Along the Thai/Myanmar border,roughly 1,000,000 hill tribe people live in poverty for generations. Most hill tribe children have never had anyone read to them. When they enter school they fall behind the other students in learning to read, and eventually drop out of school. EACM provides neurofeedack training so they can learn to read which gives them more options in life. Neurofeedback is a proven technology to train young children's brains to learn to read.
30% of Thailand's 15-year-olds were functionally illiterate in 2015 (Programme for International Students Assessment) The rate is much higher among hill tribe students. They are segregated into special rooms as they enter public school and no dedicated training is given. Therefore, the learning gap grows bigger. In the end they drop out of the main stream Thai education system and leave school unable to read or write. This damages their economic prospects and ability to escape poverty.
EACM provides neurofeedback training to elementary level students who have reading delay. With this project, we want to reach 100 more students. Numerous studies have shown neurofeedback reorganizes the neural pathways in children's brains increasing their attention span, short term memory, processing speed and IQ's. We assess reading level before and after the training to measure progress they make. All of our children show developments after training, some improving a whole grade level.
Providing these children with the ability to read and write fundamentally alters their long term career prospects and allows them to escape the cycle of poverty. This in turn can help their families and future generations. One of EACM's goals is to evidence that hill tribe children can thrive if given the appropriate support and dedicated focus. This project will enable us to demonstrate the capabilities of these bright and tenacious children.
