Pyae Sone Kyaw had forgotten about the joys of childhood. Dreams of the future were lost on him. Instead, Pyae Sone Kyaw did everything he could for today – his only goal was to take care of his little sister and HIV infected mother. Every day, at just six in the morning, Pyae Sone Kyaw jumped out of bed and started his day. Leaving his tiny house in the urban slum area in a rush, Pyae Sone Kyaw scurried to catch the early bus. While other children his age headed to school, Pyae Sone Kyaw headed to work. Once in Yangon city, Pyae Sone Kyaw, whose body is quite small for a 13-year-old boy, hurried around the market where all kinds of vegetables, fruits and flowers are sold. He offered his labour to some of the vendors, hoping to

earn some money by helping with an odd job or two. All day, Pyae Sone Kyaw stayed at the market. When it closed at 7pm, Pyae Sone Kyaw collected recyclable materials – bottles, cans and cardboard - so that he could get extra money by selling them. Only once he had cash in his hand, he could return home. Often when he returned home, it was already 9pm. This was the daily routine of the little boy. There was no other option for him.“I’ve finished Grade 4. When my father died, I decided to stop schooling. I wanted to go to school like my friends, but I needed to help my mother. She’s ill and it’s not easy for her to work. I didn’t want to see my mother working exhaustedly even though her body is too weak to work.

‘‘I have a dream now!”The early morning bus was jam packed. As it heaved towards Yangon city, 13-year-old Pyae

Sone Kyaw huddled among the crowd. He was not heading to school, like most children his age. Instead, his target was a big wholesale market. There, Pyae Sone Kyaw planned on earning enough money to provide for his family’s daily needs.

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Tharlikar 2

Features

That’s why I left school and start working in this market,” Pyae Sone Kyaw explains. Pyae Sone Kyaw worked at Thirimingalar wet market, a place with a lot of family history. His father and mother used to sell seasonal fruits there when he was little. When his father, U Win Naing, was infected with HIV and died at the age of 36, his mother continued selling fruits to feed and educate her children. However, Daw Mee Nge’s strength for her children is torn when she frighteningly realised that her husband left the deadly disease with her. Since then, Pyae Sone Kyaw has become the family’s breadwinner. “I was very ill and had to stay in the bed. I am very sad to see my son working for the whole family at a very young age and I couldn’t do anything for him as a mother. There’s no one to help us. We were very helpless. At that time, another problem came. We needed to pay for the rent. We needed to pay 100,000 kyats [ 120 US dollars] for six months’ rent. How can we pay that amount of money when we struggled to have daily meals? We had no place to stay and nowhere to go, so we stayed in the market,” Daw Mee Nge says as she recalls the darkest days of her life.“I don’t like staying in the market. It’s terrible. When it rains at night, we have to move from one place to

another not to be wet and can’t sleep at all. Sometimes, in the middle of night, we have to hide as the watchman patrols around the market. Once, our clothes were stolen,” Pyae Sone Kyaw adds to what his mother said.While staying in the market, Pyae Sone Kyaw became friends with children who staying in the street and working like him. Pyae Sone Kyaw became very interested by a place his friends went to study. Through his friends, he met World Vision staff from the street and working children centre near Thirimingalar market. Pyae Sone Kyaw was invited to join the non-formal education class.“World Vision staff came to the market and spoke to us. Then they invited us to visit the drop-in centre where we can learn, play and have meals. I was so happy and excited to go to the centre with my friends and learn reading, and writing. World Vision staff is really kind,” Pyae Sone Kyaw says.After his family stayed hiding in the market at night for seven months, Pyae Sone Kyaw’s desire was fulfilled. World Vision helped his family rent a house for six months. Now, his daily routine has changed. In the morning, he helps at a flower shop and then comes to the centre at 9am. He enjoys studying at non-formal education classes with his friends. After having the lunch at the centre, Pyae Sone Kyaw goes to a second job at a salted fish shop and work until 5pm. “Before, I had to go around the market the whole day to earn some money. Now, I have a job and help selling salted fish. With my wages, the shop owner gives me some salted fish every day. My mother sells the salted fish I get, so we earn about 3000 kyats [4 US dollars] a day. When a lot of salted fish are sold, the shop owner gives me 1500 kyats [2 US dollars] as pocket money. I work honestly. I never cheat or steal. I just take what they give me,” Pyae Soen Kyaw says, expressing his honesty from his heart.His mother, Daw Mee Nge has received anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and is feeling much healthier. She is really grateful to World Vision for helping her family. “I felt I was alone and there’s no one to help me. But I’m now really happy to know that World Vision cares. I’m very grateful to World Vision for encouraging me and giving me strength to hold on my hope. I’m now selling the salted fish and saving some part of the profits so that I can pay for the rent for next six months. I’m happy that I can send my daughter to school again and very pleased to see she’s studying in Grade 1,” she smiles.Pyae Sone Kyaw, who never thinks about his future before, now has a dream. “I will work hard and try my best to take care of my mother and my sister. In all honesty, I will work hard. When I earn more money, I will let my mother stay at home. I want my sister to be educated. I will support her education. I wish for my mother and my sister to be healthy and that we can stay together for a long time. Things are getting better now. I’m sure our future will be better,” he says with a light of hope in his eyes.

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A tool of changing lives

Since she has witnessed the knowledge she got through the discussions has transformed her life and her family, Htwe Htwe Yee becomes the one who never fails at the discussions and who encourages the people in her community to join the discussions.The 31-year-old, mother of two, lives in 13 ward, Ote Set which is one of the target areas of Aungmyaythazan Area Development Programme, Mandalay. Htwe Htwe Yee’s husband, San Lwin works as a labourer with daily wages. Her seven-year-old daughter is studying in grade two. Htwe Htwe Yee spends most of her time at home doing house chores while looking after her 22-month-old daughter.“Majority of our community is odd job workers and we all are struggle for daily living. We don’t have much knowledge about health and hygiene practices. I didn’t understand the importance of immunisation and was afraid to get immunisation for my children. We simply relied on homely remedies when children became ill. And we didn’t feed much food to the children when they were ill as we thought that fever runs high by eating food,” Htwe Htwe Yee who used to give the bark-paste of Indian almond tree when her children got diarrhoea recalls.

ေျပာငးလျခငးအတြက အစြမးထကလကနက

အမအလပေတြ ၿပးတာန႔ အစညးေဝးက အခနမ တကႏငဖ႔ မေထြးေထြးရတစေယာက အမကေန ကပာကယာ ထြကလာ

ပါတယ။ ေဝါလဗရငရ႕ အျပအမေျပာငးလျခငးဆငရာ ပညာေပးေဆြးေႏြးပြ ျပလပမယေနရာက သြားတလမးတေလာကက အမနးနားခငးေတြရ႕ အမေတြကဝငၿပး ေဆြးေႏြးပြတကဖ႔ တအမတကဆငးန႔ မေထြးေထြးရ လကလေဆာၾသေနပါတယ။ဒေဆြးေႏြးပြေတြက ရတ အသပညာေတြေၾကာင သမန႔ သမ မသားစ ဘဝထမာ ေျပာငးလမႈေတြက လကေတြ႔ခစားရတ မေထြးေထြးရဟာ ေဆြးေႏြးပြမနသမက မပကမကြက တကသလ၊ ပတဝနးကငက လေတြ ကလညး သမန႔အတ ပါဝငဖ႔ အၿမ တကတြနးတသပါ။ကေလးႏစေယာကမခငျဖစသ အသက ၃၁ႏစအရြယ မေထြးေထြးရဟာ မႏ ေလးၿမ႕ ေအာငေျမသာဇစမခကအတြငးက အတစက၊ ၁၃ ရပကြက မာ ေနထငပါတယ။ ခငပြနးျဖစသ ကစနးလြငက ကနတငကနခ ေန႔စား အလပသမားတစေယာကပါ။ သမရ႕ အသက ခနစႏစအရြယ သမးႀကး ျဖစသက ဒတယတနးတကေနပါတယ။ မေထြးေထြးရက အမမႈကစၥက လပကငရငး တဖကကလညး သမရ႕ ႏစ ႏစအရြယ သမးးငယေလးက ၾကညရႈျပစပါတယ။

After doing house work, Htwe Htwe Yee rushes out from her little house to be

on time at the discussions. On her way to the gathering place where World Vision staff conducts Behaviour Change Communications discussions, Htwe Htwe Yee knocks on her neighbours’ doors and persuades them to join her.

Htwe Htwe Yee said her children became ill often because of the lack of health knowledge. “I was so sad and worried when my girls got ill. But one day, I was invited to attend maternal and child health behaviour change discussions. I’ve never attend those kind of discussions before. At that time, my younger daughter was sick. I thought I could get some help from those discussions and I went to attend. That day has changed my life,” says Htwe Htwe Yee.Htwe Htwe Yee who practices the hygiene practices that she has learnt from behaviour changed discussions witnesses those practices help her children healthier. She eagerly shares what she has learnt to her husband, her relatives and her neighbours. “The behaviour change discussions have opened my eyes. It’s really essential for mothers like me. I attend every discussion and gain a lot of knowledge. And my life style has changed and I’m now practicing the hygiene knowledge and practices that I’ve learnt. I gave oral rehydration solution to my kids when they got diarrhoea. I don’t use homely remedies anymore. I take my children to the doctor when they are ill. I give them nutritious food so that they recover fast when they get sick. My husband encourages me to go to the discussions. The knowledge I get changes my life and my family,” with excitement, Htwe Htwe Yee says.“Moreover, I also learn how to cook nutrition food with little money and how to use money systematically. I save 200 kyats (25 cents) per day. As I can save some money, it helps a lot in days like my husband doesn’t have job. I don’t need to borrow money from others. Before, I gave 400 kyats (48 cents) to my elder daughter as a pocket money when she goes to school. Now I explain her how to use money wisely, she doesn’t ask pocket money much and eat meals well at home. I’ll do some savings for my daughters’ education. I’m so grateful for getting these knowledge from the discussions. And I want to encourage everyone to attend the discussions and practice what you have learnt. It will change your life,” says Htwe Htwe Yee with a smile.

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The other usual scene at the Yangon train station is the children who are not accompanied by adults. For those children, the Yangon train station is their survival field. Children in dirty clothes go up and down and look for the water bottles left by the travellers. Phyo was one of those children. It was not easy for Phyo to collect enough bottles which could help him provide two meals. There are more competitors these days. This is one of the ways of street children in Yangon city survive. Phyo is from Seik Kyi Khanaungdo, a little town that is a one hour boat ride from Yangon. After a boat ride, Phyo still needs to walk 90 minutes to reach the village where his family lives. Phyo’s father, U Kyaw Thura and

Home sweet home

Yangon train station is busy as usual. People rush to catch the train. Some are waiting for

the next train to come into the station and stand in half sleep. Some read but cannot fully enjoy the material before them as they need to look around vigilantly to make sure their belongings are safe. Some pass their time chatting to fellow travellers while listening to the call for their train. All the while, street vendors go around the station with different kinds of snacks and sweets.

his mother, Daw Maw, carry water from hand pump well, goes around the neighbourhood the whole day and sell small items to earn 2,000 kyats (2 US dollars). Daw Maw also washed clothes in his neighbourhood to earn extra money to look after her four children. However, their income barely met the family’s basic needs. Family financial problem forced Phyo’s older sister to leave school after primary school. Hnin, 17, was now working at a fabric shop and supporting her family financially.It was Phyo’s turn now. He left school after Grade 5 so that his two younger sisters could continue their educations. Then Phyo worked at a restaurant as a waiter to be able to help his family. “I get 15,000 kyats [18 US dollars] per month. The restaurant’s owner beat me when I made a mistake. He cuts my salary as well. So I quit after working there for a year,” he says.After quitting the job, Phyo followed his father and helped him carry water and sold things. Carrying two full buckets of water with a yoke was not easy for Phyo who wore a cap and a thick layer of Thanakha (a traditional sunscreen) on his face to protect himself from getting a sunburnt while he was working. The family’s situation was getting worse when Phyo’s father had a stroke and had to stop working. The 15-year-old boy who wanted to help his family followed his friend’s plan and went with his friend to Yangon to search for jobs.“I didn’t want to stay at home as my sister sometimes complained about me being jobless. At that time, my friend, Nyi Nyi planned to go to Yangon and he told me that I could also get a job in Yangon. I decided to go with him,” Phyo recalls.As he could not get a job, Phyo roamed around the city. He spent his day time at the station collecting plastic bottles and his evenings at Thiriminglar wholesale market where all kinds of fruits, flower and vegetables are sold offering his labour to be able to earn some money. “I felt scared and sad. I missed home. At home, I slept soundly and warmly. I don’t like sleeping on the streets,” he shares.After roaming on the streets and struggling for his survival for more than a month, Phyo met with World Vision staff from the Street and Working children drop-in centre. “World Vision staff invited me to come to the drop-in centre and asked about my family. Then, she said she could help me if I wanted to go home. As I realised home was the best place, I decide to go home,” Phyo says.“When my son left home, I tried searching for him. As I heard he left with his friend, I thought he might go to the city. But I needed to work while taking care of my ill husband and couldn’t go to Yangon to search for him. I’m really grateful to World Vision staff for taking care of him and bringing him home. If World Vision staff hadn’t found him, he might have been recruited into the army. I

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Saving top soil

“I’ve stopped losing my top soil,” says Hawng Suan Mung, who is using World

Vision’s SALT, for farming.

“The best result is I no longer need to move to a new place to grow my crops every five years,” says the 46-year-old farmer.The communities of Mual Lum village have used traditional farming methods since the beginning of time. Recklessly, and ignorant of the consequences of their actions, they cleared the forests to grow crops. But their crops are no longer successful because of topsoil erosion. Worse, their shifting cultivation has resulted in massive deforestation. “Like our forefathers did, we moved from one place to another to grow our crops. We cut down trees and grew crops. After every five years, we needed to search for new soil because our harvest reduced. But, we didn’t realise that it was because of soil erosion,” says Hawng Suan Mung, a community development group leader. To preserve the forests, stop soil erosion and assist farmers to improve their yields, World Vision introduced sloping agricultural land technology (SALT) to the communities. In the SALT method, permanent crops grow in between contoured rows of permanent shrubs and nitrogen fixing trees that help to enrich the soil and control soil erosion.“We stopped cutting down the trees. Now 43 out of 90 households in our village are using the SALT method for farming, but families who don’t own their land can’t start this permanent cultivation,” said Hawng Suan Mung.World Vision supported the technique by providing farming materials, nitrogen fixing trees, and permanent shrubs for SALT farmers. Each family also received good quality corn seeds, potatoes, garlic and onions.Experienced 61-year-old farmer, Dam Zam Go, has been using SALT for four years. “Using SALT saves us a lot of time. In shifting cultivation, we

cut down trees in September and burned them in March or April. Then, we could only start growing crops in May. Another effect of SALT method is the fact the soil becomes enriched as we grow the nitrogen fixing trees,” he said enthusiastically.“This year, I’m grateful to World Vision for providing good corn seeds for each family. Our corn is successful. We like to use SALT because we can grow permanent crops in one place. But, we do need fencing to protect it from the animals. Unfortunately, at the moment we can’t afford fencing,” he added.As the crops are successful, the communities have enough food for their families. “We really hope that we can lift our children’s education in

the future as our cultivations become more successful. In our village school, children can only study up to grade seven, so children need to go to Tiddim for high school. My daughter has to leave school because I cannot afford her Tiddim school fees, travel and accommodation” said Dam Zam Go.“I really want to continue my education. But it’s impossible for me to study at Tiddim. It costs 300,00 kyats (US$ 300) for a school year,” said Luan Sian Huai, 15, who has finished grade eight. The children and families hope successful crops will help them lift their living standard so they can afford to educate their children in the future.

ေျမဆလႊာက ထနးသမးႏငဖ႔

“ေျမဆလႊာေတြ မဆးရႈးေအာင ကၽြနေတာလပႏငခပါတယ” လ႔ ေဝါလဗရငရ႕ ပပးမႈန႔ ေတာငေစာငးစကပးနညးစနစက အသးျပေနတ ဟနစြမးမာနက ေျပာပါတယ။

“ဒစနစက သးတအတြက ငါးႏစတခါ ေတာငယာေရႊ႕ေျပာငးဖ႔ မလေတာဘး” လ႔ အသက ၄၆ ႏစ အရြယ ေတာငယာလပငနးလပကငတ ဟနစြမးမာနက ေျပာခတယ။ေမြလြနးရြာမာ ေနထငၾကသေတြအေနန႔ ဘးစငေဘာငဆကက သးလာတ စကပးနညးစနစကသာ သးခၾကပါတယ။ ေနာကျဖစမယ ဆးကးေတြက မသဘ လပရးလပစဥအေနန႔ သးႏေတြစကဖ႔ ေတာေတြက ခတတယ။ ဒါေပမယ အေပၚယေျမဆလႊာ ျပနးတးလာတအတြက သတ႔ရ႕ သးႏေတြ မေအာငျမငေတာဘး။ အဆးဆးကေတာ ငါးႏစတခါ ေတာငယာက ေရႊ႕ေျပာငးတအတြက သစ ေတာ ျပနးတးမႈ ျဖစေပၚေစတယ။“ဘးဘြားေတြ လပခသလပ၊ ကၽြနေတာတ႔လညး တစေနရာကေန ေနာကတစေနရာေရႊ႕ျပး၊ သစပင ေတြကခတ၊ ၿပးမ သးႏေတြစကတယ။ တျဖညးျဖညးန႔ အထြကႏႈနးကနညးလာေတာ ငါးႏစတစခါ ေနရာသစရာရတယ။ ဒါေပမယ အဒါ အေပၚယေျမဆလႊာေတြ ျပနးတးလ႔ျဖစတယဆတာက ကၽြန ေတာတ႔ နားမလညခၾကဘး” လ႔ ရပရြာဖြ႕ျဖးေရးအဖြ႕ေခါငးေဆာငတစဥးလညးျဖစတ ဟနစြမးမာန က ေျပာခတယ။

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Zin Zin Khaing waits for her parents’ return while she is playing with her younger sister, Kyaw Kyaw May. Her stomach growls and she knows her fi ve-year-old sister feels the same. They

can only have the meals when their parents come back home with little money in their hand.

Livelihood programme makes Zin realize Livelihood programme makes Zin realize her dreamher dream

The nine-year-old girl knows the bitterness of hunger. Zin Zin Khaing and her family live in Na Ywe Taw village, 33 kilometres away from Chauk, a desert like town in the central area of Myanmar. The drought and erratic rainfall has caused crops to fail. Climate change and drought caused by deforestation have made the area vulnerable to desertification. A majority of the communities are very poor and children are not able to access the basic needs, like proper health care and education. Water, sanitation, hygiene are the common issues in the areas and children are vulnerable to the preventable diseases and malnutrition.Zin Zin Khaing’s parents are odd job workers. They work in others’ farms as daily wage workers, and they normally earn 500 kyats (60 US cents) for working in the farm for the whole morning. Zin Zin Khaing, her parents, her younger sister and her twin baby brothers live in a small hut with the roof and walls built from dry palm leaves. Both of the parents work, but income is barely enough for the food. “It was the most difficult time in our family. Sometimes, we didn’t have enough

money to buy rice, so we boiled the broken rice and eat. We had to skip the meals two or three days in every week,” says Daw Khin Cho Win, Zin Zin Khaing’s mother.“I had to work in the farm with my husband when I was expecting my twin. As I could not have nutritious meals when I was pregnant with the twin, my sons were weak and small. After delivering the twin, I could not stay at home with them as I had to work in the farm. I had to leave them at my mother’s place. I know it’s not good for them, and it’s important to breastfeed them, but I had no choice. I earn very little, but with that little money I can buy some broken rice for our family and it soothed the empty stomachs of my children,” the 25-year-old mother recalls.Meanwhile, Zin Zin Khaing became very ill. “She was very weak. We don’t have money to go to the doctor. Unless World Vision helps us, we might lose her,” Daw Khin Cho Win shares. World Vision provided medical expenses until Zin Zin Khaing fully recovered.To improve the family’s livelihood, World Vision provides a cow and a calf.“We can get some extra money by

hiring the cow to work in the field. We also earn some money by selling cow’s waste. Now I’m staying at home and taking care of my children while my husband is working in the farm. World Vision also provides blended food for the twin and rice 10 kilograms each for my two daughters who are studying at primary school. Now I can look after my sons very well at home and they even gain weight. I’m really happy as everything is getting better in our family,” she says with hope in her voice.“The cow is going to breed a calf soon. We plan to build a proper house after selling two calves. Breeding cows not only helps to improve the family’s livelihood, but also increase family’s income. We are really grateful for helping our family and making our children’s future better,” says U Thein Zaw, 26-year-old father, with a smile.Zin Zin Khaing who is playing with the stickers, presents from her sponsors, with her sister and brothers, says it is very good to have her mother at home. “Before, my mother had to work in the farm with my father. I had to look after my brothers and sisters. We can only have meals when my parents back. Sometimes, we had to go to bed with hunger. We now have meals

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on time as my mother is at home. I help my mother to collect water,” she says. “I’m thankful to World Vision for giving us the cows. I was worried my parents couldn’t afford to send me to school. But now, everything is getting better and my father promised me that he would send me to school every year,” Zin Zin Khiang who wants to become a teacher shares enthusiastically.“We are very thankful to Tracy who sends us the stickers. We haven’t seen each other, but she writes to us and encourages us. Thanks her for that. She is really kind,” Kyaw Kyaw May says.

can’t even tell you how I felt when I saw my son’s face. I never forgot that day. It rained heavily and I heard my son’s voice calling mother. I jumped up from where I sat and hugged him tightly. I’m so happy and thankful my son came home safely,” Daw Maw says while wiping the tears from her eyes.World Vision supported the family to start a small business, selling groceries. The sound of joy fills Daw Maw’s home again as her son returns home and her husband recovers. Phyo realises home is the best place for him. “I will never ever run away from home again,” he says. “I will help my mother selling groceries. As World Vision staff said, I will go back to school if we can save some money by selling groceries. If it is not possible for me to go back to school, I will learn a vocational skill like repairing cars. And I want to tell the youths not to run away from home as the street life is not good for you.”

သစေတာေတြက ထနးသမးဖ႔၊ ေျမဆလႊာ မျပနးတးေအာငကာကြယႏငဖ႔န႔ သးနအထြကႏႈနးတးလာဖ႔အတြက ေဝါလဗရငအေနန႔ ေတာငေစာငး စကပးနညးစနစန႔ ရပရြာလထက မတဆကေပးခတယ။ ေတာငေစာငး စကပးနညးစနစမာ ေရႊ႕ေျပာငးဖ႔မလပ တစေနရာထမာပ သးနေတြက စကပးႏငသလ၊ ေျမဆလႊာက ထနးသမးတအပငေတြက သးနေတြန႔ အတ စကပးထားတအတြက ေျမဆလႊာေကာငးေစသလ၊ ေျမဆျပနးတးမႈ ကလညး ကာကြယေပးပါတယ။“ခဆ ကၽြနေတာတ႔ သစပငေတြ မခတေတာဘး။ ကၽြနေတာတ႔ရြာက အမေထာငစ ၉၀ မာ အမေထာငစ ၄၃ စက ဒနညးစနစက သးေနၾကတယ။ ကနတမသားစေတြက သတ႔မာ ေျမပငမရတအတြက တစေနရာထမာ အေျခခ စကပးတာက လပလ႔မရေသးဘး” လ႔ ဟနစြမးမာနက ရငးျပပါ တယ။ေဝါလဗရငအေနန႔ ေတာငေစာငးစကပးနညးပညာန႔အတ ေတာငယာ အတြက လအပတ ပစၥညးမား၊ ေျမဆထနးသမးတအပငေတြက ပပးေပး ပါတယ။ ဒါအျပင မသားစတငးအတြက အရညေသြးျမင ေျပာငးမး၊ အာ လး၊ ၾကကသြနျဖ၊ ၾကကသြနန မးေတြကပါ ပပးခတယ။ေတာငေစာငးစကပးနညးစနစက ေလးႏစၾကာအသးျပလာခတ အသက ၆၁ ႏစအရြယ ဥးဒနဇမဂ က “ဒနညးသးေတာ အရမးအခနကန သကသာ တယ။ အရငက ေရႊ႕ေျပာငးေတာငယာမာ စကတငဘာေရာကတာန႔ ေတာ ေတြက ခတရတယ။ မတ၊ ဧၿပေရာကတာန႔ မးရႈ႕၊ ေမလေရာကမ သးနေတြ စစကလ႔ရတယ။ ေတာငေစာငးစကနညးမာ ေကာငးတာတစခက ေျမဆ လႊာထနးတအပငေတြက ေတာငယာမာ တခါထ စကထားလ႔ ေျမဆ ေကာငးေတာ သးႏေကာငးေကာငးထြကတယ” လ႔ သက စတအားထက သနစြာန႔ ရငးျပပါတယ။“ဒႏစမာ မသားစေတြအားလးက ေျပာငးမးေတြေပးလ႔ ေဝါလဗရငက ေကးဇးတငပါတယ။ ဒႏစေျပာငးစကတာ ေအာငျမငတယ။ ဘယမေျပာငး ဖ႔မလပ တစေနရာထမာစကလ႔ရလ႔ ေတာငေစာငးနညးက ကၽြန ေတာတ႔ ၾကကတယ။ ဒါေပမ ကၽြနေတာတ႔ ေတာငယာေတြက တရစ ၦာနေတြရနက ကာကြယႏငဖ႔ ၿခခတဖ႔ေတာလေနတယ။ ေလာေလာဆယေတာ ၿခခတဖ႔ မတတႏငေသးဘး” လ႔သကေျပာခပါတယ။သးႏေတြေအာငျမငတအတြက၊ မသားစေတြအတြက စားနပရကၡာ ဖလ လာပါတယ။ “ကၽြနေတာတ႔ ေတာငယာလပငနးေအာငျမငလာေတာ က ေလးေတြပညာေရးက ပေကာငးေအာငလပေပးႏငမယလ႔ ေမာလငပါ တယ။ ရြာကေကာငးမာ၊ ခနစတနးအထပ သငလ႔ရတယ။ အထကတနး တကဖ႔ ကေလးေတြက တးတနကသြားရတယ။ တးတနကသြားဖ႔စရတ၊ ေနဖ႔၊ စားဖ႔န႔ ေကာငးစရတမတတႏငလ႔ ကၽြနေတာသမးက ေကာငးထြက လကရတယ” လ႔ ဥးဒနဇမဂ က ေျပာျပခပါတယ။“သမး ေကာငးဆကတကခငပါတယ။ တးတနမာေကာငးတကဖ႔က တစ ႏစက သးသနးေလာကကနမာဆေတာ ဘယလမ မတတႏငပါဘး” လ႔ ရစတနးန႔ ေကာငးထြကထားရတ အသက ၁၅ႏစအရြယ လြနရန ဟြနက ေျပာခပါတယ။မသားစေတြ၊ ကေလးေတြအေနန႔ သတ႔ရ႕ လေနမႈ အဆငအတနးျမငလာ ဖ႔န႔ ကေလးေတြရ႕ အနာဂတ ပညာေရးအတြက သးႏေတြ အထြကတး ေအာငျမငဖ႔ကပ ေမာလငဆေတာငးေနၾကပါတယ။

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Tharlikar 8

Photo Story

Faster and BetterFarmers from Maung Hnama Gone village, one of the target villages of Tharbaung area development programme, are using threshing machine for better agriculture production. Previously, most of the farmers in the community had to do threshing by hand as they could not afford to hire a machine. “By providing threshing machines to farmer groups in the village, expense for hiring machine reduced and delaying of threshing by waiting their turn deprived,” explains Pyae Phyo Aung, a community development facilitator from World Vision.

Nutritious meals for childrenTharbaung area development programme conducts nutritious food cooking demonstration sessions for parents. Due to the lack of knowledge and less daily income, most children were not fed nutritious food. This is one of the reasons why children are in malnourished condition. Moreover, most of the mothers didn’t know how to cook food which includes three groups of nutrition within the amount of money they can afford. Through the cooking demonstration sessions, mothers learn about the nutrition, food groups and its role in the well-being of children. “We didn’t know about the food groups before. And we didn’t know it’s very important to feed the children nutritious food when they are under-five. We are happy to get the knowledge,” says one of the mothers who participate in the programme.

သာေပါငးစမခကထက ေမာငႏမကနးရြာမာရတ လယသမားေတြဟာ ဆနစပါး ပမ ထတလပႏငဖ႔အတြက စကန႔ ေျခြေလ႕တနညးက အသးျပေနျပ ျဖစပါတယ။ ယခငက၊ လယသမားအမားစဟာ စကငားဖ႔ မတတႏငတအတြက လကန႔သာ ေျခြေလ႕ခရပါတယ။ “ရြာမာရတ လယသမားအဖြ႔ေတြက ေျခြေလ႕စက ပပးေပးတအတြက စကငားရတစရတလညး သကသာသြားတယ၊ ေျခြေလ႕စကက အလညက ေစာငရတ အခနကနတ ျပနာလညး ေျပလညသြားတယ” လ႔ ေဝါလဗရင သာေပါငးရ႕ ရပရြာဖြ႕ၿဖးေရးတာဝနခ ျပညၿဖးေအာငက ေျပာခပါတယ။

သာေပါငး စမခကအတြငးမာ မဘေတြအတြက အာဟာရျပညစြာခကျပတနညးသရပျပအစအစဥက ျပလပခပါတယ။ ကနးမာေရးအသပညာ နညးပါးမႈန႔ ဝငေငြနညးပါးမႈတ႔ေၾကာင၊ ကေလး အမားစဟာ အာဟာရျပညျပညဝဝ မစားၾကရပါ ဘး။ ဒါဟာ ကေလးေတြ အာဟာရခ႕တရတ အေၾကာငးရငးေတြက အေၾကာငးရငး တစခလညး ျဖစပါတယ။ ဒါအျပင မခငအမားစဟာ သတ႔ တတႏငတ ေငြပမာဏအတြငးမာ အာဟာရအပစ သးခလးက အစာေတြပါေအာင ဘယလခကျပတ ရမယဆတာက မသခၾကပါဘး။ ဒအာဟာရ ျပညစြာခကျပတနညး သရပျပအစအစဥကေန တစဆင မခငေတြအေနန႔ အာဟာရအေၾကာငး၊ အစာ အပစသးစအေၾကာငး၊ ကေလးေတြ ကနးမာ ဖြ႕ၿဖးဖ႔အတြက အာဟာရရ႕ အေရးပါပေတြက သရလာခၾကပါတယ။ “အရငက ကၽြနမတ႔ အစာ အပစ ေတြအေၾကာငးလညး မသခပါဘး။ အသက ငါးႏစေအာကကေလးေတြက အာဟာရ ျပညဝ ေအာင ေကၽြးဖ႔ အရမးအေရးႀကးတယဆတာ လညး မသခပါဘး။ ခလ အသပညာေတြ ရတာ အရမးဝမးသာပါတယ” လ႔ အစအစဥမာ ပါဝငခတ မခငတစဥးက ေျပာခပါတယ။

9 Tharlikar

Photo Story

Snacking the futurePhyu Thi enjoys and also satisfies attending the traditional snack-making training organized by World Vision. “ After attending World Vision training, I can help my mom more effectively,” says Phyu, 16, whose mom is running a small snack shop. “Such kind of training is really needed and I feel that together with World Vision we can build better future.”

Young mechanics see good profit“I am now confident to run my own motorcycle workshop,” says Hein, 17, a drop out from high school. “The opportunity is high with improved road access and more motorbikes in the town. I can have decent income even I could not finish high school.” Hein is one of 23 youngsters, who joined World Vision facilitated vocational training in March, 2013.The Bogale ADP organized several vocational trainings, including motorbike repairing and snack-making, as requested by local communities, who are worried about the future of their children. All the young people participated in the training are selected by their own community members, based on their own established criteria.

ေဝါလဗရငရ႕ အသကေမြးဝမးေကာငး အစအစဥတစချဖစတ မန႔မးစလပနညး သငတနးက တကရတအတြက ျဖသ အေနန႔ ေပာရႊငေကနပ လကရပါတယ။ “ဒသငတနးၿပးရင အေမက ပၿပး ကည ႏငမာပါ” လ႔ မန႔ဆငဖြငထားတ မခင ျဖစသက ကညခငတ အသက ၁၆ႏစ အရြယ ျဖသက ေျပာပါတယ။ “ဒလ သငတနး ေတြက သမးတ႔အတြက အရမး အကးရပါတယ။ ေဝါလဗရငန႔အတ လကတြၿပး သမးတ႔ အနာဂတက ပေကာငး ေအာငဖနတးႏငမယလ႔ ေမာလငပါတယ” လ႔သမက ျဖညစြက ေျပာခပါတယ။

“ကၽြနေတာ ခ ကယပင ဆငကယျပငဆငဖြငဖ႔ အဆငသငျဖစပါျပ” လ႔ ပညာတစပငးတစစန႔ ေကာငးထြကခရတ အသက ၁၇ႏစအရြယ ဟနး က ေျပာပါတယ။ “ခ လမးေတြလညးေကာငးလာေတာ ၿမ႕ထမာ ဆငကယေတြလညးမားလာလ႔ လပငနးအဆငေျပဖ႔ အေျခအေနရပါတယ။ အထကတနး မၿပးေပမယ ကၽြနေတာ ပမန ဝငေငြေလးတစခေတာ ရႏငပါၿပ။” လ႔ ေျပာခတ ဟနးဟာ ၂၀၁၃ ခႏစ မတလ ထမာ ျပလပခတ ေဝါလဗရငရ႕ အသကေမြး ဝမးေကာငးသငတနးမာ တကေရာကခတ လငယ၂၃ ဥးထက တစဥးျဖစပါတယ။ မမတ႔ ကေလးေတြရ႕ အနာဂတအတြက စးရမပပနေနတ႔ ရပရြာလထရ႕ တငျပလာတ လအပခကအရ ဘကေလးစမခကအေနန႔ ဆငကယ ျပျပင တ သငတနးအျပင၊ မန႕မးစလပနညးသငတနးစတ အသကေမြးဝမးေကာငးသငတနးေတြက ျပလပေပးခပါတယ။ ရပရြာလထကပ သငတနးတကဖ႔ အတြက လငယေတြက သတ႔ရ႕ သတမတခကမားအရ ကယတငေရြးခယေပးခတာျဖစပါတယ။

Tharlikar 10

Photo Story

Health Education sessions raise awareness on the preventable diseases which are commonly seen in the area and equip Hlaingtharya community with the health knowledge and hygiene practices. Before, a lot of people in the neighbourhood rely on homely remedies. Through the group discussions, people learn about the signs of diarrhoea, tuberculosis, dengue fever and how to prevent those diseases. World Vision volunteer, Ma Win Mar, who conducts health education sessions in Ward

20 of Hlaingtharya Township said tuberculosis is quite common in the area. “After attending the health education sessions, people aware of the signs and symptoms of tuberculosis. They realise it’s curable and it’s important to get treatment,” says Ma Win Mar who is sharing health knowledge in the community.

Reading timeThawdar Oo, one of World Vision’s sponsored children loves reading and singing. She shares about the library that World Vision set up in 2008 in ward 20 of Hlaingtharya Township enthusiastically. “Monthly fee is just 200 kyats ( 24 cents of USD) so children can afford it. They can easily pay that amount out of their pocket money. They can borrow up to 20 books in a week. Every day, we have at least 15 people who come and borrow books. Members of the youth group volunteer as librarians, just like me,” she says.“Before, we didn’t have a library in our community,

Hygiene promotion in the community

သမရ႕ အားလပခနေတြမာ စာဖတရတာန႔၊ သခငးဆရတာက ႏစသကတ ေဝါလဗရင ကေလးသငယဖြ႕ၿဖးေရးအစအစဥမာ ပါဝငေနသ ေသာတာဥး က လႈငသာယာၿမ႕ ၂၀ ရပကြကထမာ ၂၀၀၈ ခႏစကစၿပး ေဝါလဗရငဖြငေပးခတ စာၾကညတကေလးအေၾကာငးက ေျပာျပခပါတယ။ ကေလး၊ လငယ ေတြက စာဖတတ အေလအကငေကာငးရေစဖ႔ ရညရြယၿပး၊ စာၾကညတကက ဖြငေပးခတာျဖစပါတယ။ ဝငေၾကးအေနန႔ ၅၀၀ ကပသာ သတမတ ထားပါတယ။ “လစဥေၾကးက တစလက ၂၀၀ ဆေတာ ကေလးေတြအားလး တတႏငတယ။ သတ႔ မန႔ဖးထကေန ေပးၾကပါတယ။ တစပတမာ စာအပ ၂၀ အထ ငားလ႔ရပါတယ။ တစေန႔မာ အနညးဆး ၁၅ ေယာကေလာက လာငားၾကတယ။ သမးအပါအဝင လငယအဖြ႕ဝငေတြက စာၾကညတကမႉး အေနန႔ အလညက ထငေပးပါတယ” လ႔ ေျပာျပခပါတယ။ “အရငကဆရင ကေလးေတြက ေကာငးလႊတတာန႔ ေနပထမာ ထြကေဆာၾကတယ။ ခ ေကာငးလႊတရင စာၾကညတကလာၿပး စာဖတၾကတယ။ ေဝါလဗရငကလညး အဂၤလပ သဒၵါ၊ စာစစာကးစာအပေတြလညး ထားေပးထားလ႔ ေကာငး သားေတြအတြက အဆငေျပပါတယ” လ႔ အသက ၁၃ႏစအရြယ ေသာတာဥးက ေျပာခပါတယ။ စာၾကညတက အဖြ႔ဝင ၁၀၀ ေကာရၿပး၊ အမားစက အလယတနးန႔ အထကတနး ေကာငးသားေတြ ျဖစပါတယ။

children played in the streets under the hot sun after school. Now children come and read at the library after school. As World Vision provides textbooks on subjects like English essay writing or grammar lessons, it is helpful for students,” Thawdar Oo adds. There are over 100 library members and most of them are middle and high school students.

11 Tharlikar

News in Brief

Special Talks target local authorities for disaster risk reduction

World Vision Myanmar organized a series of special talks on disaster risk reduction around the country in March. A well-known meteorologist and climate-change activist, Dr Tun Liwn, led one of the talks targeting local authorities in Loikaw. The talk aimed to raise awareness and response capacity among local authorities on possible climate change effects.“The impact of climate change on Myanmar is obvious but there is little awareness among our people,” said Dr Tun Lwin, who provided 50 years of weather data to

prove that climate change has affected the most vulnerable population in Myanmar. About 350 officials, including the administrative head of Loikaw District and members of township disaster management committee attended the two-hour special talk.“The information we received today is very valuable for us. We have to spread the latest news about climate change more in our communities,” said Win Thein, who is the secretary of one of 15 community-level disaster management committees.World Vision has conducted 15 special talks across the country with Dr Tun Liwn since 2009. As community people have high respect and interest in well-known figure like Dr Tun Linw, such special talks play significant part in awareness-raising and mobilizing the community. More talks were also conducted in later March in Mandalay, the second largest city, targeting thousands of officials and ordinary citizens.

Well know TV channel visits World Vision’s ADPMRTV-4, one of the top TV channels in the country,has visited Hmawbi area development programme, near the largest city of Yangon.On April 4,2013, MRTV-4 recorded featured stories on Early Childhood Care and Development Programme (ECCD) and agriculture activities. In ECCD story, Children fromPyin Taung Twin village were featured with one of theirteachers and a mother were also filmed. The farmergroup from Kyauk Pone village where World Visioninitiates “group farming” shared their exciting experience.In group farming, farmers shared their resources thusreduce the cost of production. It is a new initiative byWorld Vision and local people extremely enjoy the result. (In the picture, World Vision’s staff member, Gracy is filmedfor agriculture activities.)“It’s a very good sign that more media interested in World Vision’s work. It’s the best way to promote our work andeffective way to engage mass public and even to different levels of government,” says Aung Kyaw Soe, manager ofHmawbi area development program.The TV program will be broadcasted at the end of April.As Myanmar is opening up, there is increased media freedom. Privately-owned daily newspapers are allowed topublish on Arpil 1, after about 60 years absence and more TV stations are now functioning.

12 Tharlikar

HR NewsNEXT ISSUE OUT IN JUNEplease email your contribution to Tharlikar at:

htet_htet_oo@wvi.org

Welcome Baby1. Ma Nweni San (CDF, Hlegu) and her

husband have blessed with a healthy baby girl on 10 March 2013.

2. Ma Jennifer Thandar Oo (DMFF, Amarapura ADP) and her husband have blessed with a baby girl on 11th March 2013.

3. Ko Thiha Sae ( Procurement Coordinator, GS) and his wife have blessed with second baby boy on 11 th March 2012.

“ကၽြနမတ႔ ရပကြကက လေနစတၿပး၊ အမားအားျဖင တစေန႔လပတစေန႔စားေတြပါပ။ ကနးမာေရးန႔ ပတသကတ အသပညာလညးနညးၾကေတာ ကေလးေတြ ေနမေကာငး ျဖစရင ေဆးၿမးတန႔ပကၾကတယ။ ကၽြနမဆ အရငက ကာကြယေဆးအေၾကာငးလညး နားမလညေတာ ကေလးေတြက ကာကြယေဆးထးဖ႔က ေၾကာကခတယ။ သမးေတြ ဖားရင ေဆးၿမးတန႔ပ ကလကတယ၊ အဖားတကမာစးလ႔ အစာသပမေကၽြးဘး” လ႔ အရငက ကေလးေတြ ဝမးသြားရင ဗာဒေခါကေသြးတကခဖးတ မေထြးေထြးရက သမ ရ႕အေၾကာငးက ျပနေျပာျပခပါတယ။သမကေလးေတြ မၾကာခဏ ေနမေကာငးျဖစခတာဟာ သမ ကနးမာေရးအသပညာ နညးပါးခလ႔ဆတာက သရခတ မေထြးေထြးရက “ကေလးေတြ ခဏခဏ ေနမေကာငး ျဖစေတာ ေငြကနေၾကးကမားတယ၊ စတဆငးရရတယ။ တစေန႔ကေတာ ေဆြးေႏြး ပြလာတကဖ႔ ကၽြနမက ေခၚတယ။ အရငက တစခါမလ အလေဆြးေႏြးပြ မးေတြ မတကဖးပါဘး။ အဒအခနတနးက ကၽြနမသမးအငယေလးက ေနမေကာငးျဖစေန တာ။ အကအည ရလရျငား ကၽြနမ သြားတကၾကညလကတယ။ အဒေန႔ကစၿပး ကၽြနမဘဝမာ အမားႀကးေျပာငးလသြားခပါတယ” လ႔ေျပာခပါတယ။အျပအမေျပာငးလျခငးဆငရာ အသပညာေပးေဆြးေႏြးပြေတြကေန သမသရလာခတ ကနးမာေရးအေလအထေတြက မသားစထမာ လကေတြ႔ကငသးတအတြက သမ ရ႕သမးငယႏစေယာက အရငကထက ပၿပးကနးမာလာတာက မေထြးေထြးရ လက ေတြ႕ျမငခရပါတယ။ ေဆြးေႏြးပြမာ သမသရလာသမက ခငပြနးျဖစသအပါအဝင၊ ေဆြမးေတြန႔ အမနးနားခငးပါမကန အားလးက ျပနလည ေျပာျပခတယ။ “အသ ပညာေပးေဆြးေႏြးပြေတြက ကၽြနမတ႔လ မခငေတြအတြက အရမးက အကးရပါ တယ။ ေဆြးေႏြးပြတငးက ကၽြနမတကတယ။ အသပညာေတြ အမားႀကး ရလာတယ။ ကၽြနမရ႕ အျပအမေတြလညးေျပာငးလမနးမသ ေျပာငးလလာပါတယ။ ကေလးေတြ ဝမးသြားရင ဓာတဆားရညက စနစတက ေဖာတကတယ။ ေနမေကာငးျဖစရင ေဆး ၿမးတေတြန႔ မကေတာဘး၊ ေဆးခနးသြားတယ။ ကေလးက ေနမေကာငးလ႔ အစာ မစားခငရငေတာင အာဟာရရမယအစာက ေခာေကၽြးပါတယ။ ကၽြနမ အမးသား ကလညး ေဆြးေႏြးပြေတြသြားဖ႔ အားေပးပါတယ။ ကၽြနမရလာတ အသပညာ ေတြက ကၽြနမကေရာ၊ ကၽြနမ မသားစရ႕ ဘဝကပါ ေျပာငးလေစခပါတယ” လ႔ မေထြးေထြးရက စတအားထကသနမႈအျပညန႔ သမ ဘဝေျပာငးလလာပက ေျပာျပခပါတယ။“ဒါအျပင ပကဆက ဘယလ စနစတက သးရမလ၊ ကယတတႏငတ အတငးအတာန႔ ဘယလ အာဟာရျပညေအာင ခကရမလဆတာေတြကပါ ကၽြနမသလာရပါတယ။ ခဆ တစေန႔က ၂၀၀ စတယ။ ေငြပေလးစႏငေတာ အလပပါးတအခနကရင ေငြ ေခးဖ႔ မလေတာဘးေပါ။ အရငက သမးၾကး ေကာငးသြားရင မန႔ဖး ၂၀၀၊ ျပနလာရင တခါထပေပးရန႔။ သမးကလညး ေခၽြတာသးတတေအာငေျပာျပေတာ ခမန႔ဖး ေလာ သးၿပး၊ အမမာလညး ထမငးပစားလာတယ။ သမးေတြရ႕ ေရ႕ေရးအတြက ေငြပ ေလး ေတြစတယ။ ဒလ အသပညာေတြရလာတအတြက အရမးဝမးသာပါတယ။ အားလးကလညး ကၽြနမလပ ေဆြးေႏြးပြေတြမာ ပါဝငၾကဖ႔၊ ကယရလာတ အသ ပညာက လကေတြ႔ျပနသးၾကဖ႔ တကတြနးခငပါတယ။ အလဆရင ဘဝမာ ေျပာငးလ မႈေတြ တကယေတြ႔လာရမာပါ” လ႔ မေထြးေထြးရက အၿပးန႔ ေျပာခပါတယ။

စာမကႏာ ၃ - “မေထြးေထြးရ...” မ

Wedding bell ringing for ... Ko Saw Win Htoo Khaing (Safety and Security Coordinator, National office)and Ma Nan Ohnmar Aye on 30th March 2013.