BRACKETT FOUNDATION
2629 Johnnycake Hill Rd, Hamilton, NY 13346 brackettfund.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: Believing that the best hope for peace and happiness for mankind lies in education, we are dedicated to assisting refugees or displaced persons of any race,nationality, or creed to acquire an education. The focus is on refugees from Burma in Thailand, India and Bangladesh.

Helping refugees from Myanmar access education in Bangladesh, Thailand and NE India.

Programs in Thailand - scholarships: The Covid pandemic led to uncertainty and required adjustment to delays and alternatives such as online programs. Students adapted well in uncertain times. BREF distributed a total of 158 scholarships in 2020. We had 28 University graduates and 7 graduates in Diploma courses. 96 scholarships were at the university level with 27 students studying in English, the remainder in Thai. There were many different majors but education (a 5year program for a teacher's certificate) and nursing were predominant. There were also 62 grants for vocational and high school study with 27 graduates.

BREF directly supported language and computer programs for high school students, in the Mae La Refugee camp and at Nai Soi outside of Mae Hong Son. At the Mae La camp we started a program linking English language students virtually with volunteer ESL teachers for practice in conversational English. BREF also contributed to two post high school programs to prepare students from inside Myanmar and from the refugee camps for university education (English medium) in Thailand. We support another post high school program training teachers and community leaders to return to work in Burma. We continued our nominal support of the migrant school at the Mae Tao Clinic, and one small school (Kg and Grade 1) north of Mae Salit. In cross border aid COVID and political unrest have challenged education in IDP areas. Local communities have worked hard to keep their schools open. We supported 9 elementary and middle schools serving 700 children in IDP areas where there is no support for education from the government. One of these is a unique animist school where Karen traditions are taught by elders from the community. We assisted COTE in providing safe spaces and nursery education for 629 preschool children in 12 camps along the Burma/China border. COVID -19 impacted all of the programs that we've supported in various ways but in almost all cases programs have been preserved. A program in Bangkok was shuttered due to an outbreak of COVID among migrant workers compounded by anti-Burmese sentiment.

Programs in Bangladesh: BREF supports educational assistance to Rohingya children through Children On the Edge (COTE) who observe, in their annual report that, after three years, " Rohingya remained trapped and stateless on the Bangladeshi border". The COVID crisis required COTE to respond creatively. COTE produced and distributed videos and leaflets with COVID information, becoming a crucial source of public health messages. With schools closed, "small-batch, home based learning" allowed teachers to stay connected with students and check on their well-being. In addition, COTE digital team developed an "all Rohingya language library of lessons, the only comprehensive set of educational lessons available in Bangladesh or Myanmar". BREF specifically assists COTE in providing educational services 240 children in a Rohingya enclave community near the Burma Border as well as along the China-Myanmar border. Starting in 2021, BREF will also support the COTE program in Uganda in Africa.

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Data for this page was sourced from XML published by IRS (public 990 form dataset) from: https://s3.amazonaws.com/irs-form-990/202131309349301708_public.xml