Founders’ stories

 

Ian Love — Founder

On hol­i­day in Burma in 2002, my fam­ily and I came across an old per­sons’ home in the town of Min­gun.  It was here that we met Nurse Thwe Thwe Aye, who became the inspi­ra­tion for our “Small Idea”.  Nurse Thwe imme­di­ately cap­tured us with her won­der­ful smile and warm per­son­al­ity.   She spoke bro­ken Eng­lish and very proudly showed us through the old per­sons’ home.  At the con­clu­sion of the visit we took a photo of her stand­ing proudly out­side her clinic, and promised to send a copy of the photo to her upon our return home.  Now, usu­ally such promises are soon for­got­ten after the hol­i­day ends, but in this case, I decided to fol­low through and sent Nurse Thwe an enlarged copy of the photo, together with some left over Burmese currency. 

Three months later I received a let­ter from Nurse Thwe in bro­ken Eng­lish, thank­ing me for the pho­to­graph, and I began to won­der whether we could pro­vide some more sub­stan­tial assis­tance to the nurse and the elderly peo­ple under her care.  My idea was to raise money for new bed­ding and mos­quito nets for the entire home.  I wrote up a short story about Nurse Thwe and my plan to raise funds, and sent it to all my con­tacts, seek­ing their sup­port. Soon after, a team of 8 peo­ple was formed, to raise the funds and travel back to Burma to deliver the goods.   After a suc­cess­ful fundrais­ing pro­gram, the same team arrived at the home in Min­gun in March 2004, to hand over the bed­ding mate­ri­als and other gifts to Nurse Thwe.  One thing we were struck by was how far the money in Burma went.  We had raised $7,000 and the bed­ding mate­ri­als had cost just $5,000, leav­ing us with $2,000 with which we estab­lished a med­ical clinic Fund. In due course, this Fund was used to con­struct and stock a new med­ical clinic for Nurse Thwe.  

I had decided that, before leav­ing Burma, I wanted to visit at least one orphan­age and, in fact, man­aged to arrange vis­its to two — one for boys, the other for girls, both in the city of Man­dalay.  The chil­dren were very happy to see us and we spent a won­der­ful few hours play­ing games with them and run­ning impromptu Eng­lish classes.   We pur­chased them lunch with some of the money we had left over, and decided to return in 2005 with a larger dona­tion.  The end­less con­flicts in Burma over many years have led to many chil­dren being aban­doned or orphaned and it was imme­di­ately clear to us that these orphan­ages pro­vided lit­tle more than subsistence-level shel­ter for the chil­dren.  I began to form the idea in my mind that we might be able to help them in a more sus­tain­able way.  Our group decided to become a lit­tle more organ­ised and The Man­dalay Projects came into being, with the mis­sion of pro­vid­ing strate­gic sup­port to worth­while causes in Burma and (now) else­where in South East Asia. 

Our small idea has grown rapidly.  We are now work­ing with our eighth orphan­age, and it is clear that we have barely scratched the sur­face of the work we can do.  When we first wanted to do some phil­an­thropy work, we didn’t really know where to start…so we just started.   Now we don’t know where to stop…so we just keep going.   I don’t know where it will end, but I do know that we have made many new friends as peo­ple have come and gone from our group, we have had great life expe­ri­ences and adven­tures on our trav­els and we have a found great per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion in the work we have done in help­ing peo­ple less for­tu­nate than our­selves.  I hope you can join us.

 

 

David Gib­son - Co-founder

When I heard about the project work that Ian had started, I was imme­di­ately inter­ested in becom­ing involved.  I had always wanted to do some­thing phil­an­thropic, but the usual com­mit­ments had always seemed to get in the way.  A change of career in 2004 offered me the chance to join what would become The Man­dalay Projects, and I have been actively involved ever since. 

I like how hands-on our project work is, and I’m hugely moti­vated by see­ing first-hand just how mean­ing­ful a dif­fer­ence we are mak­ing to the lives of the chil­dren we work with.  We’re now into our fifth year at one of our sites, and it has been fas­ci­nat­ing and grat­i­fy­ing to see the chil­dren grow­ing up in a safer, health­ier and more stim­u­lat­ing envi­ron­ment than would prob­a­bly have ensued with­out our project work.  I pas­sion­ately believe in the power of edu­ca­tion as a means of mak­ing chil­dren more inde­pen­dent and, as a result, less vul­ner­a­ble to exploita­tion.  I think The Man­dalay Projects is mak­ing tan­gi­ble progress in this regard.  My favourite story is of a boy at an orphan­age in Man­dalay who stud­ied com­put­ing in the IT train­ing cen­tre we helped to estab­lish.  He is now run­ning a large team of IT tech­ni­cians for an inter­na­tional phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals com­pany in Sin­ga­pore, some­thing that would have been beyond his wildest dreams a few years ago. 

I am proud of the work we have done to date, and espe­cially pleased that we have kept our admin­is­tra­tive costs to an absolute min­i­mum, such that  sub­stan­tially every dol­lar that our donors give us is passed on to the ben­e­fit of the chil­dren.  An added bonus in all of this is that, through my work with The Man­dalay Projects, I have met some great peo­ple and made last­ing friend­ships.  I have also been able to travel to fairly remote parts of Asia, where our help is greatly needed, and where I sus­pect I might never have ven­tured, had it not been for my role with The Man­dalay Projects.