Despite attending classes taught in a foreign language and despite their sharecropper parents’ struggle to pay their share of school expenses, all fifty-two children in last year’s tuition program passed their exams.

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

No Country To Call Their Own.

]]> http://shanrefugeeschools.org/who-we-support/feed/ 0 http://shanrefugeeschools.org/about-us/ http://shanrefugeeschools.org/about-us/#comments Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:54:53 +0000 admin http://shanrefugeeschools.org/?p=30

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.

In 2010, under a constitution drafted by the military government, a military-dominated civilian government was voted into office. Persecution of ethnic groups, including the Shan, continues.

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.