BANGKOK - The Education for Development Foundation (EDF) and the Thai Muslim Women’s Friends Group have unveiled a project to find scholarships for at least 1,200 children who lost their parents in the violence plaguing the country’s southern border region.

The three-year scholarships provided under the project entitled, “Under the Same Sky” will be given to children in three levels — elementary (Bt3,000 each), secondary (Bt4,000 each) and higher education (Bt5,000 each), beginning from the academic year 2006, according to Anantachai Yoonprathom, the EDF’s Director for Strategy Planning.

He said the scholarships would be mainly supported by donations to be sought from both the general public and charity organizations throughout 2006.

He said initial figures indicated a total of 1,254 children in the four southernmost provinces of Nrathiwat, Pattani, Yala and Songkhla had become orphans over the past two years, as either their fathers or mothers were killed in the unrest incited by insurgent groups.

The figures are on the rise, Mr. Anantachai said, as the violence shows no sign of easing.

EDF has provided 207,563 scholarships of the value of over Bt300 million (US$7.5 million) for underprivileged students in 3,552 schools nationwide since it was established in 1987, Mr. Anantachai said.

This entry was posted by Taman Siswa on Monday, February 20, 2006 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Education News, Scholarship. Tags: Anantachai Yoonprathom, BANGKOK, Development Foundation, Education News, Scholarship, Student, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.