As my overview of
Burma was quite abbreviated, I would recommend getting a copy of Christina Finks book, “Living Silence”. Here you will find a much more complete analysis of the historical and contemporary situation in
Burma.
After our morning orientation, we traveled several hours to a tribal village in the border area. Here we visited with an AJWS partner, Hill Area and Community Development Foundation (HADF). HADF is one of over 300 civil society partners in 39 countries that are supported by AJWS. Currently, AJWS has more than 100,000 supporters and takes a grassroots/ holistic approach to it’s support of it’s grantees. Most of the projects deal with human rights service delivery, hunger, poverty, disease, and social justice through the efforts and support of the Jewish community. The activities of AJWS and it’s partners empowers people to make change in their lives and the lives of those in their communities. This is accomplished through a human rights lens and includes advocacy relating to the grantee’s work. HADF is one of 21 partners in Thailand and Burma, 6 of which are in Thailand and 15 in
Burma. The village that we visited and which HADF is located is high in the hills along the Thai-Burma border. The village residents are ethnic hill tribe people mostly belonging to the AKKA tribe. The area is very remote, mountainous, and is lush and thick jungle. A beautiful area on the surface but with many issues and problems inside. HADF programs center in the areas of education and advocacy, sustainable agriculture and environmental conservation, women’s empowerment, and health promotion. Many of the same ethnic groups live on both sides of the border. Due to the long standing situation in
Burma, many people have migrated over the border and settled in villages on the Thai side. Culturally the people are the same and they have historically welcomed these refugees. As the situation in
Burma has intensified, the number of refugees has increased dramatically and has become a burden on the already impoverished villages to which they have settled. HADF provides support for the hill tribes and collaborates with many NGO’s and government entities to promote community development, protection from harmful policies and sustaining of tribal culture. They do much work with the youth, who increasingly must move to the more urban areas in order to find work to support themselves and their families. HADF provides education to youth to prepare them as they migrate as human trafficking is common and in many cases they are taken advantage of and abused.
This was our first meeting with a project partner and was representative of all the partners that we visited in that they are all highly motivated, empowered, and dedicated to their work. It was very inspirational for me to see people living in what by western terms are “primitive” conditions and environment and how the leadership is accomplishing repair and change to their world. We were treated to a cultural exhibition of tribal costumes and dances as well as a tour of the village. We were fortunate to spend time in the home of a villager and were able to discuss with her through an interpreter her life and the life in her village. The attitude of the people is unbelievable. Our lives are so far from this…On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Golden Triangle, the intersection of Thailand, Burma, and
Laos.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 18:10 and is filed under Uncategorized.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.