Feeding as an education tool for 350 children

The funds released to this project are used for a daily and full feeding of Burma migrant children, inside 4 learning centers in the Phang Nga region (Thailand). We bring forward this project in cooperation with Iscos Onlus-Cisl. It consists in the delivery of 350 daily meals for children of Burma migrants. This project ensures continuity and support to the four learning centers (informal schools) that the no-profit organization Grassroots Human Rights Education (GHRE) created in the Phang Nga province starting July 2005.

The children who attend the learning centers lessons learn history, mathematics, and also learn Burma, Thai, and English. The teachers are native speakers in those languages and are volunteers. A medical team also follows closely the students, monitor their health conditions, and develop hygiene and prevention programs.

Andres Kjollerstrom, a Swedish volunteer who supports Moses in this project, monitors the he food quality and the children attendance on weekly basis.

Context and Objectives

The learning centers are located in the Phang Nga province, and namely in the villages of Pakarang, Ban Neing, Park Weep, and Nam Khem. The Moses initiative covers a migrants community that counts over 50,000 people in the Phang Nga province only.

The project started in conjunction with the activities that the Italian Embassy promoted in the 2004 tsunami area, and had an initial duration of 4 months (September to December 2006). After that period, as the financial coverage to the learning centers was over, Moses Onlus took over and financed directly the activity.

The “Support Plan” agreed between GHRE and Moses Onlus is targeted to those social groups that are, since ever, marginal. For those groups, the tsunami had a less evident but far heavier impact.During the after-emergency period, the Burma migrants were not recognized with rights for support, and as a consequence to the tsunami they lost their job and any basic mean for life. The migrants childrensuffer for poor integration, lack of knowledge of the local language, and scarce education – not counting the surrounding economic difficulties. The migrants come from one of the trickiest political and economic situations in Southeast Asia. Poverty and lack of human rights are the most evident consequences of a very repressive military regime, that took control over 20 years ago.