As the new year begins, the team at AMS are getting out and into the field to visit some of our supported development projects throughout Asia and the Pacific.
On Tuesday night I flew to Ranong, a town in the south of Thailand that borders with Myanmar. Ranong is a home to a large Burmese migrant community and is where the Marist Fathers run the Marist Asia Foundation providing education and health services to these people. We have been working with Fr Frank and Fr Kevin for a few years now but our work with them has increased significantly now that we are partnered with the Marist Mission Centre in Sydney and Lenity Australia. I have come down here for three days – one of which will be spent crossing into Myanmar to visit another project that we support in the border town of Kawthaung.
The Burmese that Marist Asia Foundation work with face a range of challenges that are similar yet different in their scope to those Burmese in Samut Sakhon. Sitting on the border with Myanmar, Ranong has the heaviest density of Burmese in all of Thailand with around 80,000 Thais living in town, yet the Burmese population numbers over 100,000. Disturbingly, there are only 15 Burmese children in Thai secondary schools in Ranong.
Frank drove me to the headquarters of Marist Asia Foundation on Wednesday morning and showed me around the centre. We arrived during morning meditation where the 70 preschool and 80 secondary school students were seated on the floor in relative silence. The importance of seeing these children here, in a safe learning environment, was not lost on me: only 20% of Burmese in Thailand start school, with 90% of those finishing their education by the age of 11. These 150 children were defying the odds simply by being here.
These are the children of some of the poorest families in Ranong. Unlike Samut Sakhon where the minimum wage ($12 AUD per day) is strictly implemented, workers in the factories in Ranong (mainly fish, ice and charcoal) are not guaranteed minimum wage and often work for around $8 AUD a day. If they take a day off due to sickness, the company docks them three days pay. 27 day working months is the norm. The question I asked myself was why would these people come here and work under such poor conditions? Later in the day Frank answered my question with two facts. Firstly, minimum wage in Myanmar is a staggering low $4 AUD per day. Even if these people earn less than the minimum wage in Ranong, they are still earning more than they would back home. Secondly, and this surprised me greatly, was when Frank told me that people would buy fruit and veggies from the markets here in Ranong, then travel with them across the border to Myanmar where they would sell them for 50% more. The Burmese economy is in such freefall that the cost of living is significantly higher than Thailand, all the while income remains barely enough to survive on.
Before lunch we drove around town where Frank pointed out the factories and workshops that all operate with Burmese labour. Ever wondered why everything from Thailand is so cheap? While out and about, Frank took me to two Burmese Learning Centres. Similarly to Samut Sakhon, where Burmese are discriminated against so badly that their children can’t attend school, the same happens in Ranong. What is different here is that there are 12 Learning Centres that educate children from pre-school to secondary school in the Burmese national curriculum. The centres are mainly run by Burmese staff and educate over 2,000 children, all without governmental support. The centres are bare at best, and operate in old houses or buildings, or in one case, in a small room in the corner of a large Thai school. The Thai children run around on the fields, while the Burmese are crammed in hot, under-equipped centres. The segregation was stark yet parents prefer to send their children to the Learning Centres as they retain their cultural identity and, just recently, can sit the Burmese exams which gives them a certificate of completing school. The catch is, many of these children are not registered with the Burmese ministry of education and therefore don’t receive their school certificate. Marist Asia Foundation has a strong relationship with these Learning Centres as many of the teachers attend the English courses that they run. In addition, 20-25 students each year move from these Learning Centres to the secondary program so that they can receive a higher level of education.
In the afternoon I sat in on the online university program that is undertaken through Australian Catholic University. There are 12 students undertaking their Diploma of Liberal Arts which, as cliché as it sounds, changes their lives. 27 students have graduated from this program since its inception with these graduates now working as teachers in the pre-school and secondary program, teachers in the Learning Centres, working for other NGO’s, working in tourism, and for one young girl, receiving a scholarship for her Bachelor degree in Bangkok. The fact that they have actual jobs, not just as labourers and factory workers, is an outstanding achievement. In this class the subject that was being covered was the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It was a very fitting topic with the slides covering several articles such as the right to a nationality, something these children don’t actually have as those born in Thailand to Burmese migrant parents don’t receive Thai citizenship, and aren’t recognized in Myanmar either. These children are living examples of injustices against many of these rights.
Education is such a basic right that children in Australia complain about going to school. These children complain about not going to school. Not going to school means they are in danger of being targeted by child traffickers or being the target of sexual abuse. Not learning their ABC’s and 123’s means that they would be working with their parents in factories, or roaming the streets and being harassed by the authorities. I was struck by the ground-breaking nature of what these students were doing. One of the online students told me that he can’t even explain to his parents what he is doing as they don’t understand it, they just think he sits on the computer playing games. How can he possibly learn on a computer without using real books?!
Written by: Ashley Bulgarelli, AMS Projects Coordinator
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