Schools from the Ground Up
"A thousand children. Thirty teachers. No school buildings. They've been teaching anyway—under tarps, in clearings, wherever they can gather."
In Tanintharyi's coastal region, long-standing conflict has left villages without government support or services. Children struggle to get an education—not because they don't want to learn, not because teachers aren't willing to teach, but because there's simply nowhere to do it.
About 1,000 children are currently being taught by teachers who support them despite having almost nothing to work with. No school buildings. No toilets. No clean drinking water. No electricity. No desks or chairs. No textbooks. Teachers work without salaries. Students share worn-out supplies.
The commitment is there. What's missing is everything else. This project builds the physical infrastructure that transforms dedication into education—actual school buildings where children can learn properly, with the supplies and support to make teaching sustainable.
The state's weak disaster preparedness systems amplify every risk. When cyclones hit, there's no warning system. When floods come, there's no evacuation plan. When conflict flares, displaced populations have nowhere safe to go. Climate change intensifies the natural disasters while political instability weakens the capacity to respond.
But communities don't just suffer—they organize. This project builds on local resilience, using storytelling and intergenerational knowledge transfer to strengthen disaster preparedness. Survivors share their experiences. Elders pass down what they've learned. Villages create their own disaster management committees. Communities prepare to protect themselves—from whatever comes next.
