After working with ethnic students and families in Pai, a small town in Mae Hong Son province border with Myanmar for 22 years, we needed to conduct a thorough assessment of our core programs, situations, target groups, and resources to keep our organization moving in the right direction. We found that some of the programs such as the Youth Center, one of our core programs that provide weekend classes tutoring various subjects, foreign language classes, and recreational activities for disadvantaged ethnic students in Pai no longer suitable for the situation. This program was launched over a decade ago aiming to help ethnic students get access to tutoring classes free of charge. Most of these ethnic students immigrated from the conflict zones of Shan State, Myanmar at the age of between 3-7 while a few of them were born in Thailand but did not obtain Thai citizenship because none of their parents enter Thailand legally. Most of the parents or guardians and students were under the stateless status, and very few of them obtained Non-Thai national identification cards. Going to school was impossible until the Ministry of Education amended the laws and regulations in 2005. It was the same year that the Ministry of Interior started surveying and issuing Stateless Person ID cards to those who are living in Thailand without any identity documents. Being migrant students who were able to go to school several years later when compared to Thai students, facing communication barriers and racial discrimination, these circumstances created a lot of pressure and difficulties for these advantaged ethnic students and families and had a significant impact on their academic performance. Falling behind in Thai, Maths, English, Science, and other subjects are major problems for these students and this is why the Youth Center was needed during that time.
After the assessment, we found that these students were doing well in their studies. The weekend classes and activities we provided seemed not as interesting or exciting to them as it was a decade ago, so we decided to discontinue this program and focus more on Scholarship Program instead. In addition, we wish to expand our work and cooperation closely with other organizations that have similar missions, goals, and target groups and we found that Chiang Mai is the answer. We see great opportunities to work with several famous non-profit organizations working to enhance better educational opportunities for disadvantaged ethnics, migrants, stateless, and hill tribes, in Thailand or even the Mekong region countries.
As a result, Kwah Dao Foundation has been officially moved to a new location in Chiang Mai. The new office address of Kwah Dao is stated in the following announcement. Should you need further information, please contact us at 094-752 2544.
