Helping people with food, education and livelihood projects

 

The Izara Khom Loy Trust

Registered Charity No 1111420

 

 

The Izara Khom Loy Trust is a UK charity which supports ethnic minorities and displaced people on the Burmese/Thai borders through its associated Thai-registered foundation, Khom Loy Development Foundation.

 

Background

 

There are over 500,000 minority hilltribe people and displaced Burmese nationals living in this area, half of whom do not have Thai ID, so lack full access to healthcare and education. Those without Thai nationality are confined to a limited area and cannot seek work further afield.

How Izara Khom Loy Trust works


Khom Loy works to help people in three ways.

 

Firstly, it runs a programme to convert remote village childcare centres which teach ethnic minority children aged 3-6 to speak Thai (which is often not their mother tongue) so they do not enter the Thai education system at a disadvantage. It has so far converted 19 classrooms (educating over 500 children per year) and has plans to increase this to 70 over the next few years.

Secondly, it runs an agriculture programme to help villagers become more self-sufficient in food production, as well as a microcredit scheme to help smallholders set up in business growing rice and corn. So far, over 2,000 villagers in 30 villages have benefited from their work.

Lastly, it runs a handicraft project to provide jobs in remote communities so that women can stay at home with their families rather than seeking work in distant cities and leaving their children to be brought up by relatives. Over 40 women are currently working on their products.

 

It has also been active helping displaced people in the Khao Lak area of Thailand following the 2004 Tsunami.

Further details

 

More information on our work can be found at www.khomloy.org, and some videos showing our projects are at www.khomloy.org/media.html.

 

Click here for contact details.