From The Founder
U Khaing Oo Maung
by Saya Khaing Oo Maung, Founder of BHSOH
The mismanagement and corruption of successive military regimes in Burma (Myanmar), the over five-decade long civil war, and the massive human rights abuses committed by military dictatorships, have led to the rapid deterioration in the economic sector of our country. As a result, over three million people from Burma have illegally migrated into Thailand.
Among these migrants are many families with children who cannot access education in the government schools of Thailand because of their illegal migrant status. Their language barriers and their financial constraints have also kept them out of the Thai schools. Meanwhile, Burmese families continue to flood across the border because of the daily increase in hardships and financial crises that have resulted in so many people being unable to survive inside the country.
Furthermore, soldiers of the current military regime, despite the election of a civilian government, have continued to launch military operations in ethnic minority areas, using scorched-earth and ethnic cleansing policies. This has resulted in many ethnic populations forced to become internally displaced people (IDPs) in their own country. Many of these war refugees have fled to Thailand to save themselves and their families. To provide educational services for the children of these migrant and refugee families, we created the original Boarding School for Orphans and Homeless Youth on the Thai-Burma border in the year 1993.
I had been a high school principal in Burma before the nation-wide 1988 democracy movement rose up against the military government, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. As a result of the severe crackdown on this movement by the military forces, I followed my students from Rangoon into the rural areas and eventually into Thailand. The purpose of BHSOH was not only to provide an educational voice in the lives of our youth, but also to care for those unfortunate victims whose parents were jailed or executed by the junta’s troops.
In the early days of the school, there were only 4 teachers and 63 students, 15 of whom were orphans. BHSOH was able to operate from 1994 to 1998 with food offered by the Burma Border Consortium (BBC), stationary supplied by the National Health and Education Committee (NHEC), a school building and furniture provided by the Burma Relief Center (BRC), and other needed funds collected through our cultivation of paddy and other edible crops. When we faced closure in 1999, the Open Society Institute (OSI) provided us with a partial grant, which helped us since then. In 2006, the Child’s Dream Foundation took over support for our now-registered Migrant Learning Center, and we now have an average of 300 day and boarding students studying at our school. Additional help is being provided by Mary Purkey’s Mae Sot Education Project and other volunteer donors.
Background of the Boarding High School for Orphans and Homeless by Saya Khaing Oo Maung, Founder of BHSOH
The mismanagement and corruption of successive military regimes in Burma (Myanmar), the over five-decade-long civil war, and the massive human rights abuses committed by military dictatorships, have led to the rapid deterioration in the economic sector of our country. As a result, over three million people from Burma have illegally migrated into Thailand.
Among these migrants are many families with children who cannot access education in the government schools of Thailand because of their illegal migrant status.
Their language barriers and their financial constraints have also kept them out of the Thai schools. Meanwhile, Burmese families continue to flood across the border because of the daily increase in hardships and financial crises that have resulted in so many people being unable to survive inside the country.
Furthermore, soldiers of the current military regime, despite the election of a civilian government, have continued to launch military operations in ethnic minority areas, using scorched-earth and ethnic cleansing policies. This has resulted in many ethnic populations forced to become internally displaced people (IDPs) in their own country. Many of these war refugees have fled to Thailand to save themselves and their families. To provide educational services for the children of these migrant and refugee families, we created the original Boarding School for Orphans and Homeless Youth on the Thai-Burma border in the year 1993.
I had been a high school principal in Burma before the nation-wide 1988 democracy movement rose up against the military government, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. As a result of the severe crackdown on this movement by the military forces, I followed my students from Rangoon into the rural areas and eventually into Thailand. The purpose of BHSOH was not only to provide an educational voice in the lives of our youth, but also to care for those unfortunate victims whose parents were jailed or executed by the junta’s troops.
In the early days of the school, there were only 4 teachers and 63 students, 15 of whom were orphans. BHSOH was able to operate from 1994 to 1998 with food offered by the Burma Border Consortium (BBC), stationary supplied by the National Health and Education Committee (NHEC), a school building and furniture provided by the Burma Relief Center (BRC), and other needed funds collected through our cultivation of paddy and other edible crops. When we faced closure in 1999, the Open Society Institute (OSI) provided us with a partial grant, which helped us since then. In 2006, the Child’s Dream Foundation took over support for our now-registered Migrant Learning Center, and we now have an average of 300 day and boarding students studying at our school. Additional help is being provided by Mary Purkey’s Mae Sot Education Project and other volunteer donors.