This trip was to visit Sopwak school, which
will become the sister-school of Yokohama
Futaba Junior and Senior High School, and is
being built for the children of the Karen
minority living in Northern Chennai Province,
Thailand. AEFA's partner NGO in Thailand is
the Thai division of Care International, or
CARE Thai. CARE Thai is a group that is
working to revive 30 poverty-stricken villages
around Thailand. Using such methods as organic
farming, it is training local farmers to build
sustainable food security in the areas of
vegetables and rice. In addition, it is
improving local health by training young women
in the production of traditional food stuffs
and in ways of preventing HIV/AIDS.

CARE Thai's over-arching purpose is the improvement of villages,
and within this, the school-building project is aimed at the kids
of those villages.

Two hours by car from Chiang Mai (the ancient capital of
Thailand), lies Mae Chaem county. In the center of the county,
CARE Thai has established its local headquarters. 70 kilometers
further into the countryside is Mae Jong Sam, a village of the
Karen people, the first generation of whom fled here from Myanmar.
Today, everyone in the village is Karen, and the children and
grandchildren of the original settlers still speak Karen as their
mother tongue. In the village, there is a Christian church, and a
priest gives mass daily. There are about 650 people (80
households) and each household has between 5 and 12 children. Many
of these kids have yet to receive education. The road to the
village is very rough, and our car got stuck in the mud many times
on the way there.

The kids of this village, in order to attend
school, must come these 70 kilometers down out
of the mountains to Sopwak, near where CARE
Thai has its county HQ. Previously, Sopwak
Elementary School was a school for the local
kids, but with many parents taking their kids
to large cities like Chiang Mai in search of
work, there were few left in the village, and
the school was on the verge of closing. Here,
CARE Thai decided to build a dormitory and
bring the children of the Karen people for
education. It did this with help from AEFA,
bringing no less than 60 kids from the Karen
town of Mae Jong Sam. The Thai adults in
Sopwak were glad to help with the construction.

Living so far from home, the kids can only visit their families
twice a year. However, the number of parents who can pay this bus
fare are few, and for this reason, many parents refuse to send to
send their children. To combat this, the principal of the Sopwak
school, who is very passionate about education, accompanies the
CARE staff to the village, 70km away, to try to convince parents
about the benefits of the school

Since early elementary school children are about 7 to 8 years old
and will be away for several years until graduation, the emotional
burden on parents is large. It is hard to give up their kids. The
one thing that manages to convince them is the idea that they do
not want their children to experience the same difficulties that
they have had--not being able to understand the Thai language and
not being able to receive benefit from government programs. An
additional stimulus is the fact that school kids receive uniforms
and food.

From the above situation, I can say that,
whether in Mae Jong Sam or Kung Mae Nai
(another catholic Karen town I visited), to
the people living within the borders of
Thailand, the feelings at sending kids 70km
away to school is similar to sending them to
school overseas. It is a form of
intra-national exchange.

Those parents who cannot bring themselves to
send their kids generally have three reasons:
1. When a child is small, it is emotionally
difficult to send him away to school and only
see him once or twice a year. 2. Parents who
have never learned Thai do not understand the
importance of education. 3. Once the kids have
reached a certain age, they become good
workers and are hard to let go for financial
reasons.

In all actuality, forcing kids to go 70 kilometers down out of the
mountains is not as constructive as it would be to build a school
in Mae Jong Sam itself. However, the people in that village have
all they can do to feed themselves, and would never be able to
support the running of a school. Additionally, it is difficult, to
say the least, to find teachers willing to work in a place with no
electricity, telephone or running water.

Finally, at the risk of sounding repetitive, it will take some
time before we can expect parents who themselves have no education
to find the motivation to build a school, and further, to provide
funds for running costs, such as materials or teaching salaries.

With this in mind, this kind of intra-national
exchange program, while perhaps not the best
solution, is decidedly better than no
education at all. Of these kids who part with
their parents amid so many tears, go off to
live in a dorm and study, if there are a few
success stories who then go on to support
their families, the feelings of the parents
will change and there is the possibility that
they will eventually become willing to support
the building of a school. Of course, there is
no way to tell how many years off that day is.

Education for minority children in this region is just now at the
starting line. For this reason, it is necessary for us to help
develop the awareness of the parents, in order to ensure the
stable running and continuation of the schools.