A View From Mae Sot in the New Burma Era

Peter Muennig posts on his recent trip to Mae Sot, where he is helping the Khom Loy Foundation evaluate the education, health, and economic benefits of converting regular Thai classrooms to Montessori classrooms. All but 3 of the children involved in the converted schools are from minority groups in Burma.

Mae sot is much like the last time I visited it. There are still tee shirts on sale with pictures of The Lady asking for a free Burma. It is as if nothing has changed within Burma. The town is just as wonderfully diverse as it ever was, with mosques and temples intermingling on the same roads. Dust still hangs on anything that is sheltered from the torrential downpours every June evening.

On the other side of the border change is happening fast, of course. You no longer need to feel guilty about dropping 500 baht at the border crossing. Rents in Rangoon are surpassing those of New York City. The country as a whole is growing economically at a breakneck pace, faster than China.

A USAID-sponsored school in Mae Sot shows off its garden.

But the reality for low-income and ethnic minority people within Burma, very little has changed in their day-to-day lives. Mae Sot reflects this. There are still few functioning formal sector schools, few jobs, few opportunities to build new businesses, and few formal medical clinics in Burma. So, the struggle to find opportunities for their families continues on the Thai side of the border. One thing that has changed is that donors are cutting off funding on the Thai side of the border and switching it to Burma. 

On the other side of the border, large, clumsy organizations gladly soak up these donar dolars, largely unaware of the struggles that the smaller, nimble organizations operating in Thailand face. The net effect of this is a loss of services just as they are needed most. This is because the same aid dollars are not going as far as they used to when NGOs were fully funded.

Clearly, most Burmese and ethnic minorities living in Thailand need to return to Burma. And clearly, for that to happen, there need to be institutions that can provide education, build roads, and staff medical clinics. But this cannot happen all at once, as it is happening now. Much of Burma's future--it's human capital--still lives in Thailand, and we cannot bury our heads in the sand as mission critical organizations are de-funded.