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Schooling the needy
At the Ban Pa Deng School on the Thai-Burmese border in Phetchaburi province, trying to feed hundreds of hungry children remains its biggest hurdle

Published: 5/01/2010 at 12:00 AM
Bangkok Post Newspaper section: Outlook

When the Thai Pasdu Krungthep Company built a tiny border school at Border Patrol Police Base 713 in Phetchaburi province in honour of His Majesty the King back in 1970, few would have guessed at the future of the little school run by BPP paratroopers.

At the time, the school in Tambon Song Pee Nong of Tha Yang District had only 18 students, all ethnic Karens who could barely speak Thai. Border patrol policemen doubled as teachers to help provide basic education as well as teach Thai language to help the children assimilate to Thai society.

Today, Ban Pa Deng School has turned into a bustling establishment with over 600 students, 22 full-time teachers and standing on 66 rai (10 hectares) of donated land in Tambon Pa Deng of Kang Krachan district, a short distance from the original site.

But along with success came problems that grew in tandem with the school's success.

Many of the problems stemmed from the very rapid growth of the school, which meant that government assistance was unable to keep pace. Even today, the inadequate food hall has to double as a classroom, while lunch has to be served to students in four shifts.

The children of Ban Pa Deng.
The school's tiny library can only seat 30 people, meaning that only a few of the school's 600-plus students can enter at a time.

Importantly, the sheer volume of students means that government allowances for school lunch have proved quite inadequate. School director Sangwien Imcharoen estimates that the school consumes as many as 40 100kg sacks of rice a year - that is, four tonnes.

The budget provided by the government at present comes to an average of about 5 baht per head and unless extra provision can be found many of the students will go hungry. Extreme poverty in the area means that many of the children come to school without breakfast and the school lunch represents the main meal of the day.

On the long, rugged journey to get an education.
"We ask for help from every place we can think of. We receive rice from nearby temples and from various companies in the area. We seek help from them all," Sangwien said.

He also established a school vegetable garden project. An area behind the school was cleared and students were recruited to till the plot, picking out rocks and making the plot ready for planting. Donations of vegetable seeds were sought from all around and vegetables from the plot are now helping to supplement the daily diet of the 600 or so students, providing fresh, clean organic vegetables to boost the students' daily diet.

The school authorities are still soliciting donations of vegetable seeds but said that the vegetable seed donated should be varieties that can be harvested within three months, the length of a school term, or the students will not be able to enjoy the fruits of their labour. In particular demand are pak boong, khana, pak chee, pak kwangtung and mara kee nok. Looking further ahead, fruit trees have also been planted in the school compound, including durians, for which the area is famous.

The school even experimented with growing its own highland rice, but that experiment ended with a setback after the rice field was raided by grain-eating birds. "Just as the rice was almost ready for harvest, flocks of field birds descended and stripped the fields of rice grain," said director Sangwien. "It was a setback, but I haven't given up on the idea yet. We'll find a way."

The school's problems are manifold and it would be easy to get discouraged. Many of the problems stem from the extensive poverty in the border area. Many of the children come from Karen families who work as casual labourers and earn a low, irregular income.

Sangwien tells of a Karen family whose three children were given away for adoption because the parents could not afford to feed their own children. "It is quite heartbreaking when you hear this kind of story about your own students." Luckily in this case the children were given shelter with good families who allowed them to continue their studies.

Some Karens who live outside Thailand sometimes leave their children with relatives who live in the Pa Deng area in the hope that they will receive some form of formal education.

Many of the students do not own a pair of shoes or bags to carry their books in. Some are not given any pocket money at all to take to school. Some have never tasted ice cream even though it is on sale at the school.

Travel is another problem these students have to overcome and many of them live a long way from the school. In past years, some children had to walk as many as four hours to attend class. Improved roads have made things faster, but then some of the children cannot afford the bus fares. The school is proposing a bicycle project, to provide bicycles to children who live a long way from school, so they will benefit from the exercise as well as saving on bus fare.

But food is the problem that continues to return to worry the school administrators, and the cost is high. The school uses 9 litres of fish sauce a week, 2 kilogrammes of sugar a day and 2 litres of vegetable oil a day.

"For many of these children, the school lunch is the most substantial meal of the day. If they do not have a good lunch, what hope is there that they will receive enough nourishment to allow them to grow both physically and mentally," said Sangwien.

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SCHOOL PROJECTS

The Ban Pa Deng School has drawn up an ambitious development project to enable it to better serve students in the border area. The project consists of four parts:

School Lunch Programme

The school has 526 kindergarten and primary school students, with a budget of only 2,790 baht a day to provide lunch for 279 students. This works out to 10 baht per day, per student. In reality, the school has to stretch this budget to cover all 526 students, meaning that the lunch allowance for each student is 5.30 baht per day. A subsidy of 500 baht a day would help raise this average to 6.25 baht a day, per student. The school also needs rice, fish sauce, sugar and vegetable oil. The students consume about 40 sacks, or 4,000kg of rice a year.

Lunch Hall Expansion Programme

The present lunch hall is small and lunch for the 526 students and 80 pre-kindergarten children has to be served in four shifts. The school plans to raise about 150,000 baht to expand the lunch hall to better serve its needs. In addition, the enlarged hall will be able to double as an assembly hall for the school when needed.

Teachers Housing Programme

The school's 25 teaching staff members are now accommodated in five houses, averaging five per house. The school has secured permission to pull down one run-down building and build a new bungalow in its place. This will ease the housing situation a little and should cost about 100,000 baht for building materials.

Library Expansion Programme

The library can only seat about 30 students at a time and is inadequate for the students. This is a severe handicap since the library is the heart of the process of acquiring knowledge. The school also has ambitions to incorporate ICT search systems in the library to allow students to keep up with modern developments.