Community Background

Sauch Kha Hong Sar School (SKHS) was located in Bannya, until 2009, after that it moved to Mae Pa, quarter – 9. The school was established on 25^th May 2006 by Mon National League for Consolidation and Aiding (MNLCA) funded by Burmese Migrant Worker Education Committee (BMWEC) until 2009. After that, this school run under by Migrant Education Coordination Center (MECC) until 2015, but in 2016 MECC transfer to the Help Without Frontiers (HWF) organization. SKHS’s School mission is to educate Mon children to be able to read, write and not to be surviving by begging on the street. Now a day, SKHS School is managed by Mi Seik Khamar Chan (Headmistress), with 1 Thai teacher and the rest are 5 Mon teacher.

Currently, the school’s location land belongs to one of Thai people. This land has rent by agreement 2 years at a time with 20,000 baht per year. The land area is 75 m length and 35 m width.  Before that, they have two old building, after that one of the donor built new school for teaching room, since 2012. Now, they have 3 building in this school, the building are for Nursery school, 5 classroom, dining room/office, 6 toilets, and 4 water tanks. The water tanks and toilets are built by concrete and the class rooms are built by bamboo and wood with a tin roof. The office is built by concrete, wood and bamboo with a tin roof.

SKHS’s is primary school, Nursery to Grade – 4 with 120 students between ages 3 – 14 years old. There are 120 students, 20% from Mae Pa, 20% from Kanaphu, and 60% from Hway Ka Loke. MNLCA founded this school especially for Mon children, but now it accepts all different ethnic groups to study at SKHS School. Most of students came from different places and different religion and ethnicities. The majority of the students are Mon and Burma, some are Karen, Shan, Pa Oo and Muslim. There are 65 boys and 55 girls in this school.

SKHS’s School uses the Burmese curriculum under Non Formal Primary Education (NFPE) and the main subjects, such as Burmese, English, Math, Science, Social (History and Geography), extra subjects are Mon and Thai. NFPE defines two levels for the students, such as level – 1 should be (grate 1 and 2) and level – 2 should be (3 – 4), aged between 9 – 14 years old. NFPE curriculum is to get recognize from Myanmar government. Therefore, they have to follow Myanmar Education curriculum system as take exam. Nevertheless, SKHS School teacher’s also have to go training in the Mawlamyine 2 times per a year. Then, one month one time have to go Mya Waddy Education center to send the students information and report. Sometime, Burma side teacher came and observe, who follow their curriculum and need something for teaching.

SKHS School still has challenges in their school especially for student’s basic need such as: lunch, drinking water and electric bill, transportation and school uniforms. For student transportation they have to pay 10,000 baht per year, but they only get 7,300 baht from MECC and they still need 2,700 baht to cover. For drinking water they receive 545, but have to pay about 800 per month, so they still need 255 baht to cover drinking water. Therefore, they have to collect 50 baht from each student’s parents per month, but some students’ parents cannot give. For the same reason, last year Wide Horizons students and SKHS teacher plan to plant ginger, but their plan was not successful because of many kind challenges during plant ginger. But, they do not satisfied with last year project, they have a plan to grow with stay least ginger. Some of those problems, they can solve by themselves but for lunch they can’t solve by themselves. Therefore, we would like to help and solve this problem for they can run the school to be sustainable in the future. Moreover, it will be benefit for all students and teachers in the future.