volunteer refugees thailand

australian aid international has a program on the thai burma border, it offers what you want.

thanks redwhitewine! I'll look into it.

Check out the Border Green Energy Team. They are based out of Mae Sot. They have connections with a refugee camp in the area. Also could work with Burmese refugee students and Garieng Hill Tribes in the villages along the border. Wonderful organization.

Hello Tom-

I volunteered with the Burma Volunteer Programme (BVP) for 3 months at the end of 2008. I learned a ton about refugees, the Burmese Thai border conflicts, and individual experiences of the people from Burma escaping the SPDC. Working and living with ethnic minorities from Burma inspired me to work in refugee resettlement to this day and the experiences I gained from BVP are invaluable and precious to me.

Pros about BVP- no volunteer fees, free room and board and 2 meals a day in exchange for minimum 15 hours of teaching English per week.
-living with refugees from Burma. you will never have as an extraordinary opportunity as this to live and work with such different people.
-eating amazing burmese food, all the time.
-meeting other expats thru BVP and having fun in the city (I lived in Mae Sot, good town, small but good).
-extensive access to ESL teaching resources and other ESL and education groups in city where you are placed.
-you get to live in Thailand!!! and no matter where you're placed by BVP, their offices are for the most part centrally located to lots of fun things to do in the country.

Cons about BVP- in my experience, the management team, volunteer coordinators and staff that was paid to train ESL teachers was not very supportive. They kind of just dropped me off at my Burmese org. where I would be living and teaching and it took all i had to get them to come out there again after 2 months just to observe my teaching and tell me how i could improve on things.
-if you don't have any teaching experience, get ready to teach yourself how to teach. again, my BVP training team at the time (heard they've changed mgmt since then) was not very great on training us to be good teachers. but then again, i guess that's why people go to graduate schools for teaching :)
-can be isolating at times. i lived in a village 30 minute bike ride from town and if i had of chosen to never go into town, i could have probably gone 3 months without seeing another westerner.

overall my experience was great and it has really helped me appreciate more where i come from and understand how to better serve refugees fleeing from burma and resettling here in the us. hope this info helps and feel free to email me if you have any more questions! stacyl.patrick@gmail.com... also i have the current program director's email for BVP: maesotel@gmail.com and his name is David Angeles I think. he is a good guy. he got hired right after i left. ok, best of luck!

stacy

Stacy, thank you so much! this is really usefull info to me. I'm a bit busy right now but i will def send you an e-mail with some questions I have, thanks!

Tom

My husband and I are working with Karen (Burmese) refugees in the Salt Lake City area. We are going to Thailand next week, and want to visit the Mae La camp. We arrive at the Bangkok airport at 11:00 am, so we miss the flight to Mae Sot by Solar Air (is it still operating). So, we want to take a bus. We want to take the BEST bus. We are looking for suggestions on how to get a good bus, and how to get permission to visit the camp. Any help?

Several thoughts -

One, it is no longer easy to stay in Thailand more than 30 days unless someone sponsors your visa. You usually can get 60 days if you apply for the visa prior to arrival but on arrival it's only 30 days.

Two, since this is very country specific, you might want to ask on the Thai branch (same for stogdill).

Three, opportunities that existed in 2008 may not exist now.

Ruth

Very interesting! I am looking at volunteering with Burmese refugees next year and was wondering whether the comments up here were still relevant? Any new tips?