Dear Friends,
It is Post-Cyclone Week Ten. I am just back from another trip to the delta. The villages I am visiting are recovering quickly. The farmers now have seeds, plows and diesel and are in the paddies racing time to get their winter rice planted. In fact, they had little time to talk!
My focus on this trip was to follow up on our support to the villages’ primary schools and health clinics. Most of my talking was with teachers, community health workers, mothers and children. The children that survived the water surge and storm shrapnel need no more life drama. They seemed relieved by the boredom of memorizing their textbooks. The teachers were amazed that their pre-cyclone shabby schools are now in better condition with new roofs, cement floors, new black boards and partitions. The community health workers are confident in their new skills in diagnosing and treating basic medical conditions. And the mothers… they are happy just to see their children alive and their husbands working in the paddies.
Below is a summary of our direct and immediate support given to cyclone survivors.
$12,500 - Rebuild /repair 6 village primary schools
$10,000 - Repair 5 monastery primary schools
$5,000 - Mother-Child health (tetanus vaccinations, prenatal care) to 20 villages
$4,000 - Rebuild 3 Baptist Churches
$2,300 - Fund 3 mobile medical clinics for three weeks
$5,000 - Fresh water pond recovery for 40 one-acre ponds
$3,500 - Rice Farm recovery to 2 small villages
$800 - School health clinics
$600 - 15 School Action Learning Boxes - metal boxes filled with innovative learning devices. Thank you to friends and family who helped me buy, cut, paste, copy, laminate and pack up these learning widgets.
$350 - Teacher salary support
$260 - Widow support for 6 months
$150 - Support for 3 blind children to attend Baptist Blind School in Yangon (3 years) And many more small in money large in meaning contributions.
Below is summary of long-term recovery support
$12,000 - Support in start-up costs for Good Sleep
We are what Muhammad Yunus, Noble Peace Price winner 2006, calls SBEs- social business entrepreneurs. I know little about starting a traditional for-profit business, but during the many years of learning how poor women struggle to raise families on one dollar a day, I feel I have earned my honorary MBA at the University of Poverty this season in Myanmar.
At UOP I learned that poor people better utilize precious living resources than rich people, and therefore if they are given a charitable living resource that is not useful to them, it will be reshaped into something that is!
Most of the poorly-designed, expensive bed nets that I have given away have been used has fishing nets, pillows, water and gasoline filters, food covers, and decorative clothing. A Swiss company donated 80,000 bed nets to cyclone victims. I predict most of these nets will be used for something other than sleeping under, probably stuffing holes in their thatch roofs.
Of the 50,000 kitchen sets donated by an international NGO that I spearheaded to get airlifted into Yangon, no more than half had handles that remained intact (and there are no pot holders in Myanmar). We have all passed on a gift that we might not fancy, which is fine in the recycled world of the rich. But when a gift goes directly from the rich to the poor….it loses much in its trickle-down functional value.
So with little else aside my MBA from UOP, I went straight to the poor women and listened to what kind of a net they want and how much they can and will pay for it. That was easy and fun. The struggle was designing and producing their dream net without losing money! The Good Sleep team is now producing the first thatched hut economy family bed net…blue moon. We have also designed a wooden house ( middle class - rich) net …full moon and a privacy top of the line net….honey moon. We call these our Robin Hood Nets! Please, anyone who has a real MBA from a real university… I need help.
It is cyclone week eight for me…time for me to take a week break with my family and friends. I leave on Sunday evening for a short holiday in Maui and will be back in San Francisco July 21st. My bags are stuffed with Thank You’s from people whose lives are touched by your kind donations. I hope to be able to meet with many of you before I head back to Burma in mid-August.
A special thank you to Chenda Fry Haw, without whom as my Compass Rose, I would be a cork on an ebb tide.
Best regards, Helen
Good Sleep team setting out for hut bed net interviews
Zin Zin invited into a hut for interview
A Good Sleep customer
Good Sleep production team with the blue moon
Blue moon wrapped and ready to be sold
