Friends of the Children Myanmar

I came to Myanmar by chance. A friend invited me to spend the summer in Yangon where we volunteered with a local children’s charity. We found that many children in Yangon’s orphanages were in fact internal refugees. They belonged to the minority communities along Myanmar’s borders, areas that had been ravaged by war, poverty and drugs for decades. Their parents had abandoned them in hope for a better life. But the childcare centres were overrun and carers often had no formal training in childhood education.

Friends of the Children Myanmar was founded in collaboration with local educators. We started off by hosting small fundraising events to sponsor basic teacher training at the orphanages. Later we registered with the Charities Commission in England and Wales, and managed to secure funding from Goldman Sachs and the Economist Charitable Fund Foundation. With those additional funds, we were able to do a lot more.

At the height of our activities, we had more than 100 Burmese student volunteers who were helping out at 80 childcare centres and orphanages around Yangon. Involving relatively affluent students with some of the most underprivileged in Myanmar society was intentional.

We supported orphanages with food and school books. We built toilets and fixed leaking roofs. We bought land to grow food and rear livestock; provided regular health check-ups for children; paid for business and vocational training, and supported SoyAi, a sustainable tofu and soya milk business run by young adults who had grown up in the orphanages.