When a journalist shared the story of the Bamboo School on We Are One Humanity, it reached a Singapore charity that decided to act. TSB Charity Association flew to the Thailand-Myanmar border to meet Catherine Bryan, the school's founder, and witness the work supporting refugee children in Kanchanaburi province. One story sparked a lasting partnership.
Last February, I shared the story of Bamboo School on We Are One Humanity.
The Bamboo School is a home for refugee and orphaned children founded 25 years ago by New Zealander Catherine Ruth Riley Bryan on the Thailand-Myanmar border in Kanchanaburi province. Catherine established it after she discovered a rural community with no electricity, running water, or school. Over the past two decades, the school has served more than 900 displaced and migrant children from conflict-affected areas in Thailand and Myanmar, providing not just education but practical training that enables graduates to become contributing professionals — nurses, teachers, and doctors — who return to serve their communities.
A few months after the story came out, I received a message from an organization in Singapore called TSB Charity Association. The organization runs community outreach programs for low-income families, elderly people and other vulnerable groups across Singapore, providing meal vouchers, food, daily essentials and regular home visits. The team member who called me said that she and her colleagues were already planning a volunteer trip to Thailand when they read my story about the Bamboo School. They wanted to visit the school and see it with their own eyes.
One month after that call, the organization representative messaged me again to say they were flying to Bangkok and shared photos of the supplies they were bringing to donate to the school. As it happened, I was also planning to visit Bamboo School at around the same time.
I arrived at the school to find the TSB team listening to Catherine. She was sharing the history of Bamboo School and the work she has done there.
I have known Catherine for many years. She has always been like a second mother to me. She often tells me, "Come home anytime, my son." That is why I return whenever I have the chance, especially when I feel exhausted from work in Bangkok. Yet no matter how many times I come back, Catherine never seems to stop working. It is as though she is programmed to keep moving, always finding another way to care for someone else.
Little Daeng’s Story
At the school, I also played with Daeng, the newest baby there, whose leg bears a scar from surgery. Catherine told me Little Daeng was born to a Karen man and his young wife. Little Daeng’s father went to war on the Myanmar side, and his mother could not take care of him by herself and tried to give him away.
When Little Daeng’s leg was injured, it was his grandmother who took him to the clinic at Bamboo School. Catherine saw that he was already seriously ill by then and decided to transfer him immediately to Sai Yok hospital, also in Kanchanaburi province. The doctors found that Daeng already had sepsis and that it had reached his brain. He had to be transferred to the ICU.
Daeng survived the ordeal but was unable to talk or walk for weeks after getting out of the hospital. It was the older children at the Bamboo School who took turns caring for him. They tirelessly talked to him, played with him and showed him how to laugh again. When Catherine took him back to the hospital for a followup checkup, the doctors said they were impressed with his progress. Now Daeng is living a new life at the Bamboo School.
No matter what the children at the Bamboo School have been through, they always seem to smile and laugh when they are here.
The Beginning of a Long-Term Partnership
Bamboo School continues to rely on support from people outside its community. As a journalist, the best way I can help is by telling its story — showing the world that along the Thai-Myanmar border, where gunfire and explosions continue to echo even while our visitors from Singapore were touring the school, this small place remains a safe haven for children who have found refuge here.
After the visit, Irene Quek from TSB Charity Association told me how impressed they were by the work Catherine has done at the Bamboo School. “It is heartwarming to see how the school has kept the children safe while providing them with a loving home, education and security during such challenging times,” she said.
Quek said that her colleagues were especially touched by Catherine's resourcefulness and dedication, particularly her commitment to building homes using recycled materials to help the community become more sustainable.
“It was inspiring to see how education and sustainability can go hand in hand,” she said.
Quek said that she and her colleagues were excited to return next year with more supplies and resources, and to spend time with the children.
“We hope this will be the beginning of a long-term partnership for many years to come," she added.
At a time when much of the content surrounding us fuels division and hatred, this story of a small school — a place that has become home to hundreds of children — crossed borders and oceans, inspiring TSB Charity Association to travel from Singapore to Thailand and support Bamboo School, helping ensure that its work can continue.
