Naw Paw Ray

Naw Paw Ray is building a network of migrant schools and training migrant teachers to address the vast educational gap between Thai children and the children of Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. Naw Paw’s schools provide quality education that prepares migrant children for a prospective return to Burma or integration into Thai society and culture. This model is critical to establishing a pluralistic and tolerant Thai society in the twenty-first century.

Naw Paw sees a tremendous opportunity and need to include migrant schools and students into the larger Thai society and educational system—a system that has largely excluded both indigenous minorities and immigrants. Working in Tak Province, home to many Burmese refugees and illegal migrants, Naw Paw has built a network of schools where migrant teachers, whose posts are not currently legitimate in Thailand, teach an integrated Thai/Burmese curriculum to unschooled migrant children. Naw Paw’s umbrella organization brings together fifty-two migrant schools, provides teacher training and administrative competency and leadership, and partners with Thailand’s Ministries of Education and Interior. Naw Paw also address the growing migrant challenges, particularly in education, to pave the way for migrant schools, students, and teachers, to gain public support and official accreditation in Thailand.

By drawing teachers, international and local organizations, as well as the local administration into her model, Naw Paw has built a parallel yet integrated education system. No other organization represents such a large array of minority schools, or is doing so much to build a long-term solution to the growing number of uneducated migrant children coming to or born in Thailand each year.

The number of migrants worldwide, an estimated 191 million people, would constitute the fifth most populous country in the world. Roughly 50,000 of these migrants have crossed the border between Burma and northern Thailand into Tak province as a result of a complex political and economic war waged by a brutal dictatorship against ethnic minorities. Civil and political conflicts have led more than 300,000 people into refugee camps and border towns along the Thai-Burmese border for nearly two decades. Human rights abuses by the Burmese military have prompted the outflows and the Thai government has pursued a humanitarian policy affording an estimated 160,000 refugees temporary asylum.

Those seeking personal freedom and economic independence opt not to register in the refugee camps but instead join the ranks of the two and a half million migrant workers, generally classified as illegal immigrants in Thailand. These immigrants are subject to arrest, imprisonment and deportation at any time, and are left out of official protection from international agencies. With the advent of a new government in Thailand in 2001, a new policy was adopted to systematically register the migrant workers. However, the registration fee was costly and the threat of deportation remained ever-present and dependent upon the will of the authorities. Moreover, the number of registered workers decreased significantly in 2002 as the administration prohibited the issuance of new work permits. Without any form of identification, working legally and safely became more difficult.

Stemming from this situation is an increased number of stateless children being born in Thailand. Thailand has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child but has yet to enact its obligations towards all children in the country, especially children from disadvantaged and vulnerable groups. Although Thai laws exist stating that all children in the country shall receive both birth certificates and education, the authorities view children of non-Thai nationalities as exceptions to the laws, and subject them to harassment, extortion, and deportation threats. Though both the Ministries of Interior and Education have constitutionally stated responsibilities to assist these groups, refugees and migrants are routinely denied their basic human rights.

Migrant workers suffer from lack of housing and shelter, jobs, economic and personal security, in addition to lack of access to health and education for their families. Migrant children are often neglected as their parents constantly relocate in search of work, leaving the children to fend for themselves or to work to support the family. Youth are especially at-risk to drugs or sexual trafficking, and to the dangers and health hazards faced by street children. Even when children are enrolled in Thai schools, migrant parents are often unable to cover the costs for school uniforms, books, and transportation. Their children also face ethnic discrimination and prejudice—both from peers and teachers. In response to the need for affordable education, ad-hoc and weak community schools have sprouted up all over Tak province, using disparate curriculums and surviving with in-kind donations from the migrant communities.

With the Ministry of Interior being the only authority to grant citizenship requests and the Ministry of Education the only authority to approve access to education, the process moves slowly and inefficiently. Despite the criminal and civil laws in place to help protect people in Thailand, access to justice is not easy for most migrant workers, especially for those illegally in Thailand. This is a pervasive and systemic challenge for Thai society—regrettably afflicting those already marginalized, and most notably, the growing number of stateless children.

Naw Paw, a Burmese migrant teacher, is facilitating access to education for all migrant children in Thailand. Naw Paw brings together migrant children, families, communities, teachers, local and international organizations, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Interior to identify and begin to address the many challenges faced by migrant children. She founded the Burmese Migrant Workers Education Committee (BMWEC) to represent the needs of migrant families and advocate for their rights.

The core of Naw Paw’s work is to provide migrant children with safe learning environments where they can get a quality education and maintain their Burmese identity and culture. Depending on the status of the children as migrants, internally displaced, or orphans, they have the choice to attend day, orphanage, or boarding schools at the nursery, primary, middle and high school levels. Naw Paw has also developed Post-Ten Schools, which provide older children with vocational training, including weaving, computer skills, music, and art, among others. In her network of schools, children are protected from exploitation and trafficking. They may also receive an education that combines aspects of Myanmar culture and language while encompassing Thailand’s educational system, to best prepare them for a future in Thailand or an eventual return to their homeland. By consolidating independent migrant schools under the BMWEC network, individual schools that once struggled financially are now connected to international funding organizations that can more effectively fund migrant education across Thailand. Eventually, Naw Paw aims to channel scholarship funds from international organizations and the Thai government to enable youth to further their studies at the tertiary level. In the meantime, she actively engages those who have completed their studies to work for BMWEC, continually developing young people to become future leaders in their local communities.

What had initially begun in 1999 with 7 schools, 400 students and 24 teachers, has grown to 52 schools serving over 5,000 students in formal quality schools, and 4,000 students in smaller ad-hoc school structures, with approximately 460 migrant teachers and 5,000 parents.

Naw Paw’s next step is to provide migrant teachers with tailored and comprehensive training. In partnership with local and international organizations, Naw Paw has initiated programs in curriculum development, classroom management, lesson planning, reading and writing for critical thinking, and Thai language. Whereas some schools used the Karen curriculum and others the Burmese, Naw Paw designed an integrated, pluralistic curriculum with help from teachers and educational leaders. Trained in curriculum development within the Thai context and knowledgeable about the Burmese curriculum, these teachers are placed in leadership positions as they organize and develop new training sessions—financial management, human resource management, and administrative functions—to help them independently operate and monitor the success of their schools. By increasing the skills of migrant teachers and staff, providing them with salaries and livelihood, and empowering them with leadership positions, Naw Paw is ensuring the continuous development and improvement of migrant schools.

With the help of Thai, Karen, and Burmese teachers learning each other’s languages and customs, Naw Paw is translating the Thai curriculum into Burmese to develop a flexible multicultural and multilingual education system so children can prepare for possible assimilation into Thailand or return to Burma. With an accredited Thai curriculum in place in the schools and a growing number of students speaking Thai, Naw Paw hopes her graduating students will receive diplomas allowing them to pursue higher studies. She is also translating the Burmese curriculum into Thai to advise the Ministry of Education about cultural and educational aspects of migrant children. The outer-shell of her program—cooperation and partnership with the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Interior, and international organizations—is essential to secure the legal status and development of migrant schools in Thailand.

With the migrant schools serving as virtual community centers, Naw Paw is reaching out to the migrant community; parents and families can receive health care training and services and human rights training, empowering the local community and transforming the mindset of parents about educating their children.

At the community and policy levels, Naw Paw intervenes with local leaders and Thai authorities when a school faces problems such as threats of closure, destruction, arrest and/or deportation of teachers, and students. She mediates meetings between the Ministry of Education, school principals, teachers, and parents to keep all parties informed of each other’s activities and to ensure transparency. In 2004, representatives of the Ministry of Education unexpectedly visited her school and reassured her about the intent of their visit—coming only to see her work and to request she organize a meeting gathering all migrant school headmasters, teachers, and parents. In 2005, Naw Paw organized three meetings in the presence of local and international organizations, immigration officers, the World Education Consortium, Mae Sot Civic net, and the Ministry of Education. She is seeking official registration for BMWEC under the Ministry of Education as a learning center, to receive recognition for the important role her schools play in Thai society.

In 2006, Naw Paw secured land for more schools, funds for infrastructure development, and free transportation for students to and from school. By 2010 she expects each of her schools to be registered and recognized by local and national authorities, to provide students with school certificates and scholarships to facilitate their entrance into universities, and to develop additional vocational training. Despite the growing number of children at BMWEC, only 20 percent of migrant children attend school in Thailand—a number Naw Paw aspires to increase fourfold, along with the sprouting of migrant schools and the growing number of trained migrant teachers.

It is difficult to recall that in the 1960s Africa was predicted to be the next global engine of growth. Asia, especially Southeast Asia was considered a “basket case,” except for Burma—a prosperous rice exporter with a well-educated population. The goal of Burma as a unified state has remained elusive since receiving its independence from Great Britain in 1948. Today, Burma is on the list of countries with the gravest human rights abuses. Naw Paw, originally from the Karen State of Myanmar, has suffered through the conflict since birth. While attending school in Yangon, her parents divorced and the Myanmar army instated the “four cut operations”—cutting off communication, transportation, access to food, and import/export of productions—forcing Naw Paw to return to her state of origin for refuge and into a broken family. During ninth grade, Naw Paw was the only student from her class to be invited to attend a teacher training, enabling her to receive the basics of lesson planning, classroom and student management. Despite increasing levels of violence, Naw Paw completed high school and entered the teaching field in 1981, in the primary school founded by her community village. When the military burned her village, many receded into the refugee camps on the Thai border while Naw Paw, one among very few women, volunteered as a logistics manager for the Karen National Union.

Naw Paw crossed the border into Thailand in 1991 and has since worked illegally, first as an accountant at a gas station in Mae Sot for seven years, before starting her own school. With her five children struggling to be schooled, Naw Paw realized the inability of non-Thais to attend Thai schools and the lack of schools geared towards migrant children. She received support from the owner of the petrol pump and organized her first school, bringing together twenty-five migrant children, teaching four subjects (English, Burmese, Karen, and math) and fundraising for both stationery and food. Eager to develop the children’s love of learning, irrespective of her illegal status in Thailand, with support from Dr. Cynthia Maung and a variety of benefactors, Naw Paw has spent the past eight years pursuing her dream as Founder and Chairperson of the Burmese Migrant Workers Education Committee.