Thailand: school offers hope to refugee children

Along a hot dusty track some 30 kilometres outside the Thai-Burma town of Mae Sot some 120 children make the most of their surroundings - an improvised football goal on hard, bumpy ground; cramped living conditions in dark boarding houses, scruffy outbuildings. This is Maw Taw Lu school.

Being close to the border but inside Thailand, it is a safe and stable location for children inside Burma to be able to come over and have an education; not being forced by soldiers into the army.

Other children live in the surrounding area where their parents will be labouring long hours in the hot sun for $2 dollars a day. Their parents cannot always be close by because they follow the different crops to different locations.

The children, like any others in the world, have hopes and ambitions for the future. They want to be teachers and doctors. One thing stands in their way - hunger. Without nutritious food they cannot learn. Yet an education can save them from the sweat shops and from being drawn into sex tourism. It can give them self-worth and independence. Please help us to save them from this vicious circle by giving whatever you can afford. To have one nutritious meal a day will make a difference to a child's life.

The Thai Children's Trust, whose patron is Archbishop Vincent Nichols, is supporting a programme to feed 1,000 refugee children. Just £3 will provide a child with lunch for a month.

Click here to see a video about the school and learn how you can support this project:
http://thaichildrenstrust-news.org.uk/67W-UKKN-KOK9T-BVSIX-0/c.aspx