YIEC’s work continues thanks to the generous donations and the volunteers involved in our projects. As you may recall from previous postings, we have been assisting a monastery in the city of Kungyangon in the cyclone devastated Ayeyarwaddy Delta. The monks there have been working tirelessly to care for the victims of the cyclone in their area, including 750 families from villages around the monastery and 16 families of refugees (about 50 people) from a village in the Kyonemaw area about 20 minutes down the river from Kungyangon.
Since the last posting, the 16 houses in the Kyonemaw village have been rebuilt from the materials YIEC Community Service donated. (See pictures of the villagers building) and the finished houses.
The progress in Kungyangon has been so great that we have been able to scale back our visits. A system is in place now where we only need to buy a few supplies outside of the local area. With our financial support, the villagers are able to arrange purchases and delivery of food and many other supplies from the local shops, enabling our teams to use smaller trucks or no trucks at all. This helps us more easily focus our efforts on the long-term goals of getting the people back to work and school, and rebuilding their lives. The availability of food and other basic needs will be a problem for the foreseeable future, but our hope is that the people can begin to take care of themselves with continued support from YIEC Community Service.
One of our most proud accomplishments has been helping many of the families to start working again. We donated two farming machines for the monastery area and the Kyonemaw village as well as fishing nets for Kyonemaw. Due to the high cost of these items, we could not give enough for each family to have their own, so some families have agreed to share the equipment until they earn enough money to buy what they need. Imagine how proud our team felt when we arrived on June 13th and heard the machines being used in the fields! (See pictures of the machines being used and the villagers posing with the machine in Kyonemaw). We are currently planning a donation of fishing nets for the monastery area.
A difficult question facing the people in Kungyangon is what to do about the bodies of those killed in the cyclone. By mid-June, villagers were still finding 20 to 30 bodies each day. A few brave monks and villagers began collecting the bodies, praying for them, and cremating their remains. This required renting boats to get to the areas, buying the materials to make the fires, and caring for the needs of the workers. YIEC Community Service helped with some of those costs for a short time until another charity organization offered to fund that work. The latest reports, however, are that even these efforts have been stopped by authorities for unknown reasons. We don’t know when they will be able to continue.
A follow-up to the last posting: We have learned that the other group who offered to donate one bag of rice for each of the 750 families in the monastery area was only able to donate a total of 180 bags in the end. While this was a disappointment, it has helped us to rethink our
YIEC Community Service is also building up a relationship with the schools in the area, donating a range of supplies from toilets to chalkboards for classrooms to pencils, pens, books, and school bags for poor students. Keeping to our belief that buying supplies in the area will stimulate the local economy, the chalkboards were made especially for us in Kungyangon [see pictures of school supplies donations].
above written by Mike S.
Again we would like to say THANK YOU very much to all of you who donated your time, money, clothes, and much needed material items! Without your response it would not have been possible to make the positive impact we are making in and around Yangon and in the Delta Region.
Even though Myanmar is no longer in the news, the work goes on and people are still in great need of our help. There is much more Community Service can do to help the Cyclone victims, as well as continuing our many other Community Service Activities we are involved in. We would very much like to keep the spirit of giving alive and well, into, through and beyond the 2008-09 school year!!
If you'd like to support our Community Service work by making a donation, there are a couple of ways you can do this. If you're in the U.S. and you know a teacher who is heading to Y.I.E.C. in August, you can give your donation to them before they leave so they can bring it out to us, or you can send a check or money order to Mike S. before he leaves at the end of July. If you would like to send a check to Mike, please contact him by email and he will then send you his address details: [email protected]
Another way is to send a check to my father's address and he will deposit the check in my account and I will then take the money directly from my pay check in Myanmar. It's a fast and easy way to get money into the country. My Dad's address in the U.S. is:
Richard Davis
811 Crossbrook Drive
Moraga, CA 94556
Please make checks payable to Todd Davis. And please let me know about your donation by email, or by private message through signing up with VOX. This way I can let my Dad know your check is on the way.
If you are outside the U.S. and would like to wire transfer donations, please send an email to either Todd or Mike so we can help to make that happen...
And if you're already in Myanmar and / or plan to be there in August, please let us know if you’d like to help out in any way with your time and talents!
Thank you all again very much for all your support!!!
YIEC Community Service
[this is good] I am amazed by all the great work going on! I will be arriving in Yangon on July 30th and would like to volunteer my time during that week before school starts.
Posted by: jeannette | 07/11/2008 at 05:38 PM
Hi Jeannette,
Thanks for offering to help! We can use it, especially once the school year gets off the ground. You can reach me at the Grand Mee Yah Tah room 510 once you arrive. We plan to be there on Aug. 1st. Hope to meet you soon!
Best wishes,
Todd
Posted by: Mr. Todd | 07/13/2008 at 04:29 AM