New Orphanage

We are having a new orphanage built and the children are very excited.

Here is a picture of the building  it is well on the way and will be a great new home.

Their present home is very dilapidated [you can just see the corner of the old orphanage in the photo]

It is leaking in many places, the new build will make a much better home for the children!!  And will be great for their future.

Today our trustees received a letter in Burmese from one of the people who puts
us in touch with schools in need of support.  


She said "The situation in the villages is getting worse.  It hasn't rained at all in central Burma so the farmers haven't been able to plant anything.  As they say in the village 'The plough is left upturned', in other words, if there's no rain, there's no need to get the plough ready.   That's why the farmers will have problems sending their children to school in future."  


She wants us all to know "the support that schools receive from BCF makes such a difference to these parents and their children. These children are always sending their love to the people who have helped them - who are not their own race or religion."


She told us that  "In our tradition,once a building is finished,  the village monk holds a blessing ceremony, and he invites me to come to it as a representative of BCF.  When the water is poured for the blessing, they bless the supporters of BCF."

Hare Lip Surgery

We have recently started to support  Hare Lip Surgery for children in Burma whose lives are transformed by this simple surgery

This is a new initiative and we have a number of children who are waiting for the operation. Any one who would like to sponsor an operation can do so. The cost is US$300 which covers everything, including travel to the hospital and after-care

Yadanar Education Foundation

Yadanar means Gems in Burmese and the children are the gems. This wonderful foundation is a non-profit organisation run by dedicated, unpaid, volunteers.

It opened in 2010 & its goal is to provide educational support and encouragement to 50-100 extremely disadvantaged children. They are the poorest of the poor, of all races and religions, living in the outskirts of Mandalay.

The Foundation’s vision is that the children will be cherished, motivated and enabled to fulfil their potential. They will be encouraged to develop their self-esteem as they learn in a safe and secure and creative, learning environment

The plan is to achieve the goals using a 5-step approach – with steps 1 to 4 already in place

1. Providing a safe, secure and fun but disciplined and well-managed environment for learning.

2. Providing tutoring with a strong focus on the learning of reading writing and arithmetic.

3. Upgrading health and hygiene by providing a small nutritious meal before lessons and information/checks on health and hygiene

4. Providing school uniforms, footwear, exercise books etc.

5. Is a long-term objective to build up the children’s self-esteem, motivation and levels of aspiration. A key component of this will be to arrange activities such as:

    * arts, crafts and music lessons

    * reading / library program

    * parent –child reading programs

    * excursions

All these components of step 5 will be implemented when funding is available to support them.

The Burma Children’s Fund is delighted to be involved with this praiseworthy initiative and we have high hopes for its future success.

A Most Generous Couple

A lovely couple contacted us recently and you can read their story for yourselves. Their wedding was a few days ago and we have copied what they wrote on their Just Giving Page

They wrote “For those of you visiting this page who don’t already know us, Audry (‘Aye Aye’) and Robin met about 5 years ago in London and are (at long last!) getting married on 17 August 2010 in Gloucestershire.  Audry is originally from Myanmar, while Robin is English.

As an alternative to traditional wedding gifts we both felt we wanted to use any gifts received to fund something tangible in Myanmar to commemorate our marriage.

After weeks of researching alternatives we came across a small charity called the Burma Children’s Fund (www.burmachildrensfund.org.uk).  The charity is non-political, non-religious organisation run entirely by volunteers, dedicated to helping the children of Burma through the provision of pre-schools, orphanages and healthcare. There is a moving account on their website of how the charity came into being from quite different beginnings, following a visit to Myanmar in 2004 by the founders. [This story is now on this blog]

After contacting the charity founders, and explaining what we were hoping to achieve, we were delighted when they called us a couple of weeks later with a specific project in need of funding. We plan to use any gifts received from our wedding to help establish a permanent pre-school in a village called Pyan Sakan in Pyone Chaung Parish, 8 miles from Taungoo (about 140 miles north of Yangon).  We have uploaded a photograph of the actual building that we are hoping to help purchase, taken in June 2010 specifically for us!

There are 89 families in this village currently using a house as a makeshift pre-school.  In its present form, the building can only accommodate 20 children, which is small percentage of the local children of eligible pre-school age. Any gifts will be put towards purchasing the building to secure its continued use as a pre-school, extending it to accommodate more children in the future, and training teachers to provide the tuition.

If you feel you would like to help us commemorate our marriage in this way, we would be delighted to receive donations in lieu of wedding presents towards this cause.  Donating through the JustGiving website is obviously a fabulous way to do this as they make the entire process very simple and, for UK taxpayers, are able to add approximately 20% (after costs) in Gift Aid.  However if you are coming to our wedding or know us personally we would also be delighted to receive personal cheques or cash before, at or after the wedding which we will then add to the JustGiving pot on your behalf.

Thanks so much from us both in advance for your generosity.  This truly is the best wedding present you could give us.

All the best,

Robin & Audry xx”

We are so grateful to Robin and Audrey and their family and friends for their generous support for the children in Burma. And Just Giving is such an easy way for people to donate when they want to help a charity.

How it all began - A Walk through a Window

What changed our lives after we retired was not the Son et Lumiere in the great square in Samarkand. Nor was it flying over Everest at Dawn or watching the cormorant fishermen on the Guilin River in China. Our lives were changed by a Window North of Mandalay.

In January 2004 we arrived in Burma – we watched the sun set over Rangoon’s gold covered Shwedagon Pagoda. We toured round the country before catching a rust-bucket of a trading boat up the Irrawaddy from Bagan - and arrived by moonlight in Mandalay. 

We headed to Maymyo to see the Kandawgi Gardens. Whilst there, we visited the Garrison Church of All Saints. It looked tired and neglected. We went inside and saw it was in a poor state of repair. As we were leaving we looked up to see the most beautiful Pre-Raphaelite window. The early evening light streamed through the stained glass and we were overwhelmed by the colour and content. Jesus in red filled one panel and St Peter in blue the other. The window was on the verge of collapse – only held in by chicken wire and with pieces of glass missing. 

Despite this, the transparency, luminosity, vibrant colours and the wonderful design in such fine detail made it truly special. We felt compelled to find out more about it.

We found the Burmese Vicar who spoke English. He suggested we visit his English Church Warden, Chris Harrison, who lived in Maymyo. Chris explained that David Knowles who had repaired the Rangoon cathedral windows, had recently inspected the All Saints window. David said it would only survive for a few more months. If the window collapsed the interior would become exposed to the monsoon and the fabric of the building would be at risk. Restoring it would cost about £15,000 but no local money was available.  Impasse!

So we made a decision that changed our lives. We offered to raise the funds to restore the window. Back in UK we launched an appeal and wrote to some 300 organisations and individuals that we thought would be interested in churches, stained glass windows, or the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. How wrong could we be? We received just a single reply! We clearly needed a rethink.


We formed a small committee and were delighted when Viscount Slim agreed to become our Patron – his father Field Marshal Slim had commanded the victorious 14^th Army that defeated the Japanese in Burma. He suggested we focus on Burma Star veterans and others with a connection to Burma. We wrote articles for their magazines and had immediate responses. Gradually the funds started to accumulate. We met David Knowles the stained glass windows expert in Kent and he agreed to go to Burma to repair the window. In February 2005 he arrived in Maymyo to start the restoration work balancing precariously on rickety bamboo scaffolding, with local people helping as his labour force.

Our publicity triggered a flow of letters and e-mails. People called to find out how things were progressing.  They talked about their experiences, links with, and wartime memories of Maymyo and Mandalay. Some had served there; others had fought there; many had recuperated there and some, as small children, had walked from Maymyo to India to escape the advancing Japanese troops. A frequent question asked was ‘Can we come with you to see the restored windows?’

So we worked closely with Piers Storie-Pugh the dynamic head of Remembrance Travel to arrange a Pilgrimage to Burma. 151 of us arrived in Maymyo to attend the service to rededicate the beautifully restored windows on Sunday 13^th November 2005. It was led by the Bishop of Mandalay, and attended by Viscount and Lady Slim, HM Ambassador to Burma – Ms Vicky Bowman, many locals and seventy Ghurkhas who had stayed behind in Burma at the end of the war. There were amazing stories shared, old comrades had unexpected reunions and many new friendships were formed. It was a unique opportunity for people to reconnect with a place that had played such a special part in their lives. And this could have been the end of the story for us.

After the ceremony the two of us stood together in the empty Church looking up at the restored window. Silently we reflected on the last 22 months and read the text on it - ‘FEED MY LAMBS’. These words spoke to our hearts. During our two visits to Burma we had seen the problems there, the degree of poverty and the lack of education for children. We discovered that some 150,000 children under the age of 5 die there annually –mainly from malnutrition and preventable diseases. We just couldn’t walk away.

Next day we gave the Mandalay Boy’s Orphanage the balance of the money from our appeal. As we travelled back down the country near to the new capital Naypyidaw to Rangoon everything we saw and heard reinforced our belief that we couldn’t stop. We had to go on. We had to build on our success and find a way to help the needy children in Burma.

So when we got home the two of us founded the Burma Children’s Fund, now a national charity [1123989]. Our goal is to improve the lives of children in Burma. We have no paid staff or offices and very low overheads. As a result virtually all the donations we receive go directly to support the children in Burma.

In the past few years we have built or supported orphanages and pre-schools and paid for many children’s education. We sent emergency relief after Cyclone NARGIS in 2008. In 2009 we paid for food for a thousand children who were starving due to a plague of rats in Western Burma. This year we are helping to fund deep wells to replace some in the Delta that were contaminated during the cyclone. 


A recent venture we are supporting is a school for children who spend their days working on rubbish dumps. Their evening schooling gives them hope for the future

Our walk through the window changed our lives. We cannot change the lives of all the poor children in Burma but we will continue to support their education and to “FEED MY LAMBS”

To find out more about the Burma Children’s Fund, or to make a donation visit our website at www.burmachildrensfund.org.uk or its Facebook Page - Burma Children’s Fund.

Golf Day 2010

2010 Golf day

Our apologies to our friends and supporters that we have had to cancel our golf day this year -competing for the Burma Trophy and raising funds for the charity. Unwisely our chairman poured boiling water on his leg which took a month to mend and then had to have an operation [unconnected]. These two events took us out of play for the summer so sadly the golf day this year never got organised

2009 Winners

Just to remind you -  the winners in 2009 were the team from Jays Accountants 

and Patrick Neely, on the left, was the individual champion

Children's education

The new school year in Burma started on 1 June

Many of our donations this year have been focused on getting children into education. For example we have funded the entry fees and bought exercise books for more than 300 children who are starting school for the first time. We have paid for new books at a Monastery school 

We are also paying for the ongoing education of some very bright children whose parents cannot afford to pay for their schooling. And we have arranged to pay for children to stay in hostels where they can attend secondary schools – because there are only primary schools in their own villages.

About the Burma Children's Fund

Aim 

To improve the lives of children in Burma

What we Do

The Burma Children's Fund supports orphanages and pre-schools in various parts of Burma in order to provide shelter, health care and education for orphans and children. We are totally non-political and ask people not to make any political comments.

Charitable Status

We are a UK registered charity number 1123988

Our Blog

We plan to use our blog and our recently launched Facebook Page to keep people updated about our charity.  WE ARE ALL ABOUT CHILDREN

Background

We started fund raising in 2004. We have no paid staff, offices or cars and our Trustees run the Charity as unpaid volunteers in their own time. Because of this we keep our overheads to the absolute minimum so that the donations we receive are spent on the children’s needs in Burma.