Collaborating with Khom Loy Develeopment Foundation for students at TPC

Collaborating with Khom Loy Develeopment Foundation for students at TPC

On Monday, 12^th November, the KTWG (Karen Teacher Working Group) advisor and EBCSP (Eastern Burma Community Schooling Project) coordinator asked the Khom Loy Development Foundation if they would be willing to collaborate with KTWG and support students at the TPC (Teacher Preparation Center) with some agricultural and Montessori education training.

Mark, a coordinator of Khom Loy Foundation, described the Foundation and its main foci, which include natural farming, gardening, raising pigs and managing fishponds. The Foundation has been actively engaged in research and development and it has concentrated on two types of gardening – urban and traditional. Mark also described some sites and schools that Khom Loy has been working with – conducting trainings and implementing farm development in alignment with local needs.

The TPC teachers were very interested in the pig project and also in learning natural farming techniques and they would like to invite more teachers from other schools to join the training in the future.

Th’ra Saw Eh Khu, a TPC headmaster said, “This training would be very beneficial for all of us here as we grew up with this type of livelihood in our areas. Thus, I would like to request that we begin with gardening training at TPC”.

Khom Loy will deliver the training over the next month; it will be both interesting and relevant for all the students at TPC as the areas they come from are either mountainous or countryside and most of their livelihoods in their areas depend on natural farming and raising livestock. Therefore, on graduation from TPC, the students will bring relevant and necessary skills to their areas and be equipped to pass on this knowledge.