Thailand's Rejected Region

Thailand is regarded by many Westerners as the land of glittering temples, sun drenched beaches and happy smiling people. It is also seen to have a dynamic and rapidly advancing economy. There is, however, another side to the picture. There is a region which has been rightly described as DESPISED, NEGLECTED, REJECTED and ALMOST FORGOTTEN. This region is known as ISARN in the country's inhospitable North East.

Here the overriding concern of the people is with survival. Mostly, they live by subsistence farming in a hostile landscape blighted, in season, by both flood and drought. Malnutrition and extreme poverty are commonplace. In Isarn the average per capita income is £200 per annum, about one third of the average for the rest of the kingdom. Children are needed to work on the land to help with their family's struggle for survival. In these circumstances, the education that could be the key to their future becomes an unaffordable luxury.

Life is hard indeed for most of Isarn's 18 million people. Many are forced to migrate to the large cities where, due to their lack of education, they can be easily exploited and can find only the most menial and low paid work. This potential explonation is most worrying and most damaging in the case of children and young people.

Although the Government has implemented plans to develop the economy of the region, it will be many years before the effects of this will be felt by the children of the poor. Education alone holds the key to liberation fom the cycle of poverty and deprivation.

The Role of the Anglo-Thai Foundation

The Foundation was formed in 1990 by a group of Thai and Western Buddhists, dedicated to helping the children of Isarn to obtain the education that they so urgently need and so greatly desire. It is a registered charity, incurring very low expense in its administration, no-one receiving any payment whatsoever in respect of their work for the charity.

The Foundation is sympathetic to the culture and religion of the country and seeks to support rather than to undermine these aims. All of the money donated is used directly to enable poor children from Isarn to continue to complete their education. This includes such things as the provision of school meals and the funding of travel to school as well as the provision of writing materials etc. Often, even these simple necessities are beyond the means of these families. Thailand's education system is free until the age of 13, but poverty often prevents the poor taking advantage of this.

Each year some of our Trustees travel to Isam, at their own expense, to personally supervise the distribution of the grants. ln 1996 100 Education Grants of £40 each were made to the children in the most need.
£40 may seem like a small sum but in Isarn, it will enable a poor child to remain at school for a whole year. To them it is a wonderful gift. It represents a sum they could never hope to raise by their own efforts and it offers the possibility of a better future. So far, however, we have been able to help only a tiny fraction of all those gifted and willing children who are so desperately deserving of our help. They are looking to you to offer them some hope of escaping from their lives of misery and possible exploitation. They have the ability and the enthusiasm to succeed. All they need is a little help to set them on the road to a better life both for themselves and their dependants.

For further details, including ways of making donations, please write to:


The Anglo-Thai Foundation
P.O. Box 3465
London
SW19 4AS

Enquiries may also be made by phone on: 0181 542 1712

The charity receives support from The Buddhavihara, Aston,
whose Abbot, Phramaha Laow, was the prime mover in setting it up.
You can mail to Phramaha Laow Panyasiri
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