Our students come to Thailand with their migrant worker families from all over Myanmar, and represent almost every ethnic and religious group in the country. Each family has its own needs, motivations, and challenges to survive in a foreign country and provide a living for their families. Some children arrive without a family or proper guardian to care for them. Some quit school at the end of a year or two to return to Myanmar, or because their parents found better work in Bangkok or Mahachai. Others come to Mae Sot with their families and never leave. Many arrive, at all age levels, from undeveloped rural areas, having had no effective education. A few can already speak English, but others have never heard a word of it. Some of our ethnics cannot even speak the Myanmar national language, only their own dialects. The teachers and staff at BHSOH must deal with all of this, making sure that each student gets to learn whatever is academically possible for them to learn before they leave.

                 Part of the learning also involves meeting and getting along with people so very different from the ones they grew up with. And all this at the same time as their parents are learning how to live in a new culture, to find good work and proper identification papers, and to feed and house their families. BHSOH is not just a school, but a community center, an emergency relief organization, a place to share problems and get help. Our founder and his family live in the school compound and offer the overall stability and loving atmosphere that allows the school to function. Our principal and teachers are the front line in the battle to provide a real academic education and social integration to the least fortunate, under challenging conditions, while creating an environment where we almost never hear a fight, or a see a tear.

                It is a huge job, but with so much potential benefit when we succeed. A school like BHSOH draws its strength from the Myanmar people’s enduring character, from the Thai people’s willingness to accept strangers, and from our international donors’ generosity and commitment to see these luckless people develop into productive and happy members of the blossoming human society that is Southeast Asia in the 21st century.