About Us

Bernice Johnson with group of Shan refugee children

Schools for Shan Refugees is a 501(c)3 charitable organization established to help Shan refugees in Thailand get an education. For several years the founder taught English to Shan refugees from Burma, who had escaped to Thailand. She became knowledgeable about and sympathetic with their need and desire for education.

Situation in Burma

A military junta has controlled Burma for close to 50 years, during which time the country’s economic and educational systems have deteriorated so much that more than one million children have been deprived of an education, as have many of their parents. A large number of them belong to the Shan ethnic group.

When Shan families can no longer survive in Burma, where their homes are burned and rice fields confiscated, they flee to Thailand. In Thailand, they do not have official refugee status and are not the recipients of international aid, but are considered migrants and work at the worst jobs the country has to offer. They receive subsistence wages, seldom enough to allow them to feed their families and send their children to school. Without an education, the children are at great risk of being lured into the sex and drug trades in Thailand.

Our Goal

Our goal is to help Shan refugee children who live in migrant camps get a basic education, while helping their teachers, young Shan adults, earn regular wages.

Who we support

We support approximately one hundred children in Shan migrant camp schools in Thailand, and offer Thai language classes to their parents so they can communicate with their Thai employers. We also have a tuition program that furnishes matching funds so parents can send Shan migrant children to Thai schools. We spend approximately three months a year in Thailand, observing the schools and methods being used and trying to find new and better ways to help refugee children.

Please visit the link below to learn more about the Shan Refugee children:

No Country To Call Their Own.

Despite attending classes taught in a foreign language and despite their sharecropper parents’ struggle to pay their half of expenses, all twenty-five children in last year’s tuition program passed their exams. This year our tuition program covers thirty-five children.

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