Combat Health Disparities for Kachin Women (2)

Dear donors,

The Holiday season is upon us, and we at GlobeMed at Dartmouth are getting ready for several of our biggest events of the year, including our annual Holiday Season Individual Givings Campaign during December and our awareness-raising Benefit Dinner in the winter term. More importantly, we are, now more than ever, thinking about what we're grateful for: For one, our privileges, our health, and that of our families, but also our long-lasting partnership with our partner organization, the Kachin Women's Association Thailand (KWAT) and our ability to contribute to their amazing work.

Fall has been a term of new beginnings with the start of a fresh school year. We've welcomed a new group of enthusiastic and passionate freshmen into GlobeMed at Dartmouth, who have started learning about the GlobeMed model of partnership, the conflicts in Burma, and the work of KWAT. People have been increasingly aware of Burma with the recent 2015 election, the victory of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), and what this means for Burma in the future.

In addition, since our last update, we have raised over $600, with our multiple fundraisers. One that we are particularly proud of is our parcipation in the Christmas Market in Hanover, New Hampshire, where we sold elephant pants, shorts, Thai tea, wallets, pencil cases, post-cards, and other objects hand-made by the women with KWAT as a part of their Income Generation Program, in which the women make traditional Kachin craftwork. This not only helps expose the conflict in Burma to those in the United States, but also allows the refugee women to stay in touch with their roots while finding a more stable job. 

In the meantime, KWAT continues to do incredible work, made possible by the generous donations of people like you. They continue to visit the IDP camps in Burma as well as maintaining their multiple clinics like the Ja Reng Yang Clinic in Mai Ja Yang mentioned in our last update, in which, KWAT continues to treat cases beyond the aforementioned 104,100 cases, including 3,314 births, 1,745 eye surgeries, 653 malaria cases, and almost 20 prosthetic surgeries due to land mine explosions, in 2013 alone. In addition, in October, KWAT initiated a new round of its annual Human Rights Project, and are currently working with 14 women interns in an intensive 6-month training program, teaching them about the conflicts in Burma, furthering their English, and better preparing them to become leaders in their respective communities. 

In addition, KWAT remains outspoken advocates for women's rights and for justice for the Kachin people, an important step in moving forward. For example, in October, KWAT released an important statement criticizing then President Thein Sein's failure to seek justice in the highly-publicized Kawng HKA Rape-Murder case involving two Kachin women and calling for action. In a country where freedom of speech is not a fundamental human right and censorship is common, KWAT's actions are important for not only finding justice in individual cases but for furthering the seeds of change within Burma. 

Finally, we have already started planning our annual GROW trip which emphasizes our continuing dedication to creating partnership, understanding, and interconnection between GlobeMed at Dartmouth and KWAT. The new GROW coordinator and the team have started putting together a peace project proposal that would allow the ethnographic recording of the stories of the Kachin in both Burma and Thailand, and hopefully facilitate wider awareness of the conflicts within Burma internationally. By capturing and sharing these stories, GlobeMed at Dartmouth and KWAT hope to initiate more conversation and more understanding about the continuining struggles of the Burmese. 

As always, we want to thank you for the support we receive from people like you. Every donation contributes not only to the numbers – lives saved in the clinic, equipment able to be bought – but also to the continual survival of this partnership and support we can provide to KWAT. We and KWAT are so thankful this holiday season for the willing support of our donors like you, and the opportunity to spread education about the conflicts in Burma. 

As our new leadership team updates our projects and make new goals as we do each fall, we will keep you updated on the coming developments. 

Thank you, again, for being a part of this valuable work.

Sincerely,

Hae-Lin Cho