By Theodore (Ted) Mayer | Designer and Director
You Supported Our Student Who Fled Her Homeland
Dear Friends and Kind Supporters,
We who are leaders of the School of English for Engaged Social Service (SENS) created this Nurturing Learning Communities project when we realized that graduates of our program over its 8-year history needed ongoing support. One kind of support was to help them become the compassionate leaders they could be through training programs, classes, and various forms of personal contact and assistance. The other kind of support was emergency help for those students who found themselves in a crisis.
The woman you see in the photo above is Mi Bu (nickname), a long-time activist and director of community programs in Mon State, Myanmar. She attended SENS online programs in 2022 and the three-month residential SENS program in 2023. We chose her for her long history of community service, her knowledge of local issues related to land use and drug addiction, and for her integrity, empathy, and inquiring mind. This photo was taken on a SENS 2023 field trip roughly a month before she returned home to Myanmar. Shortly after returning home from SENS 2023, Mi Bu faced a life-threatening crisis: she was falsely accused of providing material support to the People's Defense Forces, the military wing of the broad movement of resistance against the military coup that took place in Myanmar on February 1st, 2021. This false accusation could easily have become a death sentence.
While attending a meeting away from home in April 2023, Mi Bu was suddenly accosted by strangers asking for her by name. She then received a phone call from friends urging her to flee immediately. Shortly after she shifted to another hotel, she learned that a large force of Myanmar soldiers was amassed nearby, seeking to track her down. Had they found her, she would likely have been shot or beaten to death on the spot. The current Myanmar military leaders have been known to detain, beat, torture, and kill Myanmar citizens for simply criticizing the regime, for providing humanitarian help to victims of the regime's bombing campaigns, or just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Through a nearly miraculous series of events, Mi Bu was able to flee through forests and countryside to meet her husband before crossing the Thai border together to safety.
Distraught and terrified, her life and work upended, Mi Bu asked for our assistance in helping her to a third country as a political asylum seeker. Over weeks of emailing Thai professors and those with contacts in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), we learned that the UNHCR was highly professional in carrying out its duty to interview Mi Bu and to learn the details of her case. But surprisingly they were able to do little. The UNHCR has the power to grant official refugee status to individuals who arrive in Thailand seeking the safety of a third country. But Thai government authorities must sign off on each request of the UNHCR to grant refugee status. We learned through our inquiries that the Thai government rarely--and only under great pressure--grants refugee status to a Myanmar national who is forced to flee to Thailand for safety.
Thus Mi Bu and her husband have been forced to try to survive and to find income in some form as they work through a complicated series of restrictions on movement and employment for those without legal papers in Thailand. They join thousands and thousands of Myanmar citizens who have entered Thailand, some of whom came for economic opportunities, but many now who have fled immediate danger to themselves and their loved ones under the Myanmar military. Some sources estimate that there are now 6 million Myanmar citizens living, legally or illegally, in Thailand, roughly 10% of the Myanmar population.
As Mi Bu slowly adjusted to her new life situation, we also selected her to be part of a group of outstanding SENS graduates who wished to carry on some aspects of the SENS program, and who wished to receive training to do so. From September 22nd to October 1st, this select group of students became my work team as we successfully organized a training for Myanmar teachers living and working in exile in the Thai border town of Mae Sot. We were able to offer this program in collaboration with Civic Engagement 4.0, a project under Chulalongkorn University.
The format we adopted was to offer two full weekends of in-person training (six days) to a group of 18 Myanmar teachers in Mae Sot. In-between the two weekends we offered a training to the SENS leadership trainees (in what will likely be called the SENS Apprentice Leaders Program in Sustainability--by which we mean sustainability in all spheres, of the planet, of caring social systems, of local communities, of personal ties of love and mutual support, and of the human spirit.) An important part of these apprentice leaders' training was to ask them to assist in delivering a program of high quality to the Myanmar teachers--in other words to learn through experience.
Within this select group of SENS alumni, Mi Bu and Soe San (nickname), our two active participants from Myanmar, were to play a key role. Though they are each members of a minority ethnicity within Myanmar, namely Mon and Pa-O, they are Myanmar citizens and can speak Burmese fluently. This meant that they could provide guidance as we designed the program, help with interviews of program applicants, and interpret and provide empathetic support to the Myanmar teachers while the program was in process.
We faced a serious difficulty, however, in simply bringing Mi Bu the long distance to the Mae Sot training. Arranging for her to travel safely across Thailand was extremely complicated, as she does not have the necessary legal documents; and it was not worth the life-and-death risk of being deported to Myanmar for an infraction of immigration rules. I insisted that we must find a way whatever the cost, as her role in the training was critical. In the end we were able to bring her through a specially hired driver and car, and through the much-appreciated approval of immigration authorities and Thai intelligence contacts. This cost a great deal of money however, roughly $800, far more than normal travel would have required. Yet it was fully worth the investment of funds.
We determined that the funds we have raised through this project -- Nurturing Learning Communities in a Time of Crisis -- would be best used to enable Mi Bu to play the role of a key supporting leader in our training of Mae Sot teachers. As funds continue to come in to this project, we will also be offering Mi Bu the support she needs to seek asylum with her husband in a third country, should that opportunity arise.
We would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your kind donations that made this possible.
We have shared photos of Mi Bu, of the Apprentice Leaders group, and of the Mae Sot Teachers' Training here. We will provide more details on the training itself in our upcoming report for our sister project "Train Leaders in Asia for Peace and Sustainability."
Should you wish to support our work in the future, please consider making a monthly donation, or simply letting others know about our work. You could also consider donating on November 28th of this year. That day is Giving Tuesday, a worldwide day celebrating the work of non-profit and philanthropic organizations, during which GlobalGiving will be offering incentive funds based on the donations received.
With gratitude and heartfelt appreciation,
Theodore (Ted) Mayer
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