Saturday, September 26, 2009

BURMA VJ: Monday Sept 28 10p CBC Toronto



We have been trying to get this important, multi-award winning documentary, BURMA VJ: REPORTING FROM A CLOSED COUNTRY to be shown in our area and we have just learned that it will be shown on CBC Newsworld at 10pm on Monday September 28th (for those like myself who are used to being asleep by 10:00pm, have a nap and stay up .I promise it will be worth it) We will also continue to try to get it shown in the Orillia area.
This is eastern time Toronto etc. For other areas please check CBC Newsworld.
Thanks for your continuing interest and please pass this on, as we don't have everyone's email.

For more information see the Democracy Now coverage.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

video of karen flag raising

Dear All,
This is a letter from the President of the Karen Community of Canada. If you were at the Flag Raising, you will see yourself. This will go out to many countries around the globe!! Hurrah for the Karen and for The City of Orillia (and Project Umbrella Burma).
Enjoy!
Cathy




Hi Cathy:

Please check the following link. One of the Karen volunteers in London did a great job and uploaded on youtube for Karen people around the Globe.

Friday, July 17, 2009

The Orillia Packet and Times newspaper covered the Karen Flag Raising Ceremony. Thank you to everyone who attended.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Karen Flag raising Friday July 10th, 2009


The Green Room at the Orillia Opera House will be open from 10:00am until 12:00 noon for coffee, tea cold drinks and biscuits.

Speeches and the ceremony of the flag raising to begin at 11:00 am.

Your browser may not support display of this image.

Canadian Flag and Karen National Union flag flying over Orillia last year.

This year Project Umbrella Burma will again be raising the Karen Flag to fly proudly over the City of Orillia from July 10th to July 31st.

In Burma today, the Karen people are undergoing the most savage attacks on civilian villagers, an ethnic cleansing that has been ongoing for 50 years (4000 people have fled to Thailand in the last month). Over 2000 people are vilely imprisoned because they do not agree with the illegal military government. The Nobel Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi , Burma’s so distinguished voice for democracy, in a trumped up trial, is likely again to be stifled.

The City of Orillia, in its wisdom, has chosen to honour Project Umbrella’s mission and vision by endorsing this Flag raising as an expression of their international awareness. Project Umbrella Burma thanks them.

We are hoping the Burmese people, particularly the Karen Community, of Canada will join us in Orillia for this event.

To our friends from Burma who may come from a distance, please email Cathy and David dcdownham@sympatico.ca or call at 705 689 0358 if you require a place to stay on Friday evening, we hope to be able to accommodate you.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Orillia Flag Raising

Dear Friends of P.U.B,
As you know, in 2007 the City of Orillia endorsed Project Umbrella Burma, as their international outreach .
As part of their commitment, the city has again authorized P.U.B. to fly the Karen National Flag.
Our Vision is the safety and survival of all ethnic groups in a free and democratic Burma. Part of our mission is to raise awareness for the desperate situation of the people of Burma.
The Flag Raising will take place -

Friday, July 10th at 11:00 am at the Orillia Opera House.

Please mark this date on your calendars.
Details of this event will follow in mid June.

Thank you,

www.projectumbrellaburma.com

Friday, April 10, 2009

From Mao Tao Clinic Website Sunday, April 05, 2009


Education



· Access to education if compromised by lack of accessible schools, poverty, war, displacement, low wages for teachers and the UNHCR.

· Officially education in Burma is compulsory until the end of primary School, with the completion of 4th Standard. Unicef reports that less than 50% of children achieve this.

· Education is supposed to be provided free of charge, but teachers wages are so low that they are forced to charge fees or seek other work elsewhere.

· Only SPDC schools continue to the 10th Grade, but these schools are not found in rural areas.

· University professors are restricted in freedom of speech, political activity and publications.

Health.

Across Eastern Burma:



· Infant mortality rate is 91/1000 compared 76 for the rest of Burma. (compare 18/1000 for neighboring Thailand.)

· One in 5 children dies before the age of 5.

· One in 12 women dies in childbirth – 4 times higher than the rest of in Burma.

· Malnutrition levels in children is 15%

· Malaria infectivity at any one time is 12%

· HIV/AIDS are considered epidemic.

General sanitation and understanding of hygiene is low. Access to clean water is poor. Incidence of GI diseases, such as cholera, typhoid, and shigella is therefore high. Many of these diseases are avoidable.

My brother is coming to visit us here as he finishes his job prospecting for copper in Botswana. He and his wife are traveling this long journey because they want to see what is going on here.

It will be wonderful to see them. We want to show them what we have been ‘up to’ the last 7 years.

We plan to take them on the same tour through Mae Tao Clinic as the CIDA people, the United Nations representatives and Save The Children get and Laura Bush had. We will look at Trauma where David works, and see the people with amputations and abscesses, acid burns just to begin the alphabet. Next we will go to the In Patient Department where malaria is a constant visitor, where AIDS/HIV is cared for but not treated, oddly unless you have TB at the same time, and where just recently MSF withdrew their previous management of TB because of worry that the patients lack of treatment compliance was leading to too many resistant forms of the disease.



We will see the new Pediatric In-Patients and admire the children, and probably see the process of rescue from mal-nutrition and vitamin deficiency. We will probably run into Dr. Terry Smith, in OBGYN, who has recently been helping run a course for about 54 Medics who after 9 months of training are going back to their communities in Karen State to improve critical care midwifery throughout the state. Last time in Reproductive Health, he showed me two tiny babies who had been dropped off at the front gate. This is a regular occurrence. My brother and his wife are concerned people and have done what they could as they worked in various parts of the world, helping people in similar situations to ours, but I know we will upset them, as each time I take these tours with people, I get upset myself. The Clinic runs an active birth control program, but not everyone has had the education. For migrant women (many thousands working in Thailand in the sweatshops, trying to help their family,) life is not easy. Most women need a protector of some sort. With a baby, it is impossible to continue working. Dr. Cynthia and the Karen Women’s Organization run several orphanages. The Karen has enormous charity for each other. I have not a met a more caring people. Generally, the husbands are with their wives as they have their babies and giving birth is a thing of great joy but often on the other side of the building there are women very sick as the result of botched back street abortions.

We have had many visitors this year, but this is the first time ever anyone in our immediate family has been to visit and so we are very excited. We are looking forward to drinking coffee in the morning, likely in our bedroom in our Mae Sot house, with them, where we are lucky to have air-conditioning. This time of year it is very hot. They have seen most of the rest of the family recently and we can catch up on the news. My brother and I enjoy argument and discussion. I want to know if he has changed his views; what he thinks of the financial crisis; what his Africa tour has left in his head. How it has changed him? Before we were always talking about growth and how much we needed to retire, but living here, we are now questioning if we need so much, and wonder if the gap between rich and poor threatens everyone’s security far more and that living in balance with each other should be our main concern. Maybe we have it all wrong, that progress is often not progress at all and that we must shift our attention to the real problems; the excessive energy consumption, the huge population increase, climate change and our failure to see that nobody is allowed to be desperately poor or desperately rich and that the first world is responsible for many of the problems of the third, and it is time to pay the bill.

We will take them to the 23 year old Refugee Camp to meet our student charges there. This year they are having to stay in the heat of the camp unhappily as it is too dangerous for them to go back to their home villages, or to Kaw Tha Blay, their previous College Campus in Karen State (this is difficult to translate but trust me). This year, we are low on cash, so we cannot provide the $7.00 each, as we did before, so that they could buy their way out of trouble if needed if they ran into the SPDC. There are 57 children left in the hostel as of yesterday. I know because I checked before buying hand and laundry soap, toothpaste, sanitary needs and toothbrushes. 25 did go home, quite how I do not know, but I think they went with Pah Yim, the Hostel grandfather, and walked. It would take 4 days in the heat. I will take my brother up the side of the mountain, through the camp, that houses more than 50,000 people and we will take watermelons or oranges, treats they do not get too often.

We are down to the deadline with the Library donated by the Retired Teachers of Ontario. We built it but the woven bamboo is just been painted. We were also in competition with the completion of the Cafeteria in the College, and it was exam time too. We finally smuggled boards for shelves into the camp under roof leaves last week but the builders can’t put them together yet. It is the biggest holiday in SEA, the water festival from now until next week. I badly want to impress my brother who set up a Mining Library in Timmins and Sudbury. It runs in the family my mother was a Librarian too. Thanks to The RTO and Heather Gauldie and the amazing Cathy and Eric Sayles, it will happen soon and I cannot wait to see the children with these beautiful books.

So, we will climb up the mountain together and I am sure the kids will meet us just inside the gate and they will pull us over the difficult bits making light of the heat and water. They are incredibly fit, rarely get sick now, which was not how it used to be. I am sure they will give us a demonstration of Chillo or kick ball – a good choice of a game, because it does not take much space. Over the past few months , the children have repaired the dormitories, the eating and study halls and the toilets and showers, totally rebuilding some of the bamboo structures. I have told Kshakalu that we cannot take any new students this year because we just don’t have the funding and the one plus from that is that we now have enough room for a volley ball court so the girls will have some exercise. So, those in Burma will have to wait for the recovery that is promised.

I am so looking forward to my brother coming. I am so proud of our brave children and I am going to be so happy to introduce him to them.

Ten of the students from our hostel will go to the college next year, a smaller number than usual but we have big second year class of 31 and we will take in another 15 from ‘inside’ and other camps.

We have spent money on turning the safe house in Thailand into the home base for the college. The Burmese Military is determined to destroy or take over any pockets of Karen resistance this year. So the decision had to be made to cross the river. And in a short time, we have been accepted or almost accepted into Doh Tah, theThai Karen Village.

This has been an amazing process and I want my brother to see it. Our students are, as I write teaching Thai/Karen village children how to read and write their mother tongue. Our teachers are teaching the children of the 7 villages in our area how to touch type in Karen and English and Thai, on the computers PUB donors and Orillia and Area Rotary Clubs have bought and our medic teacher is teaching English to them during this school break. It is a lot of organizing that Kshakalu does and my brother who has set up in many third world countries will appreciate how difficult this is.



That will be the next place I will take my family. We have cows now and chickens and further north on both sides of the river many goats and ducks and more land, lots of land given to us to use by Karen gone to America or Thai who need the land worked to keep it. We need an agriculture teacher although we have farmers sent from ‘inside’ to help us in this slow move towards independence. Our computer teacher is ready to help with the accounting for both Hostel and college. Our Thai teacher will, hopefully, interpret and ease the way to our acquiring a telephone landline so my dream of giving them Internet Access will finally come true. These things take a long time to build in this third world working with people here who have no country to call their own.

Our kids are poor, displaced and illegal with no civic rights. The college is so significant. The students have had less (only two outfits, one pair of slippers), so we could have all the buildings we need at the college (dormitories, schoolroom, a library underway, the cafeteria/kitchen/classroom, the road and toilets) and are gaining security so the education can continue - broaden and deepen. Will my brother and my wonderful sister- in- law understand why we do this?

My brother has always stepped lightly on the earth even in his search for metals. It is a lesson it has taken me a long time to learn. The Karen, have no rights. Literally they walk on landmines. Their attitude to life has had a huge impact on mine.

I can’t wait to see at least part my own family and show them our big family here.

Then home to see more family and all the wonderful aware people who have helped and who, hopefully, will continue to help as we prepare for another year.

Love to all,

Cathy

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Volunteer Value

Dear Friends of PUB,

This year has been a very special year for the young people PUB protects and nurtures and for a few young and old from home.
The College has had a difficult year but beginning in late Sept we began to continue our integration into a Thai Karen Village in Thailand on the border. The college, that is the hope for many young Karen, is now called a Learning Centre to fit with the Thai Ministry of Education guidelines. This means more safety and more opportunity. While the College's original home remains in Karen State and they do make forays back there for the sheer beauty and love of a little bit of their home, these cannot be permanent because of the continued threat of attack from the Burmese Military.
We have almost finished the necessary building for 50 people on our tiny wedge of hillside in Doh Tah Village, so now there is some comfort albeit cramped. Here, we have a place where we can learn, and a place where volunteers can come and stay - integrate with the students, learn from this incredible experience and teach.
We have been so lucky this first trial year to have 4 young volunteers from Canada. The student's English is so very much better now because of these three young women from Orillia and one from Toronto.
The Mae Tao Clinic has also benefitted from a two month visit by Dr. Frank (Brewster) and a shorter 4th visit by Dr John (Toye) which is pretty special because they, like David and I have lost their hearts to the Karen people, their generosity, their courage and their plight and without question we hold them in our hearts and will all come back.

Please have look at our special graduation picture and read what one of our volunteers had to say.
Thanks,
Cathy and David

From Tracy Penley, Orillia, Project Umbrella Burma Volunteer

When you think of a graduation, you think of an end to something with the focus now on the future. At Kaw Tha Blay, there is much talk of the future with the graduating students. They all seem to be sad that they are going to be finished at Kaw Tha Blay but are very excited to move on to something that can put them one step closer to helping their people. In Canada, the options after graduation are unlimited. As I found out from my time here, there are many options here for graduating students too, but they may not be as lucrative as those back home. Of the eleven students graduating, two will go on to teacher training and will return to their villages in Karen State to teach their communities. Four will study to be medics, with a few becoming backpacker medics – those who travel into Karen State to help people who have no access to healthcare. The rewards are great but it is a very dangerous choice. There are two girls who would like to work with the Karen Women’s Organization – an organization that works to promote the rights of Karen women through education, empowerment, and micro-finance opportunities. There are three students who are undecided on what to do, but they have a few options: officers in the army, further schooling or even assisting Project Umbrella Burma and Kaw Tha Blay with the various projects it has. It is quite apparent that these students are thinking of the future and trying to make a difference in the lives of those around them.



One of Kaw Tha Blay’s goals as a college is to mold the students into leaders so that they can help their people. From my two months at the college, I have seen a great deal of leadership in all the students. The graduating students are just one example of that idea of leadership. Instead of immigrating to a third country and struggling to survive there, they are going to be leaders for their people right here in their own country and struggle to create change any way they can.



When I initially thought of what it was to be a leader, I thought of someone who can command a group of people and people listen to what they say. After spending time with the students, I can see that a leader is much more than that. Not all leaders have to be the outspoken, strong and dominant. Many of the students are not like that, some would even call them a tad shy, but they do demonstrate leadership through their actions. Simply participating in class and completing one’s homework shows the others that education is important and they should follow suit. Punctuality is something every leader should have, and I am ashamed to say that I was probably late for more classes than my students! I’ve learned that confidence alone does not make a leader, but there are equally important characteristics like patience, self-respect and dedication.



My experiences here at Kaw Tha Blay have been nothing but rewarding. Living at the college has allowed me to better understand the students and their individual personalities. I could not have gotten that experience by simply traveling or visiting for a few days. I truly feel that the students have accepted me and I have become a part of their daily lives. It will be extremely hard to leave after graduation, as contact with them is not always guaranteed. I wish that I could have yearly updates on each and every one of them so that I could always know that they are ok and have become the leaders I know they can be. It is an assurance to know that Project Umbrella Burma and Kaw Tha Blay will be there to educate more students so they can also move into the future as leaders who have dignity and dreams.





There are a few experiences I’ve had at Kaw Tha Blay that I will always remember.



In the middle of January we gave the girls crochet hooks, knitting needles, weaving materials as well as yarn. The most popular option was crocheting, and the girls taught those who did not know how. They took to it like fish to water. For three days straight the girls had their crochet hooks and yarn with them everywhere they went. We eventually had to tell them that crochet was for free time only, and free time did not mean midnight either.



Another memory I have is of a few boys working together to attach bookshelves to the school walls. It was a major accomplishment for them as the builders had managed to do everything until that point. They were given the chance to use the power drill, and even took initiative to use a level! For an hour and a half there was a lot of drilling but when they were finished, the look on their faces said everything.



Toilets are a running problem at the College. When we arrived in January, the “western” toilet was out of commission, and another was being built. One day, Cathy and three of the boys decided that they would fix the clogged toilet. I was in the cafeteria when they came walking up the hill towards me. Cue the Ghostbusters theme song. There they were, one boy carrying the clothes hanger, another carrying a toilet scrubber and the third carrying a bucket. All three plus Cathy looked like they had just battled a large demon and were positively tuckered yet as they walked, they had this swagger of confidence because they had defeated the demon!



One thing that may seem insignificant to others but really made an impact on me was the simple use of affection. I am not a person who gives or takes affection relatively easily but the Karen people are certainly comfortable with it. Within a week of staying at the college, I was being given hugs and having my hand held among other affectionate behaviours. As the weeks progressed it became even more impulsive and frequent between the girls and I. I found myself giving hugs and reaching out to touch someone because it felt right and I wanted to. This is one thing that I am going to miss when I leave. Karen people are very affectionate with the same sex, even the boys would hold hands and touch while in class. Some of the boys were as affectionate as the girls with me too. If I had to put in words why these behaviours made such an impact on me, I would have to say that it was their way of showing their appreciation and affection. In a world where things are never constant and tomorrow is not always predictable, a simple gesture lets someone know they are loved and is a form of comfort to the person initiating the affection too.



Thursday, January 29, 2009

The below is a letter from Sarah Weber of Orillia. Sarah spent a month volunteer teaching at the Kaw Tha Blay Junior College which is supported by Project Umbrella Burma. Her genuine love for the students and her understanding shone through in the constant commitment she made to them. Rising at six AM and before breakfast leading dance practice so that they would be the best they could for their Karen New Year performance. The memories of Sarah and her friend Hilary fill the air at our little college.

Just yesterday another exceptional volunteer from Orillia, Tracy Penley, was consoling and trying to cheer Moe Tha Zar a 19 year old who must leave the college today as she had just heard that her mother back in Burma, her last living family member, is terminally ill. Tracy played the Hip Hop music Sarah and Hilary had given and smiles came through the tears, then laughter as we all hopped around the mosquito nets once again.

Cathy at www.projectumbrellaburma.com




THANK YOU SARAH (the picture is the nervous but proud teacher on opening night)




In the past, the month of December for me has usually meant celebrating holidays, being around family, and writing exams for University. This December, I was fortunate enough to spend a month at Kah Tha Blay Junior college volunteering for Project Umbrella Burma, teaching young adults the English language among other things. As much as the experience was completely new to me, a different country, teaching students my own age, palm trees instead of pine, I found that the month's themes for me still held. We celebrated local holidays, became the type of family that comes from sleeping, eating, learning and working together, and there was still an element of education and testing one’s knowledge.

While celebrating Karen New Years and developing close relationships with the students may be easy to compare to holidays and family back home, the theme of education came in more subtle forms than one might expect in a school setting. It is assumed as an English teacher there would have been a fair amount of traditional learning, and while there were formal classes along with teaching the of lyrics to Bryan Adams song of new hip hop dance moves, there was more to the education for me than just teaching the students. Living with them for a month, we were able to educate ourselves on how we relate to this group of peers, who are giving up their family life and their homes to better their future for their families and communities through the opportunities the school provides. While we share common experiences, it is the backgrounds that we come from that frame how we come to them, how they affect us, and how we react to them. This is what I’ve learned we have in common, and how it’s not the same for us:

Everyone enjoys a good campfire! And some start the fire at 5:30am if they're on cooking duty, to make rice and curry for the rest of the school. I feel that if O.D.C.V.I. had requested this of me, my reaction would not have been as willing.

We all wanted to learn a new language, and feel we have to. I struggled very hard to learn the Burmese version of Bryan Adam’s “Baby When You’re Gone” to try and understand Burmese pop, and explained to them our frustrations with never becoming fluent in French. They however, are working on their 3rd and fourth languages, as they are living in Thailand where you need more than Karen, or Burmese. Oh, and some shared their frustrations with not being able to write in their first language because it was mandated by their government that they not be taught it. French doesn’t seem to trying now.

We both just want to be happy. When I taught a lesson on expressing emotions in hopes to get a different answer to “how do you feel?” than “I feel happy!” I found the answer remained the same every time it was asked. It could be argued that the lesson just didn’t sink in that much, or that everyone was genuinely happy every time I asked, but when a student opens up to you about their family living in the mountains for weeks at a time while the military regime burns their village and commits violent acts against their relatives, I can understand how college life is constantly a happy place, a place with food, shelter, free education and friends. I can just begin to understand what it would feel like to admit to the darker emotions that come with the past.

In the girl’s dorm, it's one big sleepover, including calls on cell phones (relatives contribute to these second hand miracles) to friends. The difference here is that we’re sleeping under bug nets to prevent malaria, a privilege many didn’t have in their own villages, and calls to friends may be to tell them they can’t see them after all because their security clearance with the Thai police fell through, and they can’t make through the military checks on the highway. A much different kind of long distance relationship.

There are so many more moments of reality checks I had, realizing that expectations of how life is going to work out, and what to expect from it are different for students like me than those who are Karen, are refugees, and living in Thailand away from their family. A private 2m square cement shower room that shares a wall with a pig pen is a Big Deal, hip hop dancing and Break Dancing on a stage made out of mud and straw is fine… the list really goes on. Essentially, I learned that these students have been through so much in their 18+ years, more than I can begin to understand how they cope with. As a result, they are so appreciative of every aspect college life can bring to them, whether it be the guarantee of rice every day, access to computers and English lessons, or opportunities to contribute to their communities once they have proudly completed their program. I have been reminded by them, and learned from them how to be grateful, how to be family when you’re not near yours, and how to learn as much as you can when someone offers you an education, no matter how hard you must work, and a chance to give something back. I feel that what we learned with Project Umbrella Burma has been the most rewarding education I’ve had in my travels, and hope that I’ve given back fraction of what I’ve taken away.

When saying goodbye after only a short month, I found it more difficult than the ending of any other teaching or camp counselling experience I’ve had. Cathy helped me pinpoint this difference, reminding me that never before have I been worried for the future of the people I’m leaving, and I feel this is true. The lives of these students are so uncertain, and that scares me, but I feel hope for them knowing the support they have been given, and the doors that will open. When we left, a student called the very next day to remind us not to forget them, and that we should meet again. I was feeling exactly the same.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009