Hill Tribe People

The hill tribe people live in remote areas scattered across Northern Thailand. The communities we work with include Lahu, Akha, Karen, Hmong and Lisu tribes. Many fled from conflict in Myanmar or other surrounding countries.

We are supporting more than 400 hill tribe children/young people in many areas of Northern Thailand. In the past, it was rare for hill tribe people to attend school, and even rarer for them to continue at secondary school. There is little or no access to education in the remote villages, and this can makes the hill tribe children prone to poverty and vulnerable to exploitation within Thailand's ubiquitous sex and drug trade. We have seen that those who can get an education grow up able to take much better care of themselves, their families and their community.

The Issues

Hill tribe children face numerous issues such as:

• they are often stateless. No birth certificate or ID means the Thai government won’t easily grant citizenship

• sex trafficking of young females

• recruited to carry drugs

• extreme poverty

• some villages are extremely remote and there is no school in their village or close by

• orphaned due to parents dying young, incarceration or AIDS

• lack of education - the reasons above mean that it is very hard for children to get the start needed to break the cycle.

This photo shows some of the children at Leadership Home Junior doing remote learning from the hostel. They are listening to their teacher as she teaches them Chinese. The three little kindy boys in the back are playing marbles as there is no school for them online.