The BRP have worked with Shan Burmese refugees in Thailand for over ten years.

In 2000, Peter Muennig and Celina Su stumbled upon an organically developed school run by two local Thais on virtually no money. They had run the school so well that the refugee children’s attendance hovered around 100% for over two years. (Celina and Peter are thus co-founders of the BRP as an official non-profit organization, but not of the original project activities themselves.) Around the same time, Celina Su received a $1,200 personal check from Carolyn Goodman, mother of slain civil rights activist Andrew Goodman. With this money, the BRP transformed from an informal school (with only an outdoor thatch roof hut with no walls as its facility) into a broader social justice project via community political participation and initiatives in education, nutrition, mental and reproductive health, sanitation, water, and legal rights. The refugees co-develop and pay for many of the programs. For example, the BRP bought porcelain for the first few latrines, but the families then decided to fund, plan, and construct the remaining facilities on their own.

Because the local refugee community grew and changed over the years, the BRP’s activities evolved as well. For example, the BRP now conducts direly needed English classes, arts therapy programs, and reproductive health workshops where women whoop, laugh, and stuff condoms into their partners’ pockets. All projects come from needs assessments and strategic planning with the refugees. The co-founding project coordinators, both public policy academics, then research different cost-effective means to achieve the refugees’ goals and discuss possible designs with the social workers and refugees themselves. With on-the-ground social workers and refugee community members, they ensure that new programs are truly needed and really work, in sustainable, cost-effective, and participatory ways.

We articulated the need for and design of our latest initiative, the Banyan School, after more than a decade of on-the-ground work within the refugees, and only after cultivating deep institutional and community ties with others in the area as well.

Celina Su now focuses on core BRP programming, while Peter Muennig focuses on the Banyan School initiative.