VTRM continues where Eden valley school left off. It provides course of study for High School graduates. The program aims to enhance the self-reliance and quality of life for the population in seven refugee camps along the Thai - Myanmar border and surrounding communities. The program offers training in Vocational skills for camp residents aged between 15 and 55 years through a standardization in line with Thai and international standards.

The prolonged encampment of refugees from Myanmar in the refugee camps along the Thai - Myanmar border has led to a broad range of social and economic issues that have impacted negatively on the quality of life of refugees. Feelings of frustration and anxiety due to the lack of meaningful activity has resulted in a rise in mental illness, gender based violence and alcohol and drug abuse. The lack of meaningful activity and livelihood opportunities for refugees has resulted in refugees becoming almost completely dependent on aid to meet their basic daily needs.

Through the provision of quality vocational training, refugees will have an avenue through which to break the cycle of aid-dependence. By providing refugees with the necessary vocational skills to access livelihood opportunities, the ptogram aims to build the self-reliance and enhance the quality of life of refugees and villagers in the surrounding Thai communities.

ADRA Thailand and ADRA-UK are partnering to reduce the vulnerability of migrant women workers in and around Mae Sot, Tak Province, Thailand. The project’s purpose is to improve registered migrant women workers' knowledge of- and access to- their legal entitlements, including basic health care, safe labor conditions, fair compensation, and documented registration. ADRA will achieve this by building the capacity of local CSOs, which currently provide varying levels of support to migrant women. The CSOs will be strengthened through a range of training programs to improve the implementation of their activities, as well as to help them to better advocate on behalf of migrant women to relevant Thai government agencies for improved access to legal entitlements. Furthermore, ADRA will work to sensitize the duty bearers (employers and relevant Thai government agencies including Immigration officials, police officers, and labor rights protection officials) to their responsibility to honor basic rights and entitlements. Programs aimed to raise awareness of the issues faced by migrant women, their increased vulnerabilities and the role of civil society to afford protection will target the community at large. Men will also be targeted as duty bearers, playing a supporting role to the marginalized migrant women in this unique context. Finally, realizing that lasting change can only be achieved through improved migrant labor policies and enforcement of the law, ADRA will work through existing migrant labor rights advocacy networks to inform the Thai public about the plight of the Burmese migrant workers in Thailand and lobby for policy change at National government levels. 

The Integrated Area Develoment Program (or IADP for short) helps marginalized communities to develope self-sustaining strategies to improve their quality of life and subsequently, lower the risk of these communities to human trafficking. The program is in place in Chiang Rai Province, Northern Thailand, in the Mae Tam and Mae Yang Min valleys. Here, 15 villages are being assisted with developing gravity fed water systems, Sanitation and sewage structures (latrines), Youth leadership development activities, land registration, credit union establishment, citizenship registration, local health care community based programs and finally; Agriculture assistance and new farming methods along with environemtal protection awareness.

Keep Girls Safe

ADRA Thailand’s Keep Girls Safe project (KGS) aims to work on trafficking prevention of girls (mainly hill-tribe girls) and offers a safe house/shelter opportunity for those girls where prevention comes too late and who are in urgent need for a safe place to stay. Many of them have no mother and/or father anymore. The shelter is located in Chiang Rai city and the KGS community oriented prevention activities are conducted among communities within districts of Chiang Rai province. These trafficking prevention activities are including community awareness raising and capacity building for community members and village leaders, Peer Educator trainings for young girls, establishment of girls clubs at schools plus out-reach activities for awareness raising in target communities, introducing a ‘watch dog’ system in communities as an early warning system, networking with partner organizations and working with local authorities to help establishing or improving systems and policies that will ensure proper trafficking prevention and enforces child protection in the concerned districts and communities.

Karen Burmese Refugee Education Project

• To provide a high standard of education for Karen refugees so that can be recognized by higher tertiary institutions.
• To educate Karen young people by providing opportunities to make future contributions to their camp communities, equipping them to hold responsible roles as good citizens in the camp or if they can be returned to their home country in the future.
• To improve background education, so that those not going for resettlement are able to be trained to take over the work of those skilled workers, who have left.

The school offers basic education in the usual primary and secondary school subjects such as Thai language, Drug and Sex Education and Vocational classes.

Thai Language: The students are taught Thai Language for them to be able to talk to their Thai neighbours that would lead to less misunderstanding in the future. The subject is a compulsory subject from year 1 to 10. Classes in Thai culture are also taught so that the refugees understand life in their host country.

Drug and Sex Education: The school provides Health Education classes emphasising on prevention of drug addiction and related problems. Students are trained to recognize diseases causing health problems such as typhoid, dengue fever and malaria. Sex education is also taught in health classes to increase awareness of the dangers of HIV/AIDS and allow students to make informed and responsible life choices. Health classes operate at all levels of the school.

Vocational Classes: Introductions to computing classes are offered to senior students with a view to understand techniques needed for tertiary education, should the opportunity arise.
Currently there are 44 dedicated teachers and one part-time teacher teaching at the school. The school administrator, Helen has been with the school for over twenty years. She has inspired many young refugees to go back and teach at the school once they graduated from year 12. The school has a system under which experienced teachers mentor the newly recruited teachers and the system worked quite well.

Eden Valley School’s program has been assessed as highly successful within the constraints of camp conditions, based on the number of qualified high school graduates that support camp operations and who have been successful in starting college and university education when they resettled to third countries.