Kilts and Longyis Ceilidh = £713

We had a splendid evening of Scottish Dance with many kilties, of Burmese food but only one longyi (well done Mary Ryan Gillespie!) on Friday night. Around 80 folk of all ages danced away and listened to stories from the Thai Burma border. We were a richly diverse group of folk, who had not met together before and that made for a really interesting and enjoyable evening.

Thank you to St James Church for use of their building, which was looking lovely. Thank you to all the Burmese and Scottish people who cooked such delicious food (apart from Sheila's mashed potato!). Thank you to everyone who bid so generously in Murray's auction of Burmese handcrafts.

Thanks to you all, we raised £713 for Hle Bee School.

Jesu Chin Barry!

Opening of OUR LIVES - again!

The 4th showing of the OUR LIVES exhibition was celebrated at its opening today in North Edinburgh Arts, Pennywell Court, Edinburgh. This is in Forthview's own community. The exhibition was organised by the P7s you can see standing in this photo. You can also see our Burmese visitor Kyaw Win speaking to everyone. He said that he will always remember this work. He translated the Scottish children's writing into Burmese and said it was really tricky because he didn't know what a Quiet Room was or a Feeling Book or Wrestling! You can also see Pirniehall Primary 7s and staff because they were our guests at the Opening. We would like to say a special thanks to Lisa at NEA for helping us so much and teaching us how to curate an exhibition.

P7 curate the OUR LIVES exhibition at North Edinburgh Arts

A committee of 6 P7 pupils are organising a showing of the OUR LIVES exhibition in their own community to co-incide with the visit of Kyaw Win, our Burmese exchange teacher and Murray Forgie, Director of BEST between 4 and 19 September 2008.

The children worked hard all morning with Ms Laing and Kyaw Win and Lisa from North Edinburgh Arts. It's not easy to prepare 78 pictures for exhibiting and the children were shocked at how tiring it is to curate an exhibition, as you can see.

The exhibition opens on Tuesday 9 September 2008 at 2.30pm in North Edinburgh Arts, Pennywell Court. Pop in and have a look.

And the end result (photograph taken on 8.9.08) shows Murray Forgie and Kyaw Win at the exhibition.

Kilts & Longyis Ceilidh

On Friday 12 September 2008, we are holding a Kilts & Longyis Scottish Burmese Ceilidh to raise funds for Hle Bee School.

Tickets are £5 on the door and include Burmese and Scottish food. The event is to be held at St James Church, Johns Place, Leith, Edinburgh from 7.30 - 10.30pm. As well as Scottish Dance, there will be brief reports from Scottish and Burmese people just back from the Thai Burma border.

We hope you can join us for what promises to be a great evening. Here's a map of St James, Leith.

Zin Zaw (see 23/7/08)

If you look back to the blog on 23 July 08, you will read the sad story of Zin Zaw, an able and delightful 14 year old learner who would have had to give up school to get a job if someone from Scotland hadn't offered to 'sponsor' her.

We heard today that the sister and brother in law she lives in a small corrugated iron shed with, were arrested by Thai police. "What happened to their little baby?" I cried out. "The little baby went to jail with the mother."

Can you imagine living like this?

However, a 'fine' was paid and they were all released some days later. If the 'fine' had not been paid they would have been deported to Myawaddy.

Meanwhile in Scotland we moan about our summer weather.......

Mia Farrow and Jody Williams visit Hle Bee School

We posted earlier that Murray Forgie had met Mia Farrow and Dr Jody Williams, the Nobel Womens' Initiative delegation who were in Thailand to investigate Burmese women's rights.


We only realised today that Mia Farrow and Dr Jody Williams visited Hle Bee School too and were delighted to find these photos on the internet of our dear friends with their very special visitors.

You can see more of the NWI trip on

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nobelwomensinitiative/page20/

Art Therapy after Cyclone Nargis

Claire Soper, International Unit Manager, City of Edinburgh Council sent us this link via blog comments and we thought you would be quite moved to see it.

In the weeks following Cyclone Nargis, Burma's military rulers refused to let foreigners into the devastated Irrawaddy Delta.
As a result much of the initial relief effort was left to smaller groups with a permanent presence there.
One such organisation - the Foundation for the People of Burma - managed to mobilise about 300 people.
The workers noticed the children were "listless and in need of playful outlets" - so they gave them crayons and pencils and encouraged them to draw.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/08/asia_pac_sketching_burma0s_cyclone/html/1.stm

Thank you Claire.