TMPL direc­tors Ian Love and David Gib­son recently vis­ited a num­ber of our project sites in Laos and Burma.  Solid progress has been made in all our projects, and it was par­tic­u­larly pleas­ing to see our new edu­ca­tional facil­ity in Luang Pra­bang being enthu­si­as­ti­cally used by the chil­dren and the teach­ing staff.  We are inves­ti­gat­ing a num­ber of poten­tial new projects as a result of this trip, and we will keep mem­bers and sup­port­ers posted as our plans for these projects unfold.

TMPL Direc­tor David Gib­son recently vis­ited all of our cur­rent project sites in both Laos and Burma (Myan­mar).  He for­mally handed over to local man­age­ment our infants’ edu­ca­tion facil­ity at the Deak Kum Pa School & Orphan­age in Luang Pra­bang, Laos.  David also estab­lished a list of poten­tial new projects for TMPL to con­sider in 2012.

TMP’s new infants’ facil­ity at Deak Kum Pa

We are pleased to announce that TMPL has extended its geo­graphic reach to include Laos (or Lao PDR as it is more cor­rectly known).  After ini­tial site vis­its ear­lier this year, we have signed a part­ner­ship agree­ment with a local part­ner (Mr Andrew Brown) who is act­ing as our in-country project coor­di­na­tor.  Our first project site is the Deak Kum Pa School and Orphan­age in Luang Pra­bang, where we will build a 2-storey dor­mi­tory and class­room, with an adjoin­ing toi­let block.  Our aim here is to facil­i­tate the arrival at the orphan­age of a num­ber of younger (pre-school age) orphans, who will be given a safer and health­ier envi­ron­ment where they will also gain a proper edu­ca­tion.  TMPL will fund the pro­vi­sion of a suitably-qualified teacher for this new group of res­i­dents.  We will keep you posted with addi­tional news of this excit­ing new devl­op­ment in the months ahead.

Exist­ing dorm at Deak Kum Pa

Mia Egerton-Warburton recently organ­ised a func­tion to raise funds for The Man­dalay Projects at St Werburgh’s Home­stead near Mount Barker, WA, 400 km south of Perth. Mia did this as part of her PLC school cur­ricu­lum to under­take a social wel­fare project or ini­tia­tive. Mia had a num­ber of peo­ple who helped her; notable were Jenny Egerton-Warburton and Ra Stew­art who were instru­men­tal in help­ing Mia achieve the suc­cess she did.

Approx­i­mately 150 guests attended the func­tion, which raised a size­able sum of money for The Man­dalay Projects and brought aware­ness of the work of TMP to a large group of peo­ple who hith­erto had not known of the organ­i­sa­tion and its work.

The func­tion was held under a large mar­quee with a live band.  A large num­ber of peo­ple had donated items for auc­tion. The auc­tion, con­ducted by a local cat­tle auc­tion­eer, was enter­tain­ing and added to the coun­try flavour of the evening.   A num­ber of local winer­ies donated wine for the evening.  The Man­dalay Projects Ltd is extremely grate­ful to every­one who sup­ported this func­tion, and espe­cially Mia Egerton-Warburton for her excel­lent efforts in organ­is­ing the event.

Inside the new TMPL tai­lor­ing work­shop at Kyaiklat

A group of TMP mem­bers recently trav­elled to Burma at their own expense and vis­ited each of our project sites.  There was good news from all loca­tions. Con­struc­tion of our tai­lor­ing work­shop at the girls’ orphan­age in Kyaik­lat is almost com­plete, and machines and other equip­ment have been pur­chased.  The res­i­dents are very exci­teed about their new facil­ity. Our engi­neer­ing work­shop at Kani boys’ orphan­age is also fin­ished and ready to start train­ing and pro­duc­tion shortly.  Finally, the hor­ti­cul­ture project at Min­galar Parahita goes from strength to strength, and a team of res­i­dents is now work­ing hard to main­tain the plants through to the end of the dry sea­son.  Thanks to Fiona, Marie, Deb, Heather, Linda, Jenny and Sue for all their hard work on this trip and for pro­vid­ing some great pho­tos of their visit.

Res­i­dents tend­ing lemon plants at Min­galar Parahita

We have a team going into Burma this week. The team will visit all our exist­ing project sites — look out for a visit report soon.

Upgrad­ing our web­site was one of our objec­tives for the sec­ond half of 2010 — we hope you like the new look.

Our grate­ful thanks go to:

the guys at Fasthit (http://www.fasthit.net/), who have gen­er­ously pro­vided our host­ing account;

every­one at Word­Press (http://wordpress.org/) for their excel­lent work in pro­vid­ing web­site tem­plates for organ­i­sa­tions such as ours, and

Kay Smol­jak at Clever Starfish (http://www.cleverstarfish.com/) for her excel­lent guid­ance and sup­port on the web design. 

We are also indebted to Neville Spacey who has pro­vided excel­lent pro-bono sup­port to The Man­dalay Projects over the past few years and who helped with the launch of our orig­i­nal web­site back in 2005.

MANY THANKS TO YOU ALL!

TMP’s direc­tor David Gib­son has recently vis­ited our project sites and pro­vides this short report:

I have recently com­pleted a thor­ough review of all our exisit­ing, and poten­tial new, project work at four orphan­ages in the Irrawady Delta region of Burma.  We have made excel­lent progress with our voca­tional train­ing ini­tia­tives at the Min­galar Parahita Orphan­age near Twante, where our hor­ti­cul­ture and tai­lor­ing work­shop projects have not only cre­ated job oppor­tu­ni­ties for the older res­i­dents, but are also pro­vid­ing sus­tain­able income (or use­able pro­duce) for the orphan­age.  We will be adding to our voca­tional train­ing projects there, with a desk-top pub­lish­ing ini­tia­tive early in 2011.  This for me is some­thing of an iconic project for us — who would have thought that, in the mid­dle of the Burmese coun­try­side, we’d be help­ing an orphan­age to develop a DTP cen­tre?  There is demand from the sur­round­ing com­mu­nity for ser­vices such as copy­ing, print­ing, photo edit­ing, etc., and we will work with the orphan­age man­age­ment to enable them to meet that demand. 

The other three orphan­ages I vis­ited are sit­u­ated fur­ther into the Delta, and one of them is acces­si­ble only by boat.  At the Pana Wady orphan­age I spent a lot of time dis­cussing our projects with the charis­matic lady who looks after the chil­dren.  This lady is quite inspi­ra­tional to work with — she has a reg­u­lar job as a teacher at a local school, but finds time in her day to super­vise the res­i­dents of the orphan­age, tak­ing care of their safety, health and hygiene, ensur­ing they do their home­work every night, and organ­is­ing games for them.  The Man­dalay Projects will work with this super­vi­sor as a strate­gic part­ner, and we have already started work on a num­ber of projects, includ­ing the estab­lish­ment of a tai­lor­ing workshop.

With some of the res­i­dents at Kyaiklat

At the Kani boys’ orphan­age, we have forged a good work­ing rela­tion­ship with the local super­vi­sory board and man­age­ment team, and will pro­vide strate­gic sup­port for a num­ber of impor­tant ini­tia­tives at this site.  First of these will be a mechan­i­cal work­shop, which we are estab­lis­ing with sup­port from an other inter­na­tional NGO.  Once this work­shop is up and run­ning, we intend to broaden its remit to pro­vide train­ing to local vil­lagers, as well as to the senior res­i­dents of the orphan­age itself.  This is an impor­tant aspect of our work; we recog­nise that the orphan­ages we sup­port do not exist in iso­la­tion — they are part of a broader com­mu­nity, and we must ensure that we take this into account in our project planning.

As always on these site vis­its, I was assisted by our local in-country team mem­bers, with­out whom our work would be well-nigh impos­si­ble.  Thanks for your sup­port, guys!