By Richard McMillan | Chairperson
The Saffron Aid team has been helping a small community in Tanintharyi Region to improve education standards and attendance at the monastic school. Monastic schools are an important part of the Myanmar education system but are not funded by the government. Teachers tend to be young people who have graduated from school and have no formal teacher training. Twenty percent (20%) of children have not/do not attend school even though education is free and compulsory for children up to 10 years of age.
Lessons tend to be by rote learning with no critical thinking as the young teachers have never experienced lessons taught like this.
This area is close to the Thailand border and has a high level of poverty and lack of opportunities for children to attend school after they turn 10. Many children and youth are sold by their parents to 'business people' who promise the child will be educated, looked after and given a job when they graduate. These children are generally taken into Thailand illegally to be on sold into the sex, manufacturing and construction industry as well as deckhands on Thai fishing boats.
This monastic school caters for 150 children in 2 dedicated classrooms and the monks dining hall. Many of the students homes are 4 to 5 hours away so they stay at the monastery sleeping in the classrooms. The monastery feeds them, pays the teachers the equivalent of $45 per month. They are wanting to employ a qualified English speaking teacher who can help improve the education standard and teach English. English is the official second language of Myanmar yet its teaching was outlawed by the military government and is now only being taught again. This is an issue when the teachers do not speak any English!
Saffron Aid has taken action to help this community by:
1. giving mini scholarships for children to attend who currently are helping family on their farms instead of attending school.
2. providing quality vegetable seed (provides a higher yield as well as introducing other types of local vegetables) to parents. This is not only providing extra food for the family but allows the excess to be sold at the big markets in larger towns.
3. providing a member of Saffron Aid staff who is a qualified teacher to mentor the young teachers through monthly visits of 1 week in duration.
4. raising money for a fulltime qualified, English speaking teacher to undertake a 2-year contract. Their monthly wage is $250 and includes 2 return trips to their home as well as accommodation at the monastery school.
5. helping raise funds to complete a new classroom block of 2 classes.
Saffron Aid has helped an extra 32 children attend this particular monastic school by providing mini-scholarships and have helped 18 families with extra seed for their farm plots who are now selling at the weekly markets in the larger township.
We embrace the Myanmar Education Department's vision for the future "To create an educationa system that can generate a learning society capable of facing the challenges of the knowledge age."
Please feel free to contact Saffron Aid for any further information on this much appreciated project. Richard, Project Leader and Chairperson of Saffron Aid, can be contacted by email richard@saffronaid.com
Many thanks and we appreciate your interest and support in this project.
Regards
Richard McMillan Chairperson
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
