Support Teacher Trainings in rural Myanmar

Dear Friends and Family

We are happy to share our latestest news with you from Myanmar. As some of you may know, the base for all of our work here in Myanmar is our home in Kalaw, where we also house the Sprouting Seeds Learning Centre, (Cafe, Bakery, Eco Shop and Yoga Studio) all as a Training Centre and home for our family. 

Unfortunately, the house has been sold which has been our home base for so long and we have to move everything out by the end of February. Although this puts extreme pressure on us, we are excited to share that we have already found a new place to move the projects. 

The new property has a large 3 story building and lots of space around the property. We are so excited with all the new space and potential, we will be able to grow all areas of our projects over the next 2 years! 

Our focus for Teacher Trainings this coming year will be on training a group of young teachers to become Yoga Instructors. Back in November together with another group we were able to host a 10 day Yoga and Trauma Healing workshop here in Kalaw. The girls came from all over the country and 4 from Kachin State and in the IDP (Internally Displaced People) camps. 

With the new space we will move into in Febraury we are excited to be able to start hosting our teacher trainings at the new project. We will continue our work with these girls that have already joined the first training and invite more girls to join in to become trained as yoga instructors. 

Besides yoga training, we also will be focusing on several practical life skills training for teachers which they can bring back to their villages and schools. Some of the workshops we have lined up include; solar food dryer, mushroom house, handicraft and more trainings. 

We have a busy few months ahead of us but are excited about all the new potential we have with the new property. 

We look forward to sharing news of more teacher trainings with you over the next few months. 

As always we are greatful for your support!

Dear Friends and Family

The rains are starting to slow down now with only about 2 months left of rain before the dry season. We are still in planning mode for the next few months of the dry season. 

As some of you may know, we have recently opened a Yoga Studio at our Sprouting Seeds Cafe and Bakery here in Kalaw. As part of this we are planning to integrate yoga training into our teacher training progams. 

In November we will be working with another group to offer a week long immersion training program in Yoga and Trauma Healing. We will bring participants from all over the country, targeting specifically ethnic girls from rural areas. this will be an ongoing program to help integrate yoga into more projects. 

We were unable to get to Chin State due to certain conditions but we are still very excited to be intouch with one of our former alumni from one of the previous training programs who would like us to come up and offer a teacher training program. 

Once the weather has cleared we should be better able to travel to Chin State to offer the program there. We will keep you posted on our progress!

Once again we thank you all for your support and kind thoughts! 

Warmly, 

All of us at Whispering Seed

Dear Friends and Family

We trust you are doing well. As we enter into the rainy season here in Myanmar we have had a small break from teacher training the last 2 months because we have been focusing our energies on our newest project and the development of the new training centre, which will be used for the teacher trainings. 

Prior to the rains we have been actively working on the new land and preparing for teacher trainings to take place during the rainy season when physical work will stop at the farm. 

We are greatful for your contributions and support of our work and we are so excited about the teacher trainings being able to use the new training centre at the end of the rainy season. 

We will have more to share with you during the next report about our first teacher training which will be held in remote Chin Sate, northern Myanmar during the next 2 months. 

Thank you kindly for all your support and we look forward to updating you further in the next report!

we are also excited to share that we have a new website where you can see more details about the teacher trainings and our other projects!

Warmly, 

Jim and all the team here at Whispering Seed!

Links:

• Our new and improved website!

Dear Friends and Family

We hope you all had a happy holiday season and a happy transition into the new year.

We are happy to share that we were able to offer a teacher training at a Buddhist monastic school in Shan State working closely with the Socially Engaged Monastic Schools (SEMS) teacher training program.

I am also very excited to share that now my eldest daughter, Aye Aung who is the manager of Sprouting Seeds Café, Bakery and Eco Shop was the trainer! We now have a new generation doing the trainings!!

Aye Aung worked with a group of teachers from all over the Southern Shan State to train in cooking, baking and ice cream making. The monastery is now offering delicious baked goods and lovely ice cream to their students and teachers will be able to go back to their home monasteries and share their new skills.

We are in the process of planning more trainings for the next few months!

We thank you for all of your support!!

Dear Friends and Family,

It has been a long rainy season here in Myanmar and we have taken a short break from our trainings to plan for the upcoming year. Our programs will begin again starting once the rains have completed around October-November.

We are taking this time to plan a variety of trainings and also materials to better assist our partners and participants of our trainings during the upcoming year.

We thank you greatly for all of your support and look forward to sharing our programs and more images with you from the trainings once the weather clears. We are always grateful for your support and look forward to sharing further news from our fall activities!

Warmly,

Jim Connor