Aye Yeik Mon Girls Orphanage - Mandalay

The Aye Yeik Mon orphanage was founded in 1956 and today is home to over 200 girls, ranging in age from 18 months to 18 years. They are blessed with a safe and friendly environment, but their daily lifestyle is quite basic. The orphanage is run by the Convent for the Welfare of Underprivileged Girls and its activities are funded almost entirely from donations.

With ever-increasing costs, the very survival of the orphanage is a daily effort. On some days when there are no donors, the girls have to make do with only boiled dried peas for breakfast and a bowl of one-vegetable soup for supper. The play areas of the orphanage are small, and when our Project Group first visited, they were struck by the lack of sports and games equipment - even the most basic items such as skipping ropes and balls were absent.

The Group felt that it could do something about that, and agreed to re-visit the orphanage armed with supplies of balls, games, toys and other items which would bring some simple pleasure to the girls. More importantly, the Group felt that there was a need to give the girls a sense of purpose in life, something to strive for, something to help them break away from their mundane daily existence.

And so it was that the next round of fund-raising focused on the purchase of sewing machines to help equip a tailoring workshop at the orphanage. To illustrate that this sort of project work is never without its challenges, it transpired that the machines purchased were of the wrong voltage for the local power supply, but this was easily rectified and the machines now play a useful role in the development and training of the girls. The opening of the tailoring workshop was celebrated during the Project Group's 2005 visit to the orphanage, when prayers of thanks were offered by senior monks from the local monastery.

One of the girls has recently moved on from the training workshop to establish her own tailoring shop nearby. This is a small, but immensely gratifying, sign that the work of our Project Group is having a positive impact on the lives of the children we support.