Our partners who focus on leadership believe in equipping youth with new skills. They see that young people can be adept at leading their communities and they inspire them to give back.
Here are a few of their stories:
Ban Nai Soi Community Learning Center
When Kyaw Hla Sein bought land on a steep hillside in northwest Thailand, people told him he was crazy.
It’s nothing but clay, they said.
But from this clay that he built the Ban Nai Soi Community Learning Center, a school with a growing network of 700 alumni.
Himself a forced migrant from Myanmar, Kyaw Hla Sein saw how vulnerable young refugees became after fleeing to Thailand. Kids were forced to work adult jobs, trafficked into the sex industry, or succumbed to drug use.
His solution? Offering a practical education rooted in community development.
Kayan Community Development Services
If you are growing up in one of the more than 60 villages in the middle Kayan region in eastern Myanmar, there is only one high school you can attend. Getting there means walking for hours through mud and rain.
That’s one of the reasons why only around 20% of students even attempt their secondary education—and only 5% complete it.
Kayan Community Development Services (KCDS), and its young founder Nay Zar, knew that for the lives of his people to improve, this had to change.
That’s why at just 25 years old, he opened a boarding house near the region’s only high school and middle school in the village of Seebu. This way, children from the area’s most marginalized, remote communities could have a real shot at getting an education.