Here is a story about a leader from Myanmar on the CEDPA site.
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Kaythi Win (Myanmar)
Most people have, at most, one event that changes the course of their lives. For Kaythi Win of Myanmar there were three.
The first was the loss of her father. As a driver, Kaythi’s father was the family’s sole source of income. When he became ill, Kaythi’s family mortgaged their house near Yangon for a loan to pay the bills. When he finally died, the family was devastated emotionally and financially.
Kaythi was forced to leave high school to help her mother deal with the situation.
“After six months, those people came to us and they said if we did not give back the money in the next two months, they will take our house,” explained Kaythi.
Desperate at the thought of her family being out on the street, Kaythi went to see a friend of hers who she knew always had money.
“She said she cannot loan me [money], but she can give me the job. But that job can be hard [for] me,” said Kaythi.
The job was sex work. Kaythi was ashamed, but she felt the weight of taking care of her mother and her sisters on her shoulders, so reluctantly she agreed. She told her mother that she had gotten a good job at the Myanmar border, and she would send money back home.
She still lived in the city, but refused to go out during the day for fear that someone might see her and tell her mother. A taxi would take her to the nightclub where she worked every night.
One night, while she was at a night club, she was approached by a PSI Outreach Worker. He asked her if she knew about HIV.
“He talked to me like friend. He talked about HIV and also STI,” said Kaythi. “He taught me many things about HIV. I [became] seriously afraid, because I have many things to do for my family.”
That conversation changed Kaythi’s life. She was so interested in what she learned that she became a peer educator of PSI.
“When I joined to the PSI outreach worker program, I go back to my home,” said Kaythi. “I told my ma I come back, and I have a job in [Yangon]. So my life started [again when I return] with family.”
Shortly after she began working with PSI, someone told her about a CEDPA leadership workshop. So Kaythi appied and was accepted to the Ford Foundation-funded Advancing Women’s Leadership and Advocacy for AIDS Action workshop in Nepal.
“Before, in my mind, I thought that leader is like ‘Leader’. When I got the leadership training, I change my mind,” said Kaythi. “I am wrong, leader is not like the position. Leader is the [ability] to organize the people, [ability] to take care of all the people.”
Kaythi’s English was lacking at the time, but she wrote everything down. When she got home, she had someone translate it for her.
“I have that problem of when I want to do something and people tell me ‘Oh, you cannot do that,’ and then I want to do it,” she explains. “So I try, even I do not sleep, I try.”
Kaythi studied everything from the workshop and began applying it. Eventually she got a promotion and now manages 350 outreach workers throughout Myanmar. She is proud of the work she does, and wants to share what she learned with her community.
“Many people are like me, but [they] don’t know what to do. They have [abilities] inside, but they don’t know how to [use them],” she said. “If [they] got this kind of workshop, [they] can do many things for the community.”
(July 2010)
http://www.cedpa.org/content/story/detail/2366
