South East Asia

They live in small villages in the woody hills the children in the border regions of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar/Burma. Their families are mainly subsistence farmers growing fruit, vegetables, and rice. They live on their crops, on animals they hunt, and on the scanty foodstuffs they trade.

During the rainy season from June to October, many villages are cut off from the world outside. The villagers support themselves, and children from early age have to help their parents with their work or around the house.

The projects of the Pestalozzi Children’s Foundation support ethnic minorities in regions with poor educational opportunities. Local teachers are trained to integrate local knowledge into curricula and classroom teaching, and encouraged to apply child-friendly teaching methods. They are shown how to prepare child-friendly teaching aids by using readily available local materials such as wood, bamboo and pebbles, and how to develop reading material with illustrations of rural life. In this way, local knowledge and skills are preserved and passed on to future generations.