Six Years of Making a Difference in Myanmar
The Salvation Army World Service Office (SAWSO) has just wrapped up a six-year-long project in Myanmar that sought to alleviate several issues prevalent throughout five different communities: Kalay, Tamu, Southern, Central, and Matupi districts. With support from the local Salvation Army corps in Norway, issues of poverty, unemployment, and living with sexually transmitted infections were all elements tackled by the various activities in this project.
Increasing streams of income to underserved communities
The Salvation Army corps in Norway played a vital role to facilitate building relationships, capacities, and support—starting with a micro-credit loan program that was established provided a significant financial support to families. Through this program, beneficiaries were given a small loan to start businesses. In more rural communities, these loans were used to buy livestock and seeds to plant, which were then sold in the markets.
Proceeds from these sales created a stream of income for the beneficiaries in the Myanmar community, which improved livelihoods all around—particularly to the women as they were able to provide for their families and send their children to schools. Overall, this loan program enabled working families to stabilize their financial situations.
Providing training for better employment opportunities
Vocational training was also provided to the youth and other members of the community who are living with HIV. The Salvation Army partnered with local businesses and companies to provide the job training, and these partnerships were further able to provide the community members with networking opportunities for future employment. In fact, about 65% of people who completed the job training were able to go on either find jobs or start their own businesses. Jobs like hair dressing, cooking, and welding are some examples of the types of employment community members were able to obtain.
One beneficiary, a young woman from Khampat who was abused from the young age of 13, was disappointed when she discovered she tested positive for HIV. “I cried for many days. It seemed all my hope was gone,” she said about learning about her diagnosis. While attending one of The Salvation Army’s support groups for people living with HIV, she learned about job training that was being offered and wanted to get involved. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted her training, but after a year of waiting for local restrictions to be lifted, she resumed her job training as a beautician.
“I got much help from The Salvation Army,” she said. “Not just vocational training, but also psycho-social support. Their open and warm welcome helped me to get back to a normal life. I am deeply appreciative to The Salvation Army.”
As iron sharpens iron, some of the folks who went through vocational training were also able to inspire and encourage their friends, peers, and other community members to attend job trainings themselves. Overall, the vocational training aspect of this project were successful and has empowered the involved community members to learn the skills and confidence to have a sustainable income.
When the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted this work, many elements of the project had to pause. Political unrest in the country also became an obstacle, and lives were threatened by either the virus or the political conflict. Despite this, in time the project implementors at the local Salvation Army corps were able to make significant strides in fulfilling the project's objectives. Beneficiaries are slowly regaining the developments they had, as the country slowly recovers from the devastating effects of the political conflict. Incredibly, this project was able to provide support to, and improve the lives of, some 45,000 adults, youth, and children over the course of the mission.
SAWSO's mission
The goal for many of SAWSO’s projects is to help those in need and improve the quality of life, but the thing that makes each project so unique is the people being served. Each community has different needs, and these unique needs inform how the support is implemented.
In some places, it might be agricultural training to boost sustainable farming practices; in other places it’s renovating a building for use as a thrift store to provide income for the local community center. One community might see the support in the form of teacher training programs to provide children with better quality education; another community might see the delivery of essentials after a natural disaster has struck the area.
No matter what the need is, Scripture reminds us that God will meet all our needs from his glorious riches which have been given to us in Christ Jesus.