Karen children in Mae Hong Son face a harder start than most. Only 51% are enrolled in primary school, compared to a national average of 89%, and just 1 in 4 complete secondary education. Many of the reasons come down to distance, water and money — problems KHT works on every year across our WASH, education and livelihoods projects.
Water is often where the problems start. Karen villages without a clean water system rely on rivers and streams, and children get sick more often as a result. As many as 48% of Karen children are thought to carry intestinal parasites. KHT’s water systems have shown that reported diarrhoea cases in children under 4 dropped from 0.44 cases to zero, and missed schooldays due to illness fell too. Across all our WASH villages, monthly diarrhoea cases per household are down 95%, from 0.81 to 0.04. Our WASH systems benefit the most vulnerable in a community and ensure they are able to grow and stay healthy in the long term.
Getting to school at all is another obstacle. Villages are remote, roads are often washed out in the wet season, and many children have no way to get to school except to live away from home in a dormitory. KHT runs several projects to help with this. We fund daily bus routes, serving more than 333 children, so they don’t have to walk for hours or stay away from their families just to attend school. We support 7 schools with funding for meals, so children boarding away from home are properly fed and don’t have to leave school for lack of food. We sponsor university and vocational students annually with scholarships, helping 33 university and vocational students in 2025 and currently supporting 23 young people, mostly girls,
Even if many Karen can overcome the obstacle of remoteness, they are still struggling with poverty and food insecurity. Our livelihoods project helps improve annual incomes so parents have more resources for their children and investing in their future. Our project has also reduced days in hunger and improved overall food security, which means better health and less deprivation for children as they grow.
KHT also provides additional support such as deworming medication, which has helped more than 700 children in the last two years, as well as school equipment, mosquito nets and latrines for schools, which has helped over 400 children.
Since our programmes began, KHT has helped thousands of Karen children and young adults get an education they might otherwise have missed, improved their health and allowed their families improved incomes.
Every bus route, every water filter, every school meal is one less barrier standing between a Karen child and an education.
YOU can help us reach more children and change more lives by donating today!