IMPACT Along Thai/Burmese Border 2009-2016

The story of Pangea’s partnership with ECCSD (Employing Community Capacity for Sustainable Development) profiles the kind of impact that we hope to achieve with our funding.

The story begins with the formation of the SE Asia Pod in 2007-2008. At that time, despite the group’s interest in Myanmar/Burma, the political environment prevented either traveling or funding there. Therefore, the pod decided to assist Burmese migrant workers along the Thai-Burmese border. It was a time when many Burmese were escaping the military regime in Burma and crossing the border into Thailand to find work and a better life for their families. For Pangea it was the beginning of a successful seven-year (2009-2016) funding initiative that resulted in Pangea awarding over $100,000 to support these migrant workers and their families. The three partners in this initiative were Pattanarak on the northwest Thai-/Burmese border (assisting farming communities), the Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma in the Bangkok area (legal support/intervention), and ECCSD on the southern Thai-/Burmese border (integration of migrant children into Thai schools). Over the years these Partners advocated for and assisted thousands of exploited migrant workers and their families in farming, fishing, rubber plantation and urban communities.

Pangea started funding ECCSD in 2011 after conducting a site visit and meeting with Ms. Jitada – “Da” – Rattanapan, the Director, and her 3 staff members. ECCSD works in the rubber tree plantation region of Phang-nga province in southern Thailand, an area that was also hit hard by the Boxer Day Tsunami in 2004. ECCSD’s mission is to help children of Burmese migrant families who live and work on the rubber plantations to successfully integrate into Thai public schools. While schools are legally open to Burmese students there are many barriers: historical conflict, discrimination and language/cultural differences between Burmese and Thai people.

To leverage her small staff, Da has focused on building partnerships and stakeholder participation that includes local community leaders, school principals, teachers, parents (both Burmese and Thai) and students. By training teachers, parents and students to be peer mentors she was able to leverage ECCSD’s limited staff and resources to reach families over a large geographic area.  Activities included teacher training, peer and leadership training for students, parent orientation, a bridge course for incoming students, frequent phone check-ins at each school, support for parents and students, and emergency support for students with urgent problems.

ECCSD has successfully placed over 400 students in 27 schools. They are also providing continuing education for young adults who were never able to attend school and help families who wish to return to Myanmar.

In 2013 during one of the Pod’s three site visits to ECCSD, the team asked Da how Pangea could improve its grant making process. She spoke about how it was time-consuming for a small organization like hers to apply annually for grants and to deal with the unknowns of year-to-year funding. We listened and in the next funding round Pangea made its first multi-year grant to ECCSD.

Last October we invited ECCSD to apply for a transition grant to ease the ending of our five-year funding relationship with them. Surprisingly, Da declined additional funds saying they were grateful for Pangea’s funding over the years and that they now had the capacity to seek funding from local organizations in Thailand. A previous Pangea grant had included funds for ECCSD staff to learn fundraising techniques.

Today ECCSD has two staff and Da serves as advisor to the organization. Increasingly, they are relying on community members as volunteers to carry out the work started by ECCSD. Rather than expand her organization, Da has opted to eventually hand over her organization’s work to the community and have ECCSD be in an advisory role. An approach she believes is more empowering and sustainable for the community. Pangea has been fortunate to partner with such a strong and effective leader as Da. While our funding relationship has ended, we look forward to an ongoing connection with this remarkable woman and ECCSD.

3/14/16