05/25/2004

School Children:
Hmong refugee children at the Wat had to learn to speak Thai and pay a fee to attend the local Thai school. Other children were educated at this school organized and conducted by Hmong refugees in a building used from 6 am to 8 pm by the refugees hungry for an education. Children had to pay 50 baht a month (about $1.25); the fee paid for school supplies and other costs. The curriculum is the same that Hmong refugees used at Phanat Nikhom, the US funded cultural orientation program for refugees in the 1990s, which provided months of  English language and cultural orientation programs for refugees being resettled to the United States.