Nurturing Learning Communities in a Time of Crisis

Since early September, our SENS team has been in residence in Mae Sot, Thailand, working with about 50 Myanmar teachers and youth. Over the past three years, we have built connections with this community through weekend workshops and one-day gatherings. This pilot program is our first attempt to stay for a longer period. Our aim is to understand the community’s needs more fully, design programs that are more responsive to the Myanmar people who have been forcibly displaced here, and provide the additional support that a three-months’ stay could bring. The program will run until the end of November.

English and IELTS Classes 

From mid-September to October 29, Lien (nickname), one of our SENS alumni from Vietnam and a member of ALPS, our higher-level training (Apprentice Leaders Training in Sustainability), taught IELTS and English classes to 23 students at different levels. She organized both online and in-person classes to fit participants’ busy schedules. Lien left Mae Sot on October 29 after two months with the program. 

As Lien departed for Vietnam she was showered with gifts, invitations to coffee shops, and other forms of affection from the many students who had interacted with her. Lien is an insightful and experienced language teacher who offers warmth and individualized attention to every participant, both inside and outside of the listening practice. She brings an especially light touch to her teaching of language as well as of social and environmental issues, and we often heard laughter when her classes were in session. Her practice sessions and instructions on preparing for the IELTS exam have been of great practical benefit to students who hope to apply to universities. Yet her exam preparation lessons were far from being dry or boring.  She found ways to make them engaging and lively, and we will all miss the delightful energy, wit, and warmth she tends to bring into any encounter.

Co-Counseling and SENS Curriculum Classes

Since early October, we have run three larger weekly classes of 10-16 participants each: two Co-Counseling classes, held on Saturdays and Mondays, and a Sunday SENS curriculum class. Each class has met for four to five sessions so far. The SENS curriculum class offers instruction and practice in English language skills, and this is about strengthening connection and understanding between people from different backgrounds. It is also about opening up access to educational and other resources on the international scene. Our curriculum also works to build a deeper awareness and understanding of oneself, immediate others, and the crises facing the world at this moment in history. We feel it is of the utmost importance for everyone to orient themselves to what we now face as a species with the climate crisis and other challenges. Co-Counseling helps with the personal and person-to-person side, while it also allows for healing, more relaxed and focused thinking, and renewal.

In Co-Counseling, participants take turns and practice listening to one another. We found that after the first two weekly sessions, our Myanmar participants seemed to notice more clearly what it feels like when someone truly pays attention to them. And trust has grown tangibly. Over the following weeks, they started opening up, feeling freer, and sharing more, and connections among them grew stronger.

Some participants say they look forward to the weekend and the chance to share their struggles. Others say they have found a place where they can both laugh and cry. Some participants who were quiet and nervous at first now feel more comfortable sharing about their lives with the group. We have also seen new connections form across ages and backgrounds. One afternoon, a participant in her forties and a young man of about eighteen sat together and talked energetically and at length, a moment our team found deeply encouraging.

What We Have Learned

As participants have seen that they can share their inner world and still be listened to with respect, they have shared more deeply, and we began to glimpse the full range of trauma they have been through. Many have witnessed extremely violent and terrifying incidents involving their friends and loved ones, and these memories can of course be persistent and haunting. While dealing with such memories as well as the ongoing news of violence in Myanmar, they also have to handle the extremely precarious conditions of life in exile. Will they have a chance to attend a university? Can they rely on their work to feed their families? Will they be able to obtain the documents that give them legal security? They face these and many other questions.

One kind of suffering virtually all of them face is an uncertain future. To face this successfully, many of them work multiple jobs to support their families and to develop the skills they need to create some kind of future. They also do their best to stay abreast of the situation in Myanmar, which impinges directly on their prospects. Our conversations with participants have also shown us the financial pressure many of them face, which is greater than any of us had imagined. All of this means there are many competing claims on their time, and huge pressures to do the right thing as new challenges come up. As a result, attendance in our classes is far more unpredictable than we are used to. Yet ultimately, we see that people keep coming back and keep sharing of themselves more openly and more courageously. Even in very difficult circumstances, participants consistently show kindness, generously share what they have, and support one another and our team. And this instils in us an ever-deeper respect, and an ever-stronger determination to offer something useful to them as allies in their struggle. 

One Month Ahead

In November, we will continue the Saturday and Monday Co-Counseling classes and the Sunday SENS curriculum class through to the end of the program. Our aim is for participants to feel supported and at home in these classes and to build relationships they can rely on, with each other and with us. We hope that Co-Counseling, a form of mutual support between peers that is already showing clear progress, will continue as part of participants’ lives after our team leaves Mae Sot, and that we’ll be able to continue to offer guidance through online get-togethers.