Rangoon, 13th of February at the National League for Democracy Office. Lots of people in front of the door and on the street. Aung San Suu Kyi gives little presents to successful students. Benno and Karolina standing in the front row. While Aung San Suu Kyi leaves Benno goes up to her. “Please, a message of hope for the people who are living at the border in Mae Sot. I'm from Help Without Frontiers and I've been working there since 10 years!”
The community already started to rebuilt their houses. Every family got a little bamboo from the Landowner to built the house.
Now they are building 19 houses, some of them too small for the big families. Our Team arranged additional leaves for the roofs and delivered them the same day. THey also need more bamboo for the floor, as well as boxes to store whats left over of their possesions.
Recently Grade 5 in the New Day School got mail! Children in South Tyrol wrote them, who attend an afternoon course in Bozen. Their faces were full of excitement and happiness when the colorful letters reached the classroom. Every student of Grade 5 got a letter, in which the boys and girls from South Tyrol introduced themselves and gave a short insight in their lives in Bozen. There were also drawings and pictures inside the envelops. How much fun! The students were very exciting, read the letters and showed them to their classmates.
Yesterday afternoon a unattended cooking stove started a fire in the village 44km. The people have been on the fields working and didn't recognise that their whole village burnt down in 45 minutes. Now 31 femilies have left nothing, 72 Adults and 47 children, 10 of who are students in our 42km School.
Today our Team went to the place where the accident happened and brought soap, tooth paste, tooth brushes, blankets, rice, washing powder as well as donated clothes from our office.
Hi everyone, first of all I'd like to introduce myself: I'm Eva Benelli, Italian, 38 years old. I'm an artisan and work with terracotta (my website www.lefoio.com). I taught clay handicraft at the High School and I'm currently holding a ceramic course for disabled people in Italy.
The Clay project was born during an exchange of ideas between Nadia, president of the Krio Hirundo Onlus, and me. I want to thank her so much.
Normally our Volunteers write a final report. Thomas wanted to stay for two weeks to update our computers and network in Mae Sot. Meanwhile he has been here since two years and is an essential part of our Team in Mae Sot. He not only takes care of our website, the computers and printers in Mae Sot and Brixen, but also helps wherever necessary. He helps driving, delivering emergency supplies or helps with presentations in Europe. There is no final report. It would be too long anyway.
This month our Rays of Youth Team was busy, training their successors. Saturdays and Sundays all "Peer Youth" students and their trainers Kiki and Joli stayed in our office.
Save the Children UK, which has been collaborating on a border program with Help without Frontiers since a year, organized a child protection initiative training in Vientiane (Laos) from the 30th of October to the 5th of November 2011.
On the 29th of December 2011 we did a very special activity at the Ah Yone Oo school. Hänn, a volunteer from South Tyrol (Italy), who is teaching English at Ah Yone Oo school, organized the activity “Painting T-Shirts”. Before she came to Mae Sot, she had collected money for this project. The T-Shirts were made from the Help without Frontiers Sewing Workshop “The Happy Tailor”, where migrant women get a fair paid job, so that they can build themselves an existence.
Our Education Project Manager Chaung Khu is working with Help without Frontiers since 2007. She is Karen from Burma and for the first time she got the chance to come to Europe from November to December 2011. In this Interview she shares her thouhgts on cultural differences and new experiences.
Hi Chaung Khu, you've been working with people from abroad since many years and now you were able to visit Europe for the first time. How did you like Europe?
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