COERR has always involved children and youth participation in our activities in all 9 temporary shelters since the beginning of the Thai-Myanmar border operation. During the past 2 years, to enable youth to prepare for their future repatriation, COERR invited youth to make a dialogue on Our Dream Home, What a Dream Home is Like and How We Can Make Our Dream Home Come True”.This year, COERR Mae Sarieng Field Office has organized a Dialogue in Ban Mae La Oon on June 15, 2019, in which 32 youth of 26 female and 6 male participated. Then, another Dialogue was organized in Ban Mae Lama Luang on July 13th, with another 32 participants of 24 female and 8 male participated.

   Both Dialogue sessions were aimed to introduce youth to look at their community and think how they would like to improve it. We challenged them with questions and they eagerly wanted to answer: how they like their dream home and community to be; what they would like to learn; what kind of support they need from others; what services their dream community should have; etc.

   The methodology in the Dialogue was to have youth introduce themselves by drawing about their future when they graduate. Most career they like are teachers, soldiers, health service providers, etc. that are helpful for their future community. Then they divided in groups. Each group brainstormed their opinion about what services should be available in their future community. The answers are education institutions, healthcare centers, soldiers to protect their community, convenient roads, etc.

   Then groups were asked to think about what kind of support they should need in order to make their Dream Come True. Their answers were that they would pay more attention to study, to attend good trainings offered by Organizations in their Shelters in order to prepare themselve for better future; however, they knew that they would need a lot of support from senior people and concern institutions too.

   COERR let the youth know that they have come half way of success; that because of their good attention, they can make the other half way successful. Let them keep on trying and “ Make their Dream come True”.