Hannah Hornibrook wants to help

Inspired by her experiences volunteering with Burmese refugee and migrant children in Thailand last year, Lennoxville’s Hannah Hornibrook is looking for the community’s help in supporting the Hsa Mu Htaw learning center.

“I spent six months at the school then came back in December,” Hornibrook explained. “I just found out that they’re in a huge financial crisis (...) they need approximately $40,000 to run this year.”

The young volunteer has started a fundraising campaign through the crowdfunding website Gofundme, with the goal of raising $1,000 before she returns to the area this coming June.

“I hope to go back and encourage them and bring them money,” Hornibrook said, explaining that she has kept in touch with the school since leaving Thailand and was already planning to go back before she learned about the financial issues. “The school is going to close if they don’t find the money that they need. I just really want to share that with people and get the word out.”

Although $1,000 is only part of what the school needs to operate, the student volunteer said that it seemed like a suitably significant starting goal for the campaign.

“I’d obviously like to get as much as we can,” she said, adding that the ideal scenario would be more sustainable. “I’m praying that we can find someone or some organization that would commit to long term support.”

Hornibrook said that, ironically, the funding challenges faced by the school are linked to an improving situation in the migrants’ native Myanmar. As the political situation in that country slowly

starts to stabilize, she said, partner organizations who have helped to support the school have started to move their work across the border. Although local parents are doing what they can to support the needs of the school, the situation is unmanageable without outside assistance. “I’m not the only one looking,” the volunteer said. So far Hornibrook’s campaign has raised just over $400, with her planned departure date of June 9 more than a month away. Once back in Thailand the volunteer said that she plans to help out at the school as well as a nearby Christian school that she connected with during her first trip to the area.

“They’re like a second family to me,” she said. “They really love the children and look out for their wellbeing.”

Hornibrook’s campaign can be found www.gofundme.com/migrant-school-aid

Mary Purkey of the Mae Sot Education Project (MSEP), the joint Bishops and Champlain initiative that Hornibrook volunteered with her first time in Thailand, said that the needs of the Hsa Mu Htaw learning center and other similar schools in the area are a real concern, but she underlined the fact that Hornibrook's fundraiser is completely independent. Although the MSEP is also raising funds to help support the school, Purkey explained that the project is opposed to religious outreach in the Mae Sot district and thus cannot support Horinbrook’s initiative, which is framed as a religious appeal.

“Hannah's gofundme initiative really should not be confused with MSEP because she has framed it from a religious perspective,” Purkey wrote, acknowledging Hornibrook’s good intentions, but explaining that that the MSEP cannot promote the fundraiser. “We do not want our donors to be confused about what we do.”

Instructions for donations to the Mae Sot Education Project, which is working in its own way to help the Hsa Mu Htaw learning center, are available on the group’s website, www.maesot.ubishops.ca at