A DEVELOPMENT worker from Lancaster has just returned from refugee camps in Thailand where she helped build links between the two very different communities.

Gisela Renolds, who works at Global Link development education centre on China Street, won a £1,500 British Council Youth Millennium Award to visit Karen school children and teachers from Burma living in refugee camps across the border in Thailand.

Some of the refugee children have been linking with school children in Morecambe High School since last June.

Gisela visited two refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border, and met the head teacher of a school in a third refugee camp.

Her trip has enabled her to find three more schools in the refugee camps to link with Garstang High School, Great Wood Primary School in Morecambe, and a secondary school in Bradford.

Gisela said: "Global Link helps schools to find partner schools in developing countries in order that the children can write to each other and learn about each other's lives. Some schools may ultimately visit their partner schools, and there is funding for teachers to visit their partner schools to develop links."

Gisela added: "School links can help challenge racist stereotypes and preconceptions about other countries, and are a way to learn about different cultures, religions and environments. School links enable children to learn how they are connected to people in other parts of the world, historically, economically, culturally and environmentally."

The refugees in Thailand are mainly Karen people who have fled the Burmese military government who is targeting the Karen people by burning down their villages, killing people or using them as forced labour.

Burma is a military dictatorship under increasing international pressure for its human rights abuses, against democracy supporters as well as the many ethnic groups who live in Burma.