Cajamarca, Peru
Foundation for Education and Development, previously Grassroots HRE in Phang Nga, Thailand, is a Burmese-run human rights org I’ve volunteered for and visited twice. They primarily serve migrant workers on construction sites and rubber plantations by providing schools for migrants’ children and offering legal, educational and health services for adults.
If you’ve never seen a rubber plantation, it’s pretty amazing and beautiful. Thousands of rows of skinny trees all in a line. Little cups on all the trees. Crazy bugs. A stillness throughout the jungle. But the Burmese workers there are often attacked, murdered and raped as they tap the trees overnight, and are not usually paid well. This Irrawaddy report on life on the rubber plantation noticeably lacks mention of the extremely repressive and genocidal dictatorship in Burma which is the REAL reason people flee to work in Thailand, but nevertheless, it gives you a good sense of life there (story starts around 00:42). I was on this particular plantation twice:
