The strengths of Hle Bee School 2008

Looking back over our summer 2008 in Hle Bee School, Mae Sot, what strengths did we see?


- A thriving, growing school of 329 children who feel safe, happy, nurtured and valued in their school and who have a hunger for learning.






- A community based around the school, with fantastic parental involvement in the school, so much pride in their school and a passion to improve their school







- A highly dedicated and committed staff team who live and work closely to improve the lives of their students and to give them skills which will give them better life opportunities in the future.



It's a privilege for Forthview to be global partners with Hle Bee. They have so much to teach us. Thank you Hle Bee for your amazing hospitality to us again this year. In the next post, I'll share the challenges facing Hle Bee in coming months....


However, this is probably the appropriate moment to tell you all the difficult news that Hle Bee and some other Burmese learning centres in Mae Sot have lost their previous funding. If it were not for the £5000 that Forthview raised over the last year, Hle Bee would now have no funding. This £5000 is keeping Hle Bee running until October 2008. Another long term funder is being sought but many funds are now being diverted to Cyclone Nargis relief so the future is not certain.......

walk a mile... wash your hands

Remember Forthview School walked a mile round the school in March 2008 and raised £200 so that Hle Bee School could have wash hand basins by their toilets? Well here are the toilets in action.

I spent many a magic moment watching children run to the toilets then come out and wash their hands.

So simple, so wonderful, so much coming from so little.

Ricky Gervais: The Real Disaster In Burma Is The Government

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mPAZg-Cdq3k

Safely home... but don't stop reading the blog as there's more to say!

We arrived home safely and on time on Thursday 24th July and are all fine. Please have another look at last week's blogging, particularly FRIDAY 18 JULY because I spent Wed afternoon in Bangkok uploading more photos and filling in stories.

The sad story of Zin Zaw, a young and able Burmese learner

On Thursday night while eating in the night market, we were invited over to see Zin Zaw's house (not her real name). She is in one of the top classes in school and is a very smart, engaging, clever lassie with good friends. When we saw her little home we were amazed at how lovely she and her family had made what was essentially a corrugated iron shed. It had one room and everyone slept on a wee platform with a curtain to screen off the young married couple she lives with while her mum is away working. So all in all, it seems that 7 folk may stay in this little iron lean to. On the wall Zin Zaw has her Hle Bee photo and a letter from her Forthview friend. It showed me how much hope and richness this partnership gives to individual Burmese children.

Zin Zaw is 14 and didn't turn up for school at the start of this school year. When the teachers went round to her home, they found her working in a cafe as a waitress. Her mum said they couldn't afford to have her not working any more. They need the income so she must leave school and work. The Headteacher persuaded mum to let Zin Zaw return to school but for how long?

So we asked, 'IF Scotland could pay her mother the wages Zin Zaw would earn (about 80p a day!), could the teachers ask her mother if she could come to school every day?' We know this happens for one other boy in the school from another donor. The teachers thought the mum would accept this. She does want the best for her daughter. So we wait to hear if this is possible.

How shocking is it that for 80p a day a child might have to leave school. What sort of world do we live in?

Now you know why we were so distressed....

Lost in Trang!

Anyone seen Trang on a map and does anyone know how to get back to the hotel? Cos we haven't a clue! Our hotel in Trang is stunningly beautiful and idyllic but the remotest place in the world. It also has many signs that say TSUNAMI EVACUATION ROUTE, which seem to point in all different directions, even back to the sea - doesnae really inspire confidence. So Geoff and I decided we needed to take a 'public bus' 40 Km into Trang Town to get some expectorant for Sheila's awful cough (passed on from Hle Bee baby via Louise to Sheila) and some after sun because we burnt to a frazzle yesterday in 36 degrees by the pool! Louise decided not to join us and is staying at the hotel for her beauty treatments.

Finally we drive into Trang, somewhere on the outskirts and the driver stops and tells us to get off and meet him at 4pm. 4pm!!! 5 hours in Trang and where in Trang are we? Nightmare and many swearie words ensued. Finally decided to draw a map as we walked to somewhere. 20 mins later, all our tasks done and 4.5 hrs still to wait in what must be 40 degrees. I think it's time to go back to wet and rainy Scotland but that's tomorrow's joy, meanwhile we traipse the streets of Trang!

(Wed 23 July, Bangkok) You'll be glad to know we made it back to the hotel, which was a miracle. We left Trang this morning and are now in a Bangkok hotel for the afternoon, eating, sleeping, blogging and bogging, ready for the long haul to London via Doha tonight. Trang was beautiful and we swam in the sea, ate nice food and slept but it's a bit remote for us. The 3 of us just wanted to be back in Mae Sot with our friends....

Mia culpa... who knows when we'll be all together again?

Well, this is a guest blog from Murray, who is feeling kind of bereft after the past week’s friendship and solidarity that only comes from a seemingly bottomless supply of toilet stories from Sheila – this should perhaps be renamed www.forthview.bogspot.com – and the deep connections we have consolidated with our Burmese friends, parting from whom was so moving and has left me humming incessantly:

“We’re all together now - we’re here, we’re here...”

I have been given a long list of complicated jobs to complete as a prelude to the first part of Forthview’s reciprocal visit in September, which will coincide with work involving five Edinburgh schools’ “Awards for All” initiative - something which was planned before “my retirement” out east to Chiang Mai.

Fortunately these tasks fit very well into the community capacity building remit of my voluntary work in Chiang Mai and the Thai-Burma border and plans to extend the training opportunities for Migrant Worker/Refugee Teachers including our Edinburgh partner schools, look like being met by Dr Thein Lwin in a programme of intensive training for teachers in the Mae Sot cluster in October.

Discussions about support for Migrant schools to register as Thai Ministry of Education Learning Centres funded by the International Labour Organisation are now underway, bringing together Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and potentially the British Council into a strategic plan, which would potentially safeguard the schools’, teachers’ and pupils’ futures.

Elsewhere today, the Nobel Women’s Initiative, established in 2006 by a group of women Nobel Peace Laureates, held a special seminar at Chiang Mai University, led by one of NWI’s founder members, Anti-landmines campaigner, Professor Jody Williams. International participants included the UNICEF goodwill ambassador and famous American actress Mia Farrow, Chinese labour rights activist Qing Zhang and Dr. Sima Samar former Vice-President of Afghanistan. Discussions at the seminar focussed on the political-rights crisis faced by women in both Burma and Thailand. Mia Farrow gave a very moving account of work UNICEF have undertaken in Darfur, showing children’s drawings of villages burning, soldiers shooting women and children – images almost identical to those drawn by Burmese children on the border.

There was video testimony by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, (herself a Nobel Peace Laureate whose house arrest was recently extended for another year) which was presented and discussed, as were the systematic violations of women’s rights, the crackdown on democracy activists and the ongoing violence in Burma. A background of the terrible ongoing situation in Burma was also presented, highlighting Aung San Suu Kyi’s situation, the regime’s criminal blockage of aid to cyclone Nargis survivors and the situation of refugees on Burma’s borders who are continuing to flee from persecution.

Much of the discussion was about collectivising individual actions and active citizenship and Murray had spoken earlier with the panel, giving them each a Forthview saffron ribbon and telling them about Forthview – and now Pirniehall’s – unique Global School’s partnership with our Burmese friends: school to school; teacher to teacher; pupil to pupil. They were so moved that they proudly wore the ribbons throughout the press call and afterwards once the event was over and they said they would wear them all this week when they too visit Mae Sot – another wee bit of international solidarity and awareness raising by Forthview pupils and BEST! Told you it would happen Sheila... and here’s the photo to prove it!