The Janusz Korczak School
Mandate:
The Janusz Korczak School of SE Asia serves street children, undocumented children without Thai citizenship, and children with special needs who have no place to go to school and no place to learn and play with other school children.
Janusz Korczak was a Polish-Jewish educator and pediatrician who introduced progressive orphanages into Poland, trained teachers in what is now called moral education, and pioneered the legal rights of children everywhere. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, his Jewish orphanage was removed to the Warsaw Ghetto. Korczak declined offers of help for his own safety. Months later, he and his children walked together in quiet dignity to the train bound for Treblinka, where they perished.
This school is dedicated to the memory of Janusz Korczak and to the children in his care who perished during World War II.
The Need:
In the past we have had extreme difficulties in educating certain groups of slum children in our care, especially older children from the streets who are far behind their peers and have little or no confidence in their academic skills.
A second group comprises students with physical and emotional disabilities, many of our own children at Mercy Centre, as well as neighborhood children, who cannot attend formal government schools.
Once we opened the school, in 2004, we also took in a third group of students. These are foreign-born children who lack the documentation to attend government schools. Today more than half our students are from Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos.
Success Story:
Sunisa joined our Mercy family as a young teenager. Raised in a poor hill tribe village, she had never gone to school and could speak only her local hill tribe language. She entered our Janusz Korczak School and began an informal primary school education. After two years, we were able to place Sunisa in a local high school. Today she has completed a college degree in accounting and works in our finance department.
Related Mercy Centre Education Programs: