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

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!