Macro govern and Micro action

As service learning, I visited a monastery in Shan State during the school camp. The monastery is supported by Mudita Foundation and carrying out a project which educate children.

This project has been started from 2 years ago and currently has 235 students, 150 of whom are sleeping together. In addition to educating local village children, it also protects children who are not safe due to economic hardship, conflict, and refugee damage. The children would gain the education and skills to live, and then they will be supported by the foundation until they find their jobs such as teachers in other facilities, craftsman, etc.

Most of buildings which are used as classrooms or sleeping rooms are made from the woods, bamboos and other materials from locals. Also, it was built by the local peoples to make jobs. Mudita foundation also let them aware about hygiene and safety, and innovation in the region.

The reason why we, International students, were gathered at is to create opportunity for children to contact with other worlds and to motivate local teachers.

While local employees are sleeping, children who are left play something. Moreover, the foundation follow the local monastery's systems. Hence, even if they can carry out the basement knowledge such as literacy by traditional education, their education has still not yet reached the learning to establish the way of thinking and concrete identity to live in the globalized world.

Project leader told us about current difficulty surrounding here. Situation seemed to be "landing around" or "cat-and-mouse game".

The facilities cannot be said to be enough such as unsatisfactory water supply and sewage systems, building with gap wind, unhygienic toilets, and so on. The village borrows electricity from other cities and cannot even turn on without permission. Many electronic devices such as personal computers are provided by the Foundation.

He also said to me, "Despite the project of removing the garbages mountain from a certain village and efforts to sweeping all of them by taking one year, garbages mountains were restored while he got back to his home countries in half year." Similarly, in other areas, I often hear about problems such as "Local people cannot sustain hygienic conditions even if a toilet is provided by developed countries and NGO because of less education and consciousness."

In order to maintain this facility, They need more than 4000 dollars per each month. Nevertheless, such foundation, based on donations, would continue to manage it regardlessly whether the local staff work or not. Their challenge is not only to provide these projects but also to sustain them.

The systems itself are immature but there are many children who hold their own dreams. One has a dream to be Engineer. I hope he would realise his dream.

Nonetheless, unfortunately, Businesses which deviate from economic benefits tend to be volatile and discontinuous. Now the professions they can choose are limited to those that the Foundation can provided. Even dreams are given from limited ones.

Of course it is important to provide needs to live by foundation, but the next step, how they will obtain their independency, should be considered.

By looking such kinds of micro problem surrounding micro action, we frequently want to see the issues from huge scale and try to solve them more essentially. However, if children are waiting for the development of the country which takes time from 5 to 10 years, their future in front of them will be closed.

There are no doubts that both are required.  It would be ideal if both wheels could cooperate, but I felt a big gap between people from overseas funds, and governments which holds conflict problems.