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Pam Rogers had a hunch

Refugee camps along the Thai-Burmese border were filling with displaced Burmese people, and the Toronto-based addiction counsellor knew that was a recipe for substance abuse. She had seen the impact of displacement and cultural isolation on First Nations communities, so wrote to a fellow addiction expert in Thailand asking if they needed help. Her friend wrote back quickly: “Please come.”

By 2000, after six months of assessing and learning and listening, Rogers and local leaders founded a recovery program with support from PWRDF, the Burma Relief Centre and Norwegian Church Aid. By 2005, the group was renamed DARE (Drug and Alcohol Recovery and Education Network) and now operates in five camps as well as in the migrant community. In 2015, DARE expanded to villages across the border in Karen State, Burma.

One such camp is the Mae La Refugee camp. It’s the last place you might expect to see a game of Ultimate Frisbee, but the sport has been a mainstay here for years. The Bangkok Soi Dawz Ultimate Frisbee team has adopted the camp as their official charity and they regularly donate shirts, shoes and other equipment, as well as training.

“If you’re angry, you throw a ball. It gets it out of you,” says Rogers. The Frisbee program is just one of the many wellness initiatives in the camp that nurtures teens, in order to prevent the addictions that plague so many of the people living there. The most common substances abused are alcohol, methamphetamine, marijuana, opium, tobacco, glue and heroin.

The program has grown and changed over the years, but the real change is in the people who recover from their addiction. “The people are so happy when they recover, they didn’t know they could,” says Rogers, adding that many people were convinced addiction was a form of punishment. According to DARE statistics, the program (which is now published in a manual in Karen and Burmese languages), has a 61% non-relapse rate. Most Western addiction recovery programs average 25%. The success of the program, says Rogers, is that it is based in the communities and run by the people of the communities.