KO LYNN: FINDING A TEAM FOR DEVELOPMENT

Ko Lynn was a student at Wide Horizons (WH) from 2011 to 2012 and through his current job

he remains in very close contact with the program. “WH is like a cornerstone in my life that

affects everything I do”, he says. From grassroots work with a local organization in Thailand and

Eastern Myanmar, to plans for a new training center in Northern Myanmar, he has been

motivated by the time spent at WH.

Ko Lynn grew up in a village on the outskirts of Yangon in

Southern Myanmar, but when Cyclone Nargis hit the area in

the spring of 2008 his family had their lives uprooted; they

lost their home, as well as their business. Ko Lynn turned to

family he had in Umphiem refugee camp on the Thai-

Myanmar border and was able to get a job there as a teacher

at a camp-based high school. In 2011 he was accepted to

attend Wide Horizons (WH) in Mae Sot, Thailand. The WH

Program is a 10 month intensive study and field work course

in community development followed by a one year

internship with a Community Based Organization. The program brings in young adults from a

wide variety of ethnicities to live and work together while learning the skills to build community

services in a collaborative way. Since it was established in 2006, WH has trained hundreds of

young adults who are now community workers and leaders.

When Ko Lynn arrived at WH, he soon realized that the community development focus of the

program was just what he had been looking for. Today, he is the Program Assistant at the Khom

Loy Foundation, a local based grassroots

organization that does agriculture, livelihood

and small business projects in low-resource

migrant communities in and around Mae Sot.

Recently they have also started working in

Eastern Myanmar, where Ko Lynn is in charge

of several projects, among them one that

provides rural villages with interest free loans

over a five year period to start their own

businesses and use the profits to develop their communities, for example by building schools.

The villages are located in a remote part of Karen State and in order to reach the villages, he

has to trek through the jungle. “It’s real development, real change”, he says.

Looking back at his time at WH, he is able to see a

clear line between his time at WH and his

professional life today and the many skills from WH

that he and is using every day. In his opinion, the greatest skill he learned was the ability to

work with people of very different ethnic and cultural backgrounds as part of a team. “Before I

only used to work with and for myself, but at WH I learned that it is much better working as a

team – it’s not just what you can do, but what WE can do”, he says.

While Ko Lynn was a student at WH, the Khom Loy Foundation gave the students a financial

literacy training on how to manage households funds. Afterwards, the students had to give the

training themselves to a community of migrant women living

in the local landfill, where they make a living of collecting and

selling recyclable garbage. “It was one thing to do the training

in a classroom with four walls, but a lot more difficult to do

the same training under open sky, among piles of rubbish”, he

says. One year later, Ko Lynn was back at WH, but this time as

an intern with the Khom Loy Foundation and this time, he

was the one giving the financial literacy training to the

students. In this way, he has through his academic year, his

internship and now his job, managed to keep a strong

connection with WH and with several generations of

students. Currently, he is busy training the Khom Loy

Foundation’s new intern, a WH student from the 2013-14

academic year, for when it’s her turn to give the same

training later this year. However, according to Ko Lynn their shared experience helps a lot: “We

studied the same methods at WH and so we think in the same way”, he says.

In the future, Ko Lynn wants to open up a vocational training program to provide employment

for youth in Shan State in Northern Myanmar. “It will be a local version of WH”, he says. He has

created the plan for the project together with his fiancée, who is also a former WH student

from the same year as him. “Not only has WH provided me with knowledge and skills that have

been valuable in my professional life, but the program has also provided me with a life partner.

Her and I think alike, because we are both former WH students, which means we never fight”,

he says with a big smile.

For more information about Wide Horizons, contact: widehorizonsmaesot@gmail.com

or visit our page on Facebook (Wide Horizons, Community Development Program).

“It’s not just what you can do, but

what WE can do”