มูลนิธิ ดุลภาทร
Providing educational opportunities for disadvantaged young people in
Northern Thailand
Partner Organization
Lion Mahajak is a school operated by the Border Patrol Police on a mountaintop not far from Chiang Mai, but in an area of extremely difficult access.
Project
Dulabhatorn has completed three years of support for very poor primary and secondary “hill tribe” students attending the school. The project has benefitted from an extremely able manager, Mr. Nimo Kano, a Karen university graduate, who was a teacher at the school.
Our Contribution
Dulabhatorn supported costs related to basic essentials and income generation which translates into the following contributions:
- Support for everyday needs: toiletries, uniforms, shoes, other clothing, etc.
- Funds for families to hire help to replace work the children would otherwise do at their homes – farming, animal husbandry, etc.
- Help for dormitory expenses or to pay families for room and board while at school.
- Provision of funding for an income-generating project in which in the first year the students raised chickens, both to provide supplementary food for school lunches and for sale of eggs and meat in the market.
- In 2009 and subsequent years, they accumulated a cash surplus that was used to sponsor the school’s sports day and to subsidize the handicraft production work of the local housewives’ association. Based on their success, they received a gift of a dozen piglets and, in cooperation with the agricultural extension service, bought some more and are now fully engaged in pig raising, butchering and meat sales.
Achievements
This project is now complete but its success can serve as a model for other rural school projects. The community will be included in a new school-based community development project which began in late 2011. Nimo Kano, who has since resigned from his teaching job and moved to his wife’s village in Pai District, will be the Dulabhatorn field manager of the entire project.