Rural Myanmar

70 percent of Myanmar's 54 million people are ethnic Burmese. The remaining 30 percent, however, is broken up into more than 130 ethnic groups, many of which live in the border areas. These ethnic groups, living in the regions adjoining China, Laos and Thailand, have for many years been among the poorest people in the nation, and the least educated.

One reason for this low level of education is the fact that, under the Myanmar system, the parents of schoolchildren must pay for the maintenance of the school's facilities, and support the salary of the teacher. While this may seem on the surface like a logical system, in fact the result is that parents who must struggle simply to eat usually end up pulling their children out of school. This of course deprives the children of any chance to better themselves. Teachers themselves are finding thatthey cannot earn enough to live, and school facilities are falling into grave disrepair.

In order to reverse this negative spiral, and at the same time build prosperity in the state, in 2002 The Nippon Foundation embarked on Education for Peace and Development (EPD), a highly innovative project that is not only providing education, but consolidating communities and helping them build an economic future for themselves.

The process, which places a strong emphasis on community involvement, begins with action by villages that would like to build, refurbish, or add to the local school. Such villages first apply to our local partner NGO, known as Saetanar (a name combines the Myanmar words for compassion and kindness). Saetanar then visits the village, surveying its needs and more importantly, its will to make the project sustainable. Once this will is judged sufficient, the organization helps the village to set up a school construction committee, made up entirely of members of the community itself. Throughout the construction process, it is this committee that oversees the work, procures materials, and obtains labor from within the community.