Room to Grow Projects

Executive Summary of Hsa Mu Htaw Project

Hsa Mu Htaw School was established in 2003. It is located in Kappiband Village, Mae Sot, Tak province, Thailand. Their mission is to provide unparented and migrant students with the same education levels as students inside Burma. They also provide vocational training for students who cannot continue higher education. They come from different villages in the Thai-Burma border and inside Burma to continue their education in the school.

There are 47 students and 7 teachers living in Hsa Mu Htaw School’s dorm. Out of this number, 27 female students and 3 teachers are facing insufficient bathroom and water supply. At the moment, they have only one bathroom for female students but it is combined with toilet. For this reason, they have to use the small open-air feet washing place to take a shower. However, this area has no water tank to store water and the water pressure is very low. Therefore, each student takes a long time to finish showering because each student needs to wait for the water to fill their buckets before taking a shower. Currently, female dorm students have to wait averagely 30 minutes per-person to take a shower. This is especially a big problem for 15 female students who study in outside schools such as Hsa Thoo lei and Thai school, In the evening, they are late 1 hour and 30 minutes for dinner and also start their study time 1 hour late. (Refer to table 1)

This washing area also has no wall covering so neighbors are seen peeping at girls showering. This creates many security and privacy problems as well as schooling problems for those who live in the dorm. When students take shower, they feel not safe and cannot be on time for their lessons.

For this reason, we propose to build a brick wall around the makeshift bathroom and install a water tank with a capacity of 1000 liters of water with shower sprinklers. After this project, the community will get a new safe bathroom and sufficient water supply. A water tank will produce good water pressure and shower sprinklers will ensure students do not waste time filling up water in their buckets and this will help them reduce the time to shower. They can maintain the building for at least 5 years because it is built with good quality materials. Furthermore, during the implementation of the project, the students, teachers and some of the students’ parents will be involved. Therefore, if the building has to be fixed again, they can repair it themselves. In addition, the water tank comes with a 15-year guarantee.

To implement this project, our proposal is seeking 34,539 baht to install a water tank and build a wall for the makeshift bathroom.