Good to see Eric getting some of the recognition he deserves.

[him] moderator

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Philanthropist brings HIV education to villages
By Ma Thanegi

U AUNG Din (also known by his family name Trutwein), white of hair and mild of manner, had a busy time just before the last Thingyan water festival: He was involved in gun running to Yenanchaung, where he was also working on some other projects.

“I represent an NGO,” he told The Myanmar Times, “but I also have other personal projects going on, looking after old or young people who cannot earn and have no family support: grannies, and orphans living with one grandparent.

“I bought 200 water pistols for these kids as well as for the poor children of the town. They had the greatest fun during water festival.”

At present he is looking after about 40 orphans living with their grandmothers and more than 50 grannies or single old ladies living on their own and without support.

U Aung Din tries to generate funds for their food, and every month he delivers to each of these households rice, oil, salt, fish paste, laphet pickled tea with condiments (“Grannies must have that,” he said) plus school costs for the children.

It was not terribly hard to get funds for children, U Aung Din explained, but very hard to get any for the elderly people.

“They cannot be accepted at old people’s homes because acceptance is conditional upon having no family to support them, and some of my grannies have children who have moved away and could no longer send money to them.”

Life in old people’s homes is strictly regulated and some cannot feel “at home” in such an institutionalised environment, where residents are often required to wake up very early, attend regular communal prayer sessions and walk in singe file to meals.

“I am trying to raise funds, apart from my own contribution, to build little houses in one large compound for these families to move into. I wouldn’t want to part them,” U Aung Din said. “There will be a common dining room where they will be fed, but as yet these plans are still in my head.”

What he has achieved in real time are his projects for the Italy-based NGO Progetto Continenti, which is involved in promoting HIV awareness, and his work of providing water reservoirs to villages.

“When I first started working with the NGO, I was not sure exactly what form of media to use to spread HIV awareness,” he said. “We were aiming mostly at the rural population, the really conservative people, who have no access to the weeklies or books.

“Then I realised how much the zat pwe traditional theatre still means to rural villagers after I accidentally came across perhaps 100 villagers at dawn, coming back from one.”

U Aung Din and a friend subsequently wrote a play with HIV educational content, which zat troupes in Magwe are now performing. Although Progetto Continenti is only working in Magwe Division, U Aung Din said he hopes people in other parts of the country will take up the idea of using traditional theatre to teach people about the disease.

U Aung Din’s other project of building rainwater reservoirs for villages is also going well. So far he has built them in six villages at a cost of about K20 million each.

“I built the first one out of bricks but then the price of bricks went up, so I had local masons cut blocks of stone for me,” he said. “I bought electric drills and a generator so the work went faster. The reservoirs built of rock will last forever, and the cost is the same as for the one of bricks.”

Each reservoir is 100 feet by 100 feet, 11 feet deep, with walls and floor 18 inches thick. They are built at the bottom of an incline or even on the bed of a pond, with a wide filter to catch rainwater during monsoon season.

The use of mechanics is minimal so the system has few parts to fail. The water is on the surface so people need only a pail to scoop it up. One full reservoir lasts until the next rains for each village.

“It’s a country tradition for water sources such as ponds to be dug near a monastery, so the village sayadaw looks after it, to see that cattle don’t fall into it and drown and that it’s cleaned every year,” U Aung Din said.

“Those who come by oxcart to fetch water must pay K100 to the village fund for each cartload, and those who carry the water themselves get it free. If the carts fetch water from wells owned by wealthy families, they have to pay about K400.”

U Aung Din is perpetually busy but also anxious about sufficient food for his children and his grannies, and about getting more funds for the reservoirs.

“It’s a sustainable system,” he said. “If I could I’d built hundreds more reservoirs.”

http://mmtimes.com/no431/n013.htm