The school road for migrant children on the Thai-Myanmar border and the private schools struggling on the edge of survival

Located in Mae Sot on the Thai-Myanmar border, it was once a haven for the Karen Tribes, an ethnic minority on the Thai-Myanmar border, fleeing the flames of Myanmar's civil war. In recent years, due to Thailand's establishment of a special trade zone and Myanmar's opening up, Mae Sot, situated on the overland route from Bangkok to Yangon, has become an emerging hotspot for foreign investment in factories, attracting large numbers of Myanmar migrant workers to illegally enter Thailand to find work.

According to estimates by local aid organizations, nearly hundreds of thousands of Myanmar migrant workers are gathered in the Mae Sot area and neighboring districts, living in makeshift crude housing. Arriving in Mae Sot, one can often see temporary shelters built by migrant workers using locally sourced materials scattered along roadsides and in the fields, forming a group of dark, unregistered residents without education, healthcare, or citizenship.

To address the schooling problem for the children of Myanmar migrant workers, privately run migrant schools have been established with international aid, including assistance from Taiwan. Green Water School is one of five migrant schools receiving private donations from Taiwan, allowing children to receive education at low or no cost. The after-school road of Green Water School is the children's happy school road, the migration road of Myanmar migrant workers, and a microcosm of the fate of most Myanmar migrant worker families.

The marginalized among the marginalized - Education for migrant workers' children

Green Water School is located in Phop Phra District, south of Mae Sot, about an hour's drive into the countryside. Leaving Highway 1090 and entering a winding industrial road, fields stretch along both sides of the hills, where groups of people can be seen planting corn or cassava in the fields, ranging from ten to twenty people at the least, to forty or fifty at the most.

As large grain companies began to massively purchase cassava, corn, and other raw material crops for conversion into biomass energy in Thailand, farmland near Mae Sot began to be extensively cultivated. The rapidly expanding labor demand attracted disadvantaged farmers from within Myanmar to cross the border with their families to work in Thailand.

As the industrial road drove further and further from the highway, an isolated single-story building was hidden in an open grove on the hillside. "Green Water School" is located here. Although called a "school," it is basically just an extremely crude large classroom, with the dirt ground on the slope serving as the playground. The classroom is divided into spaces for high, middle, and low grades. Due to a lack of teachers, migrant schools often have different grades sharing a single teacher.

These children have circles of yellow-white Thanakha powder (thanaka powder) applied to their faces, a Myanmar custom for sun protection and skin whitening. On these cute, tender faces, one cannot help but think that the dark, blurry-faced groups of migrant workers seen in the fields along the way are the parents of these very children.

The unrecognized Green Water School

On one hand, the Thai government tacitly allows large numbers of cheap laborers to enter, yet is unwilling to provide corresponding basic education services. Privately run schools provide education for migrant workers' children, yet they are not recognized by the Thai government, which only registers and classifies private "migrant schools" as "Learning Centers," positioned similarly to cram schools.

Legally, migrant workers and migrant worker children's schools are a gray area left to fend for themselves, becoming another important humanitarian aid issue on the border besides refugee camps. However, while the United Nations is overwhelmed dealing with refugee camp issues, the migrant worker issue falls into a defensive zone beyond the reach of other international aid organizations.

Fortunately, some international organizations are still willing to assist these migrant schools. However, remote rural schools like "Green Water School," which serve the bottom of the bottom among migrant workers, have become the marginalized among the marginalized.

Fragile universal values: people struggling on the edge of survival run migrant schools

Green Water School operates under the crude school building and conditions of a painter-principal. Compared to Mae Sot town, where international aid organizations are numerous, Green Water School is located in a remote area, and the reach of international aid resources is limited, making the school's operation extremely difficult.

About five years ago, Green Water School faced the predicament of closure due to an inability to raise funds. The school's parents went to plead with Principal Weng Wen of the neighboring "Waterfall School," who was quite friendly with the former principal of Green Water School. Waterfall School is about a half-hour drive from Green Water School. Because it is adjacent to a highway with convenient transportation, its scale is much larger, yet the school's situation was also stretched thin. Principal Weng Wen approached Lai Shu-sheng (Sam), a worker from Taiwan's "Glocal Action Association," and received timely support, allowing Green Water School to temporarily avoid the fate of closure.

"On the border, my nickname is also 'Sam Dong,' but this nickname is not an easy one." Lai Shu-sheng said with a bitter smile. It means that when everyone cannot find resources, they place their last hope on him, a Taiwanese person, and the responsibility is exceptionally heavy.

From lighting to clean water, everything here is a luxury

Green Water School is indeed a school, but because the school building is truly crude, stepping into the classroom is at first slightly startling, almost too painful to look at. Donations from Taiwanese organizations prioritize installing solar panels to provide lighting electricity, followed by water purifiers to give teachers and students a clean water source.

On the afternoon of the visit, the school had already planned an interactive class period. Fellow partner Mama Daisy skillfully blew up the pre-prepared balloons, and the Taiwanese public welfare group played games with the lower-grade children. The serious classroom became colorful because of the brightly colored balloons.

Education, faint lighting, clean water -- these basic services taken for granted in Taiwan can only be realized here through the goodwill donated from thousands of kilometers away.

The school must operate; once students drop out, it is very hard for them to come back!

Lai Shu-sheng, who has been involved in overseas aid on the Thai-Myanmar border for over 15 years, says that schools in towns with convenient transportation find fundraising relatively easy, but "Green Water School" is the periphery of the periphery. Even though aid resources from Taiwan are limited each year, resources must still be squeezed out to maintain Green Water School.

"Otherwise, once students leave school, it is very difficult to get them back." Lai Shu-sheng explained that if children do not go to school, they either stay home to care for younger children or follow their parents to work as child laborers. On the border, child laborers' wages are surprisingly not lower than adults', sometimes even higher. Because for managers, child laborers are more obedient and easier to manage.

"Sometimes the income of one more person is a great incentive for Myanmar migrant workers to improve their economic conditions, so changing parents' minds to support their children's schooling is often not easy at first," Lai explained. Looking at the crude migrant villages of bamboo or corrugated iron along the roadside, there are still many children unable to attend school. Being able to come to Green Water is already a kind of fortune.

Lai Shu-sheng: The responsibility of caring for children lies not only with the family, but with the entire community

Because migrant workers have no citizenship, they not only lack the right to education and medical security, but sometimes even the law cannot protect them. When they suffer harm, they have nowhere to turn for help. "I once witnessed a battered woman come to seek help, and the international aid organization could only respond with silence," Lai Shu-sheng painfully recounted a dark psychological trauma of international aid workers.

In his experience with international aid, Lai Shu-sheng knows that only by making children become "so