The Migrant Assistance Programme Foundation (MAPF) is a grassroots non-governmental organization (NGO) that seeks to empower migrant communities from Myanmar that are living and working in Thailand. It became a registered Thai foundation in 2002 and is now a registered foundation under Thai law. MAPF’s mission is to empower migrant workers from Myanmar and their communities to take action to claim their rights, by ensuring that migrants really have full access to up-to-date information on rights, policies and laws in their own language. MAPF helps fight discrimination against migrant workers, especially women and families, so that they can receive their full labour rights, basical health care. Through its various programs, MAPF works towards a future where migrants from Myanmar have their rights and freedoms fully protected. To reach this goal, it incorporates a human rights perspective into its policy decisions, increases understanding of the situation of migrant workers in the host country, and takes significant steps in assisting migrant worker communities in improving their overall working and living conditions.
MAPF was born out of a pioneering service provision entity for migrant workers in the health care center setup in Mae Sot by Dr. Cynthia Maung in 1989, which itself now serves many hundreds of thousands of migrants annually. In Chiang Mai, in 1990, a branch opened a drop-in centre for all sex workers and was immediately adopted as an important educational and empowerment centre for both Thai and migrant sex workers. In 1995, a particularly large number of migrants, mostly from Shan State, were employed in Chiang Mai to work in the booming construction industry in the city, including the building of the South-East Asian Games Sports Stadium. On completion of the stadium, many migrant workers were arrested and were held in police cells, where they could not communicate easily with the police. In some cases migrant workers were separated from their children and literally did not know where they were. Other migrants were sick, so translators and medics had to be found. This situation clearly demonstrated that to essentially reach their goal, MAPF would need to incorporate some kind of human rights perspective into their policy decisions, increase understanding of the situation of migrant workers in the host country, try to reduce discrimination, and assist local migrant worker communities in improving their working and living conditions.
Since there was essentially no one organization working directly with migrant workers in particular, several organizations with related skills came together to assist. The Burma Relief Center, Images Asia and WEAVE had made connections to Shan, Karen and Burmese translators, Empowerment had contacts within the social services, Medecins Sans Frontieres provided medical doctors and healthcare professionals, and so on. These organizations, together with concerned individuals from the Thai, Burmese and other foreign communities started to meet regularly to discuss the situation in more depth. Thereafter, they were joined by representatives of Swiss Aid, the National Health and Education Council (Burma), and the Union of Civil Liberties. Each organization pledged a limited monthly contribution and organized translation services for migrants at hospitals and police stations. In 1996, Diakonia offered a small six month grant to employ a Thai nurse and an outreach worker to survey the situation, provide basic health care and health education, and that was basically when MAPF was born. More volunteers joined the MAPF team from the migrant community, and together these partners formulated a set of Do’s and Don’ts for outreach work and formulated the long-term vision of MAPF.
Interview
Interviewees
Mr. Brahm Press (Executive Director)
Q: How long have you been involved with the MAPF?
Brahm: I have been a director here since 2014.
Q: What is the purpose of the MAPF?
Brahm: MAPF aims to empower migrant workers by giving them up to date information, and enable capacity building in their own language so they can stand up for their rights. Moreover, we also engage in direct activity with migrant workers.
Q: What is the philosophy of the MAPF?
Brahm: As I said, we are a grassroots organization, so we believe that it is important that people know the situation so they are able to respond. We also believe in empowerment, so that when people are supplied with the knowledge they need, they’ll take action and, at some point, make decisions that can assist others.
Q: What did you do before you worked in this position?
Brahm: I worked with another NGO in Bangkok before this.
Q: Why did you choose to work at MAPF?
Brahm: I had been working at another organization in Bangkok since 1998 before deciding to make Chiang Mai my home, because my daughter lives in Chiang mai. At that time, the founder of MAP Foundation had just left and they had a position open. I was already known to the people at MAPF, and as I was pretty familiar with the issues, and was actually in the network of NGO staff, they thought I was a good fit and moved me into this position.
Q: What are your everyday tasks at MAPF?
Brahm: So, I mainly work as an administrator and communicate with donors, and another partner who gets our name out to the public and generates the interest we need for collaborations with another organization. I also write project proposals so that we can get funding, and then send progress reports back to the donors, in order to maintain our funding.
Q: How many staff work with the MAPF?
Brahm: We have 25 people and they are from Myanmar.
Q: What is the most important thing for successful operation of the MAPF?
Brahm: Staff capacity is very important, because they do the work. If they don’t know what to do our team will be ineffective, so they have to be specialists in their fields. We have four fields: labor rights; rights for all, such as women’s rights; community health and empowerment; and the MAPF multimedia.
Q: What is the most difficult thing that you have ever had to deal with while you have been working in this position ?
Brahm: Government policy is pretty difficult when having to navigate the working status of migrant workers, and it’s always tough because most of our staff are not Thai nationals. This means we all need visas, and the process for getting a visa is pretty complicated. It takes a lot of time and money and, of course, many people become very concerned and anxious about their visa status while the process is ongoing. However, we finally overcame it; it took a lot of time and energy, but we did it.
Q: What role do you think that the MAPF plays in the community in the Chiang Mai area?
Brahm: We support them as much as possible by providing them with direct action and information through a radio broadcast. We also have programs on HIV, labor rights, education rights, women’s empowerment and gender-based violence. When people learn about this, they can contact us with their questions, as well as many other things.
Q: Who are the major sponsors of MAPF?
Brahm: Primarily, we receive mostly international funding from donors from various parts of the world, like the US, Australia, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Moreover, we receive global funding to fight against health issues like HIV, malaria, etc., and we have been receiving these funds since 2004.
Q: How did COVID-19 affect the work of the MAPF?
Brahm: Covid affected our ability to reach out to the community with direct action, but as the community was locked down there wasn’t really anything we could do anyway. Fortunately, we could still give out information via the radio station.
Q: What role do you think the MAPF will be able to play in the local community in the future?
Brahm: I believe we will be able to keep reaching out to migrant workers, and fixing the gaps in the policies that allow for the exploitation of migrants. And even though they still have problems with accessing services like health care, education, help with domestic violence, etc. that might seem beyond our reach, or even that of another NGO, our staff speak their language as migrants themselves, and that creates trust. This also makes communication easier and our assistants and Thailand will work on solutions so that migrant workers living in Thailand can receive their proper rights.
Q: What would you like to shout out to the world ?
Brahm: I think that Thailand needs to embrace its multiculturalism, and the government should allow for that by making it easier for foreigners to work and live legally and conveniently.
Mr. Brahm Press (left) with researcher
Reflections
Meeting Mr. Press, the Executive Director of MAPF was an enlightening experience, he was a kind, generous and friendly man. He mostly works in office administration, such as emailing the donors to keep them updated about the funds and he monitors the situation in the organization to make sure that everything is working properly. We also talked about the challenges facing migrant workers in Thailand; their suffering, violations of their rights, their right to access essential services, such as essential information, education, medical services and basic human rights. The MAPF is definitely a strong, grassroots NGO that seeks to empower the migrant community and the migrant workers from Myanmar that live in Thailand. They work and lobby for them to have their rights, freedom and full protection. It was very interesting to find out that the MAPF also provides migrant workers with a Burmese language radio station in order to increase their understanding of the current situation within Thailand, receive trending news, weather announcements and entertainment.
References
https://mapfoundationcm.org/eng/
Researchers
Hi everyone! My name is Voravit Osathananda (Victor) and I come from Chiang Mai, Thailand. Currently I am studying Food Process Engineering at Chiang Mai University (CMU) and also working part time as a language translator for the Faculty of Medicine, CMU. Over the past ten years I have learned English to an advanced level, along with a basic level of Mandarin. I enjoy talking with a wide range of people from around the world to further explore and understand cultures, history and ways of living. I have been fortunate enough to travel with my family to over ten countries with Japan being my favorite. In my free time I like to stay active and play competitive ultimate frisbee, motocross, plane spotting, martial arts, cooking, baking and hanging out with my friends.