the type of illness, being that of HIV/AIDS. Fear of the virus due to poor knowledge of the subject and the stigma related to the fact that it is spread through unsafe sex, were at least part of the problem. I suggest that as with all things money was also an issue perhaps because of a perceive effect on property values in that area. The result of which culminated in violence against Father Giovanni himself in that his car was bombed and also against the building and patients in that the windows of the building were shot out by firearms.  

So in 1994 the work was begun in the Rayong province at our current site on land that was donated by a Thai Catholic family. All further information can be found through out this website.

Should you decide to support this project, donations may be sent directly to the:

St. Camillus Foundation of Thailand,
Bank of Ayudhya
Map-Ta-Phut Branch Rayong
Account Number 229-1-29336-3 (AYUDTHBK).