The Children of the Forest Project

As a tangible way of involving our students in an international development programme, we are helping a deprived school and orphanage in Sangkhlaburi, Thailand.  The charity that runs the school and orphanage is based in an area of Thailand where refugees face a life of poverty. The Karen and Mon people have been subjected to much suffering and loss of dignity. The Charity BISAK support is the Children of the Forest and its aims are to address the grievances, to ease suffering and restore the dignity of the children.

To view the May 2010 Newsletter please click here...

Daniel Hopsan, the Director with some of the students

The background to the Charity

Awareness of the situation in Sangkhlaburi first emerged from a visit to a small school for Karen and Burmese children on one of Sangkhlaburi's plantations. The school consisted of one bamboo classroom with forty children with ages ranging from three to fourteen years old, all studying together with one teacher. The school's aim was simple but crucial to provide sufficient competence in the Thai language to empower the children and reduce the risk of exploitation in Thai society.
Contact with this locally established plantation school provided a deeper and wider understanding of the hardship and limitations facing the students of this school and Karen, Mon and Burmese children throughout Sangkhlaburi. We would find children sick with Tuberculosis and Malaria not visiting the hospital because their ethnicity meant they were not entitled to free health care. With no land, no permanent home or community, students would leave school suddenly as their family moved on to the next plantation. Girls from as young as twelve would leave the school and other students would inform us the family had sent them to work in the city. For students from single parent families the free school lunch could be their only meal that day. The school had no funding to help these students continue their studies. Sadly, and despite the students determined efforts, their academic career would start and finish here.

With limited funds and resources, we tried to work with the plantation school and respond where possible. A bag of rice a month was given to a family of six children whose mother had passed away. The payment of a hospital bill for a child with malaria. Contact with a Thai NGO to provide a home for two children in distress. Providing a volunteer English teacher for six months. Using only personal funds, we were always limited with the amount of help we could offer. It seemed like there were so many problems, yet we were working with only thirty families on just one plantation.

Naam, house mother and co-founder

Since this simple beginning our knowledge and level of assistance have been able to grow. Through the establishment of a sponsorship program a level of funding was acquired to help older children from the plantation begin attending an official school. Generous financial support then enabled us to develop an area of land, this was the start of our Home for Children and Free School. After visiting other settlements and learning of the many children with no school we decided to build a basic bamboo school ourselves.  The children came to learn enthusiastically and in great numbers. We had expected about fifty students to join our free school, yet one hundred and fifty arrived on the first day.

Students at work
Today
The school now has over 400 hundred students and more than 90 of the students live in the orphanage.
During the holidays (June 2009) the school handed over to the Children of the Forest (the school charity) 40,000 baht (about 4,000 SR).

Daniel  Hopsan, the Director receiving the money