The supplies a school year depends on

Stationery supplies & health literacy

Due to the financial constraints and other challenges faced by schools in Thailand and Burma, BCMF began providing stationery support to schools in 2016. These schools face financial constraints, receiving minimal, or no, support from their local governments and face difficulties getting support from students’ parents, many of whom are either subsistence farmers or low-income earners. Additionally, stationery supplies are not available for purchase in many remote areas. By providing students and teachers with basic school supplies such as pens and paper, BCMF ensures that they can continue to learn and teach skills at school.

The stationery support provided by BCMF include basic supplies, such as notebooks, pens, and pencils for students and correction pens, pencil sharpeners, and reams of A4 paper for teachers.

Dengue-prevention posters in Karen, Burmese, and Thai are also distributed to schools according to their language needs to promote health literacy.

Staff carrying a delivery of supplies the last stretch on foot, to a school reached only by dirt track.

Many children need to travel far to other villages or refugee camps to attend school and may sleep in dormitories at some schools, so BCMF also provides sleeping mats and mosquito nets for these schools when requested.

While BCMF strives to deliver supplies to schools ourselves, many of the schools supported by BCMF are too remote or too far away for this to be feasible, especially those inside Burma. In these cases, BCMF works with the schools to identify suppliers local to the schools, order the supplies, and send cash transfers to support the cost of the supplies as well as travel and logistics for delivery. This is not only more convenient and safer for many schools, but it also expands the reach of the project to places where BCMF cannot easily travel.

Since the project began, BCMF has provided stationery support for 206 schools, reaching more than 57,700 students and 4,100 teachers. This includes more than 30,700 students and 2,800 teachers in Burma, 26,800 students and 1,300 teachers in Thailand, and more than 100 students and their teachers at an IDP school in Mizoram, India.

Students and teachers with the pens, notebooks and other supplies distributed to their school by HFA and BCMF.