Social Action for Women is a Burmese organization in Mae Sot which provides social support to the local community. Their programs cover health, education and social services and reach out to tens of thousands of migrant workers and children in the Mae Sot area.
SAW operates a Safe House for orphaned and abandoned children. There are currently 53 children living in the Safe House. Some arrived as babies, abandoned by their mothers shortly after having been delivered. The average age is five years old although some children are ten to twelve.
There are currently 35 school age children in the program. Ideally, these children will be funded for SAW’s “scholarship” program. The scholarship provides the child with the funds necessary to access the formal Thai education system. There, the child will learn to speak and write Thai. If the child can continue and graduate from a Thai high school, he or she will be able to access further study opportunities in Thailand as well. In addition, the jobs available to Thai high school graduates with fluent reading and writing skills are much broader than the jobs available to Burmese speakers with no formally recognized education. These scholarships, therefore, lay a solid foundation for these children’s future and provide a potential exit from a cycle of poverty.