ARTICLE
Interview with The Education for Development Foundation
The Education for Development Foundation (hereafter EDF) was established in Thailand in 1987 as a branch of Minsai Center in Japan, which aims at supporting children who cannot get enough education. EDF is primarily working on scholarship program for children and collaborative CSR activities of both domestic and international companies.
We had an opportunity to talk with Mr. Anuchat Khongman who is in charge of the project with Japanese companies, and Mr. Reiji Ueda who is the fundraising advisor of this organization.
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Q. Could you tell me how EDF created such a huge scholarship program although it supported only 41 children at the beginning?
A. We used mass media to tell a lot of Thai children still cannot go to the school while Japanese children usually enjoy mandatory education until 15 years old. More and more people started to know the real situation of children in Thailand and contributed to support them. Offices both in Japan and Thailand were established at the same time about 30 years ago, and the office in Isan (Northeast of Thailand) just used donation from Japan to support children. Since 20 years ago, however, the movement that the problem in domestic ought to be solved by us started to be popular and the amount of donation from domestic began to increase.
Isan region: the region that one third of population in Thailand lives. Most majority of its population is working on agriculture and poverty line stays below the standard among more than half of its population.
Q. What is the proportion of donation from domestic and Japan?
A. The amount of donation from Japan is decreasing year by year, so contribution within the country occupied the majority now. As an actual result, 11.000 children were supported by our scholarship last year, and about 75 percent was from domestic.
Q. What kind of children are the target of its support? Could you tell me criteria and the process about it?
A. We are supporting 4 types of children. [1] Junior high school students under economically unstable situation [2] High school students under economically unstable situation [3] Students with physical disability [4] Orphans who lost their parents due to violence in south part of Thailand. As is mentioned on the website, we have these necessary conditions.
[1] Applicants need to have strong will of going to junior high school, and get an agreement from their parents [2] Annual income of their families should be less than 30,000 Baht (It is said that poverty line is under 30,000 Baht annual income) [3] Applicants should behave courteously [4] Children of government staff, ward chief, and village chief cannot apply.
We are going to sum up how many students could get scholarship from our all donation we received at the deadline for scholarship, and make a report to the Education Service Area Office in each province, after which each school starts recruiting. We screen application forms, but students do not have to submit their grades. That is because we would like to have many voluntary students willing to keep studying.
Q. How could students know about this scholarship program?
A. It is from teachers at school. Since we provide this program every year, students may know their senior who got the same scholarship before. We can say that connection between school and the Education Service Area Office is strong because it has been almost 30 years since we started this program.
Q. Why do Thai children need economic support like this program although Thailand has a duty of compulsory education?
A. EDF is cooperated with small schools located very far from the central part of each province. Children in those areas tend to stop studying after an elementary school because they cannot afford money to go a junior high school even though it is mandatory laid down. Therefore, the Ministry of Education of Thailand launched joint program, which connects elementary and junior high school, and EDF is supporting the schools. Tuition at the school is of course free, but some small schools in rural areas cannot provide to necessary goods like school bag, uniform and textbook, which are normally prepared with its budget. Our scholarship program is going to be used for preparing necessary goods and transportation fee to go to the school.
27th April, 2017
Sasayama, Sato, Miyagawa
Q. Do you have any other focused activities that you would like to accomplish?
A. We are cooperating with many companies for promoting their CSR activities as one of our main activities. One program is providing fresh vegetables and fruits to the children in poverty area, which has been done as the latest activity. We implemented this activity as a campaign in many schools within the country by funds of 150 million Baht from an autonomous government agency in Thailand. The process of this program was complicated and we had to know about academic knowledge of nourishment. We would like to make simple proposals for every company. To be more specific, we are going to launch "safe restroom project” and “lunch project.” It is common to be only a few numbers of toilets (mostly defect) in small schools. We will propose simple plan to the company like “You can provide 4 clean and safe toilets with 200,000 Bath, how many toilets would you like to donate?” For the lunch project, we are going to recruit the company for supporting to keep chicken or catfish for student’s lunch and income of the school. It would be easier for both of us and any companies to cooperate and support the children.
Q. Then are you going to expand your program to new company with new clear and simple plan?
A. Yes, we are going to propose it to various kinds of company in spite of many challenging points when we approach the companies. Some companies even do not respond to our proposal, and others are already doing their project without agency like NGO because cooperation with them causes some management charge.
Q. What do you always keep in mind when you work on activity as EDF?
Mr. Anuchat.) I always think how we can tell the present situation of rural areas for those who have never been there, and get them involved in supporting children.
Mr. Ueda.) Spreading that kind of mind is an important and difficult point in our activities. It is true that many Japanese, who came and live in Thailand because they just like it, start to be interested in our activities when we provide some opportunities to them. I believe that Japanese and Thai can make strong relationship and contribution if we cooperate each other by doing something. I hope those people would be increased. I want to help to create like big social power by much more people who have that kind of mind
Q. How can students get involved in activities with EDF?
We only accept Thai student as an intern now while there was only one Japanese student in the past. We also receive donation from some international schools in Thailand. For the events with Japanese students, we have arranged domestic study trip with the University of Wakayama. It has been already 6 years since we started it. We arrange homestay program and cultural exchange events for 2 weeks. As one example, Japanese students made donation by selling goods that they brought from Japan to Bangkok. We are very welcome to arrange those programs depending on what you would like to try.
Q. Could you tell me your goals and outlook in the future?
Society must function compulsory education for all children, and the parents must understand its necessity. However, it is true that some parents prefer their children to work rather than spending money on school. The reality is many people still cannot go to school even though everyone seems studying at school when we see the statistics. Furthermore, even students who have got scholarship quit studying because of some reasons. For example, one student had to quit school to earn money for his/her life. This student lives with grandma by provided pension of 600 Baht per month, and this is certainly hard to make ends meet although he/she got scholarship. The student must make money for oneself and its family.
〈After interview〉
We are deeply grateful for cooperation and support of EDF. We were impressed that public consciousness about children’s poverty within the country is growing thanks to various public relations of EDF. Necessity for poor people tends to be overlooked when focusing on economic growth and urban development too much. We realized Thai society has a huge gap between the rich and poor, and domestic should work on it not only asking support from international society. In addition, we were simulated from positive approach, which he supports for getting much more Japanese involved, by Mr. Ueda that he would like to give something helpful to people over a lengthy of period.
We have been collected a donation on the street in Bangkok since August 2016, and we are going to give it to the scholarship program on EDF. We Think felt a strong attraction to its transparency such as how many children we support and what kind of student we help. We are going to inform report about it later on through our home page.
We would like to express our gratitude again for accepting our interview to EDF.
Sun And Dear HP : http://www.edfthai.org/en/
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/edfthai