Wednesday was our last day to visit some of the learning centres (schools) under the BMWEC umbrella. Our task - to talk to them about expansion of the mushroom house project and a visit in September this year with a group of Friends of WWM. Our first learning centre visit was to the big centre of 700 children, Hsa Thloo Lei. We needed to organise video footage for a short film about the school for a sponsor in the UK. We watched the filming of both the junior and senior assemblies. The little ones sang us some songs and we, of course, sang for them. Note to selves - need to improve our performance! We also saw the senior students harvesting mushrooms and working in the vegetable garden.
From here we headed off to Hway Ka Loke Learning Centre and boarding house, a half hour from Mae Sot, which in our notes from from 18 months ago was noted as having 130 children and now has over 320 students. We talked with the assistant headmaster who agreed the centre and boarding house would benefit greatly from a mushroom house, talked to the children and some volunteers who are helping at this centre and visited the boarding house where the little children were in 'kindergarten'. Carrying in tins of biscuits was a sure way to disrupt the proceedings... and we were glad we did. Little children dressed in rags, with no shoes, needed something special to brighten their day. Committing to revisit this school in September to spend some time and do a few activities, we left to then visit Nam Tok Learning Centre.
While the children of Nam Tok had a day off for parent teacher meetings, which were to include discussion of swine flu, we talked to the head master about locating a mushroom house here . He had already heard that his Centre may have one, so bingo... the location was already marked out! We enjoyed his enthusiasm and assured him we'll do our best to ensure a mushroom house is built at his school. He also shared with us other 'income generating projects' set up to assist the learning center, such as a leaf used for consumption of what we think is, or at least similar to, betel-nut. The leaf will be sold to the community to generate funds to subsidise the income for the Learning Center.
Continuing on to Future Garden Learning Center, a small center set in the middle of corn fields, we found them also keen to have a mushroon house to help feed the children their lunches as well as selling them to the local market to help add protein to their existing lunches. As an aside, the day of our visit the center had been without water for 10 days due to roadworks on the highway. It had got so bad - 10 days without water for cooking or bathing - that some of the teachers and older students had started to go and assist with the roadworks so they could be finished. Last word was the water was expected to be completed the next day...
Our final Learning Center visit was to Thoo Mwey Khee Boarding House and Learning Center, which has over 300 students - half of which are living at the boarding house. This Center, close to the border has leased land with the assistance of
Global Neighbors Canada Inc to develop a farm to help support their food and running costs. Several different NGO's are working together to set up a sustainable Centre for educating and boarding migrant children whose parents are in extremely difficult circumstances. It is an amazing place, and the headmaster, Pway Doh, inspires us with his enthusiasm. A definate place for a mushroom house. Or two...
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