Sending materials to Moses School

Moses School was established in 2009. It is in Wha May Day village, Papun district, Karen State in Myanmar. This school is a Primary school. Phar Eh will teach art at that school. He will teach art to children aged between 4 and 12. Moses School is very far from our office. We send the material to Maesariang first. And then, someone from Moses School comes to Maesariang to take them back to the school. Normally it is 2 days travel from Moses school to Maesariang.

 

Checking materials list at Studio Xang office in Chiang Mai. Max, wearing the bandana, went to buy it and Emily is making sure he didn’t forget anything…Then of course there were some things missing and she sent us back to the market!

All the equipments above are necessary for Moses School's art classes.

Materials list in Burmese

 

Putting materials into a cardboard box

Max is putting material boxes into the car.

Our lovely Rot Chang (Studio Xang's car) is ready to go to the Arcade bus station.

The material boxes are being weighed and the Bus company staff is calculating the transportation fees to Maesariang

Arcade bus station 

It’s all on the red bus. Phar Eh called us that evening from Maesariang to say he had received the boxes. This art materials surely be a novelty for children in Moses School and they are going to have fun in their art class thanks to you all!!!!!!!!

Young Art Leaders working with infant school students.

                          Year 9 students from Sundorne have been paired up with children
                          from the infants school. They have been visiting the infants school and
                          undertaking drawing and painting tasks with the younger children.

                           This one to one tuition has enabled the younger children to explore new
                            tecniques in their art work,including adding tone and texture to their
                            work.

                      The first task they do is develope the use of tone by understanding
                       how differnt pressure with a pencil can produce light and dark effects
                       to their drawings.

                          The second task involves using water colour paints, understanding the
                          terms primary and secondary colours, and how to mix colours and use
                          the colour wheel to help get the best results.

                            This interaction with younger students helps them to develope their
                            own social skills and provides them with the opportunity to pass on
                            the skills they have learnt in the art department at Sundorne.

Final exams at Sunrise School

The school year over here starts from June until March. The final exams for the year take place in March. It is a busy time for students. Here are some photographs of Yaung Ni Oo (Sunrise) students taking their exams.

Students taking their end of year exam (march 2011)

You might notice that there are students of different ages in this room. This is because there are not enough classrooms in Yaung Ni Oo School for each grade to have one room to take their exam in.

Grade 10, Grade 8 and Grade 2 students concentrating on their exam papers

 The advantage is that there are no cheating but it does take a while for the teacher to distribute all the different exam papers in the classroom!

This young girl is answering the Social Science exam questions.

Students who pass the exams, will enter the next grade in coming school year in June 2011. Grade 10 students will graduate from Yaung Ni Oo high school and enjoy the summer holidays.

To be continued.....

Sundorne 'inter form' sports activities

                            Sundorne School run an 'inter-form' sports competion, where all
                             year 8 forms compete against each other in various sports.
                             This time the chosen activities were tennis, team races, dodge
                              ball and dance.                                                                   
                                                   

  

                         Forms selected teams from volunteers, the players could
                         choose to play on the full tennis court or play a shortened court.

                            Teams warm up by stretching before the activity races,
                             nobody wants to pull muscles or injure themselves.
                             The team races involve teams of 6 running a relay
                             which included skipping running and throwing bean bags
                             into hoops on the ground.

                              Part of the race involves skipping, not as easy as it looks
                              when your racing to beat the person next to you!

   
                           Dodge ball in the gym involved two teams, on opposite sides
                           of the benches, trying to hit the opposition with soft balls. Once hit
                           you have to leave the game and the last man standing is the winner.
                                            

                         The game was made more difficult for the teams by the
                         nomination of a 'King' who put on a red bib to show he
                         was the 'target'. The aim for the rest of the kings team
                         was to protect their king from being hit by the opposition.

                                      
                      The final activity was a dance competition.Teams of 4
                      from each year eight form put together a short dance routine
                      which was then judged by the dance teacher Miss Frederick.

Estelle wrote:

I send you some pics from Maessariang which is the last town on the way to Mae la Oon refugee camp. Salai and I spend all our time between Chiang Mai, Maesariang and Maesot.

Maessariang

The old cinema - now a gas station in Maessariang

Maessariang centre

New year is when we are licensed to throw water at any one, police included from mid morning to sundown.
Evenings are for parties with friends and families. In Chiang Mai this lasts about a week but it's only 2 days in Bangkok. We went to the city moat where all the action happens for 3 solid days, trucks loaded with people, water containers and ice, people on foot filling buckets from the moat, people on motorbikes and us on bicycles! All totally drenched and in a massive traffic jam.

On the side of the road there are some stages organised by businesses to advertise. Dancers jig up and down with blasting music. Most of this is happy and friendly chaos, wishing a total stranger the best for the new year, helping each other washing out the bad of last year. The thing is you can't cleanse your spirit by yourself.

In your last email you asked if there was other schools that Sundorne could help. At the same time, we received a letter from Par Eh who was our intern last year. I made a post about him on the blog.

After the internship, he went back to the camp and looked for work but didn't find any (not much employment prospects in a refugee camp), then he went home to his village. Finally, he has found a job as a teacher in a school run by the Karen education department (they run the schools in refugee camps and conflict zone inside Burma).

The school is inside Burma, about a day or 2 from the border in Wah Meh Deh village ( Papon division, Kalaw Tha area if you can find it on the map. It's not far from Ma Naw Plaw but spellings can be varied). It's a jungle school. A school for kids living in the zone of conflict where there are no schools. He requested us to support him for art supplies so that he could teach art as well at this school.

He made a list of material he needed for one term teach 20 to 30 kids aged between 4 and 12yrs. I think 5000B would cover it, plus a camera (3000) and transportation cost from Chiang Mai to Wah Meh Deh village  ( 1000B). So the total would be 9,000-10,000B. That's around 250 pounds.

Traditional teak house

Spirit House

Children playing with water in the streets

Festive shirts for New Year in the market

Mirrors on buildings to wade off evil spirits

Food stall in the market.

I told him that he would have to follow reporting requirements and document his classes if he wanted financial support which he has agreed to. But we don't have any spare budget so I was wondering if this could be something your students would be interested in supporting. Par Eh is doing teacher training in Maesariang right now and he will go back to the school on the 16th of may. The school year here starts in June.