Burma 2011

Are you a business or individual who would like to sponsor the project or donate equipment?

Could you chose GlobalEyes for your next fundraiser?

Mingalar Children's Home in Yangoon, Myanmar (Burma) houses 24 children from 4 - 17 years old. It is a small organisation, which does not have a regular volunteer programme or receive funding from a UK charity. The children attend a local government school for basic education, but do not have any extra-curricular activities or creative stimuli.

Myanmar / Burma is a country constantly in the media, run by a military junta with reports of ethnic cleansing leaving over 503,000 internally displaced people, plus thousands of people fleeing to neighbouring countries. The country was also hit by a natural disaster in 2008, when Cyclone Nargis decimated parts of the Irrawaddy Delta, killing over 200,000 people and destroying rice-farming land. The country spends the least on health care of any country in the world, and according to some sources, over 25,000 AIDS deaths in Burma in 2007 could have been prevented with the use of Anti Retrovival drugs, unvailable to most of the population. The country has declining health and education systems and is the second largest producer of opium in the world.

But despite the grim statistics and the way Burma is portrayed by the media, there are of course plenty of people in the country who are simply trying to get on with their lives. Politics is a taboo subject, and not one I will be raising with the children. Instead, we will be focussing on more practical, less controversial topics which will be of use to the children. The younger ones will again focus on hygiene, and for the older children and other local young people who wish to be involved, we will look at HIV prevention, with special note taken to drugs and prostitution, both of which are common in the country.

Burma / Myanmar has a rich cultural heritage, with local forms of dance, music and puppetry valuable traditions to use in the project. As there is a group of young people who also wish to take part, I will also work with them and the older teengers on leadership and workshop skills so that they can in future lead groups on their own.

  The children at Mingalar Children's Home