IF you set your life’s sat-nav to a career working with disadvantaged children in Thailand it wouldn’t necessarily start by bunking off lessons at Nunnery Wood Secondary in Worcester. It would also be highly unlikely to detour off via Dolphin Showers store room in Lower Wick and a potato farm in South Wales.

Still that’s the journey taken by John Cope. Yes, the John Cope who went to Cherry Orchard Primary in the late Sixties, turned into a punk rocker and virtually abandoned his lessons at Nunnery, before working for two years as a painter and decorator in Worcester. Dolphin Showers and spud lifting, plus living among New Age travellers and busking with a flute in French towns followed.

The only shining light among all this is that John Cope also spent time as a Worcester Evening News paperboy with Jones Newsagents in Sidbury. A redeeming feature if ever there was one.

However, if you recall John from any one of his various incarnations during his early life in Worcester, you certainly wouldn’t recognise him now.

OK so he’s 47 years-old and long out of short trousers, but the address is Chompoo in the old city of Chiang Mai, Thailand, which is a world away from Timberdine Avenue, Battenhall, Worcester, where he was born.

In Chompoo, John runs the Stratton ABC Foundation, the main arm of which is the Chiang Mai Children’s Home.

Here up to 14 disadvantaged Thai youngsters get the benefit of consistent education and workshops on subjects such as art, craft and dancing, plus the English language.

John recently sent a message to this newspaper outlining the work he is doing in Thailand and hoping it might persuade anyone who felt inclined to give a bit of financial support.

He said: “The foundation’s first year has gone well but funding has mostly come from my own limited resources and we are desperately looking for support and sponsorship to ensure the good work can continue.”

Working with Thai children is the latest stop on a long and winding road for John Cope, who seems to have packed enough living into his four score years and seven to last a lifetime.

To some extent his own childhood was troubled and he freely acknowledges his part in the strife.

He said: “As a pupil at Cherry Orchard Primary I did very well, getting enough points in my 11-plus exam to gain a scholarship.

But even at that early age I was rather headstrong with definite views on equality and so I refused the grammar school option and instead went to Nunnery Wood Secondary School.

“However, it soon became apparent this was a mistake because I considered the school couldn’t keep up with my thirst for knowledge and I became bored.

When the punk rock era started I latched on to this and spent more time on my political thoughts than school work.”

Not surprisingly John left Nunnery Wood with little academic success in his final exams.

For 10 years he worked in a series of “ordinary jobs” such as painting and decorating and storekeeping before leaving Worcester at the age of 28 to see the world. Although initially he didn’t get far, spending a year in Holland, in Amsterdam and Haarlem. He then returned to Worcestershire to live with a group of New Age travellers and became a familiar sight busking with his flute. He even spent a month touring central France playing on the pavements.

Back in the UK John joined friends working on a potato farm in Pembrokshire and this seemingly innocuous move changed his life.

John said: “Living in a mobile home in the tranquillity of the Welsh countryside I found the spiritual peace in my heart I felt I had been searching for all my life.

“This gave me the confidence to return to my studies and in my early 30s I took a course in environmental studies at de Montford University, Bedford.”

As part of the course John travelled to the remote East Usumbara mountains in Tanzania and meeting the villagers sparked a desire in him to work with people less fortunate than himself.

Returning to Pembrokshire, he began a career caring for autistic adults and children.

After seven years of dealing with some very difficult cases, he felt in need of a break and on the suggestion of a friend, travelled to Thailand for a holiday.

He said: “Thailand rapidly stole my heart. The culture, the people, the strong Buddhist beliefs all gave me a strange feeling of having ’returned home’.”

Within a few months John had sold his cottage in Wales and bought a guest house restaurant in Chaing Mai.

He said: “I ran the Brick Road Cafe for two years before deciding that although the business had done OK compared with many and I’d managed to break even, I was no businessman at heart and wanted to return to working with people.”

That’s when he had the idea for setting up the Stratton ABC Foundation. It operates as a children’s home offering placements for up to 14 disadvantaged children, although its courses have proved so successful they are now being opened up to village children who are not resident at the home.

John said: “In the future I hope to open more similar sized homes and also a facility to assist with autism in Thailand.”

So that’s the John Cope journey from Timberdine Avenue and Cherry Orchard Primary in Worcester to Chaing Mai, Thailand.

If you can offer him a helping hand along the way then visit thestrattonfoundation.com.