Sprouting Seeds Learning Centre

Dear Friends and Family,

We hope this message finds you healthy, safe, and well. As many of you know, the situation here in Myanmar remains extremely challenging. Most recently, the country was struck by a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake on March 28th, which brought widespread devastation across central Myanmar.

While the epicenter was in the dry zone near Mandalay and Sagaing—two of the hardest-hit areas—the tremors were felt as far away as Bangkok and across Southeast Asia. Closer to home, the Inle Lake region was also heavily affected, and Kalaw experienced some minor damage. Unfortunately, two months after the initial quake, a 5.0 aftershock caused our kitchen building at the Whispering Earth Training Centre to collapse completely.

Thanks to the generous support of our partner organizations, we were able to distribute much-needed food supplies—such as cooking oil, peanuts, and dried fish—to around 200 families in affected villages, coordinated through our teacher training network in the Sagaing region. While the road to recovery will be long, we are grateful we could respond in some small way to the immense needs.

Despite the continued hardships, our team has remained focused on what we can do. We’ve been actively supporting youth, community leaders, and teachers through our ongoing training programs. Our apprenticeship program at the café also continues, though not without challenges. As we've mentioned before, many families are understandably hesitant to allow their children to travel during these uncertain times.

As we look ahead to the upcoming winter season, we hope Kalaw continues to be a small refuge of safety and calm amidst the wider turmoil. We hold hope for a more peaceful season ahead—not only for Myanmar, but for all corners of our shared world.

We are deeply grateful for your continued care, encouragement, and support. We look forward to sharing more updates with you in the months to come.

With love and gratitude,
The Sprouting Seeds Family

Dear Friends and Family, 

We hope you all are making a healthy and happy transition into the New Year as we rapidly make our way through the first months of 2025. Here in Myanmar, situation changes rapidly, but our little town of Kalaw still has been spared the atrocities of war that are being seen and felt across the country. 

The political and economic tensions continue to mount in all regions of the country and the work continues to be challenging. With the cold season slowly fading away, as the warmer breeze pushes up from the lowlands, we begin again with a new group of interns. 

The town of Kalaw is still rebuilding following the devastating flooding from the past few months.  With continued and worsening power cuts across the country, maintaining a small business endeavor let alone a place of training, is extremely challenging. 

Internship Program and Summer Camp
With dry season holidays and festivals coming up, we are aiming to run a few more trainings over the next few months and open the café. Our next batch of interns is on the way, as we make everything ready! We are also starting a summer program for youth in partnership with the school in Inle region. The camp will be based at the farm training centre but we will come to Sprouting Seeds for baking, cooking and craft trainings with the youth. 

As part of this, we made visits to a local Vermicompost project and also our solar food dryer is back in action! You can see Aliyah enjoying sun dried tomatoes, bananas, apples and papayas from the solar food dryer!

We look forward to sharing more news with you in the coming months!!!