Background: The Karen are the largest ethnic minority in Thailand and have lived for centuries as subsistence farmers in small mountain communities. The difficult terrain has restricted development and kept the region largely inaccessible, making it the poorest part of Thailand. The Need: A recent UN report highlighted that 75% of children in north west Thailand leave school without completing their education. This situation needs to be drastically changed if the Karen are to build a better future for themselves. The main barrier to education is the distance between the rural villages and the schools which are only in the larger towns. The Karen people are subsistance farmers, most living below the poverty line, and are unable to afford the cost of transport or school dormitory costs. The Project: The aim of the project is to provide access to education for students that otherwise would not get the chance to go to secondary school. We think the most simple and effective solution is to provide a free bus service to transport the children to school. We have successfully been running a free bus service since 2003, and this year we want to expand the service to take up to 1000 Karen children to school. We hire buses (known locally as ‘Songthau’) direct from Karen drivers who run the service from their village to the secondary schools. Each bus can transport an average of 20 children and, depending on the distance, costs an average of £1500 a year to run. The buses run daily from the village to the secondary schools and are monitored by the village headman in co-operation with our Karen manager. Not only does the bus provide a valuable service taking children to school, it also provides stable employment for the Karen drivers. The Results: This free bus service will directly benefit 1000 Karen children by helping them get to school, and take the financial pressure off the families. In the long-term, more Karen students will be able to complete their secondary education and progress to vocational colleges and universities where they can be trained in employment that will help their communities. This is something we are beginning to see and we are currently supporting 100 university students studying subjects such as teaching, community development, business management and agriculture. We believe that education is key to the Karen people developing a better future for themselves and we hope to see every child having the opportunity to complete their education.