MBOA Orphanage

Loca­tion:                 Chan Aye Thar Zan Town­ship, Man­dalay, Myanmar

Key dates:               Com­menced March 2004; Com­pleted March 2005

Local part­ners:        Myan­mar Bud­dhist Orphan­age Association

Project back­ground:  This orphan­age pro­vided ade­quate care for the 220 res­i­dent boys, but we felt that there was a need to help them develop new, poten­tially career-oriented, skills.  The man­age­ment team at the orphan­age was keen to increase the amount of voca­tional train­ing avail­able to the boys.

Main activ­i­ties:  In con­sul­ta­tion with another NGO which had pro­vided sup­port for this orphan­age, we decided to invest in a new com­puter room to sup­ple­ment the exist­ing train­ing facil­i­ties in this area.  We sup­plied var­i­ous items of com­puter hard­ware and soft­ware and, to ensure that the Orphan­age cap­i­talised fully on this strate­gic invest­ment, we also pro­vided teach­ing aids, schol­ar­ships for some of the boys and estab­lished an Edu­ca­tion Endow­ment Fund.  

Sta­tus of project:  Com­pleted March 2005.  Many boys now undergo com­puter train­ing in the Orphan­age, sev­eral have gone on to grad­u­ate with diplo­mas in IT from local col­leges, and some have secured good jobs in com­put­ing, either in Myan­mar or over­seas.  One boy is man­ag­ing a large team of IT pro­fes­sion­als in a multi­na­tional phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals cor­po­ra­tion in Sin­ga­pore, a very grat­i­fy­ing piece of evi­dence that our strate­gic invest­ment has made a mean­ing­ful impact on the lives of the orphans.