The Cabinet on 7 February 2023 approved a project to promote the building of good people in accordance with proper religious principles in order to treasure and preserve the multicultural society in the southern border provinces.

The five-year project, to be carried out from 2023 to 2027, was proposed by the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center (SBPAC) and was previously endorsed by the Strategic Committee for the Development of Southern Border Provinces.

It involves a budget of 2,330 million baht, which will be spent in the five southern border provinces, namely Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, Songkhla, and Satun.

In this project, free lunches will be provided for 288 Tadika Islamic schools (on Saturdays and Sundays), with 191,024 schoolchildren, and 45 Buddhist Sunday schools, with 12,582 schoolchildren, attending. Altogether, a total of 203,606 schoolchildren will benefit from this project.

Both Tadika Islamic schools and Buddhist Sunday schools are important religious learning centers, which will help create good people in the multicultural society in the deep South.

Apart from providing free lunches, the budget will also be used to develop the potential of schoolchildren and teachers for their activities, such as those concerning leadership camps, where schoolchildren from Tadika Islamic schools and Buddhist Sunday schools learn peaceful co-existence. Another activity involves evaluation to be conducted by participating teachers.

The SBPAC will work with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture in implementing this project. It is expected that the project will encourage schoolchildren to be interested in religious studies and will provide a central space that welcomes people of different faiths to join various activities together. Their interaction on a continual basis will become a uniting force in helping develop the southern border provinces and tackling local problems.