I decided to go back and bring him here when he was three.īack home, we’ve to pay around 500,000 kyat (around 10,000 baht) per semester for an education that’s irrelevant to the contemporary job market. But after first five years in Chiang Mai, I did not only find myself a secure job as a locksmith, but also a better opportunity for education for my son. About eight years ago, I came to Chiang Mai through Mae Sai border when I was conscripted, due to regular clashes in my homeland. I fled my homeland, Shan State, when my son was only six months old because I couldn’t see any future there. Jing Lungsa, 27-year-old father of a third grader in Buak Krok Noi School, Muang, Chiang Mai Note: The interview was conducted in Thai. My parents have returned to visit my grandmother once, but the whole family can’t afford that yet.
But a trip for the whole family, around 20,000 to 30,000 baht, to visit home via Mae Sai border is too much for us. However, I’ve missed my grandmother and home a lot. I don’t want to go back home because of education. Back at home, there’s not much for us to do. Here, I can also do a lot more activities with my friends. If I were in Shan State, I could only have studied until Prathom 5 (5th Grade). I want to stay here in Thailand and become a teacher. All of us, seven people, live in a 16-sqm apartment near Muang Mai Market. My elder siblings also work as construction workers in the city. This training broke a new ground by including persons with intellectual disabilities in the CRPD training. For many participants, this was the first experience to work with people with intellectual disabilities.Everyone in the family has to work because we need to pay rent. Participants with intellectual disabilities from these two groups contributed much to the training while they learnt a lot by working with people with diverse disabilities, including those with physical and psyochosocial disabilities as well as those who were deaf and blind. In 2010, the first-self advocacy group in Myanmar, Future Star (originally named Unity) was born, supported by APCD and by self-advocates from Japan and Thailand (*). The first self-advocacy group in Thailand, Dao Ruang was born in 2009, strongly supported by the Asia Pacific Development Center on Disability (APCD) with Inclusion International and Inclusion Japan as partners.
They took part in the training through interpretation into national languages of Myanmar and Thailand. The Sue Moe, self-advocates of Future Star group from Myanmar. Phacharin Sujaritwatanasak, self-advocates of Daoru Ang group from Thailand, and Ms. Inclusion International, as a member of IDA, nominated 4 women with intellectual disabilities to this training. Nagase Osamu, Asia Pacific Regional Representative of Inclusion International, served as one of co-facilitators and made a presentation on education. Participants were from Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia as well as from China, India and Pakistan. From 29 September to 7 October 2015, the International Disability Alliance (IDA) and the International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC) organized the BRIDGE training on the CRPD for Southeast Asia in Bangkok, Thailand.