For A Better Future 

Rationale of the A E I O U Programme

[AEIOU = All Ethnic International Open University]

Our Believe
 
             We believe education should have the power to transform lives, enabling continued profound positive change and personal growth, to ultimately build a better world. For such growth to occur, we need a good educational institution to understand transformation and recognise the situation of the students in authoritarian countries.
            Hence, AEIOU set out to provide students, faculty, administrators, and educational officials of all levels with confidence and a profound shared experience and exploration of personal transformation. Together we aim to construct an open and safe space and an honest collegial environment where educational leaders, practitioners and students are able to engage in dialogue, interaction and reflection. Through this experiential and interactive process, we will discover, define and inspire personal and institutional change in an innovative, open and rigorous way.
            AEIOU is structured as a process of open, experiential sharing, reflection and mutual support, based on the following three beliefs:
            Education is an inclusive process that involves the full spectrum of stakeholders – from students to donors. An institutional change begins with transformation within the individual. A safe, open and honest atmosphere is therefore a prerequisite for personal reflection, in order that every participant can speak from his/her own experiences and feelings with confidence.
         Understanding what ‘transformation’ means in the context of one’s own education involves identifying the personal and societal ideals that one want to pursue.
 
Structure
             Besides inspirational talk given by the staffs of AEIOU speakers there will be
 
1 Open Space- meetings and experiential exercises so that each participant has the opportunity to undergo a transforming and enriching personal experience at the programme what we say as personal transformation.
 
 2 Identifying Educational Values and Ideals:  A dialogic and interactive process for participants to establish common goals for education through small group discussions focusing on identifying education values and ideals

3 Diagnosis of Institutions and Processes:  A forward-looking and critical review of existing practices and institutional culture: “How do our beloved motherland educational institutions and/or personal learning processes need to change in order for them to be genuinely transformational. In other words is a diagnosis for institutional and processes.
 
Action Plan
An action plan is being developed for the second semester to be implemented in their own respective community: The goal is for each person to formulate a practical action-plan that can help make a significant difference to their educational institution or/and to their own learning processes
 

A Short Background 

               The mainland peninsular countries of Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and part of Yunnan are facing a major challenge inherent in the transition from a command economy to a market economy. The political conflict, compounded with human rights violations and ethnic cleansing, have forced many to flee for their lives or voluntarily leave their country in search of greener pastures, and all sorts of refugees, illegal migrants, and displaced persons originating from these areas can be found in Thailand. This has become a big burden to the Kingdom of Thailand.
              Among the refugees there are young people who have nothing except their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. A good many of them have completed high school in their respective countries and have the potential to continue their education to learn better ways to help build their society and community and the country of their choice. These adolescence and young adult, even in most stable situations is immeasurably difficult but when it happens in the midst of armed conflict is unmanageable. Without traditional support systems and ignored by international aid agencies, youths affected by armed conflicts have lost their opportunities to develop leadership skills. They are also unable to study in the established institutes of higher education for various reasons. They have no opportunity to learn and could attain a very low standard of education that realistically cannot cope with the demands of modern society. There is a dramatic need for education of the oppressed, persecuted, and marginalized youths of Southeast Asia. The AEIOU (All Ethnic International Open University ) Programme, in cooperation with Chiang Mai University, is a small attempt to fill in this gap.
 
1 Indo-China
Among the Indochina countries, the current Burmese[1] regime is committing the most egregious human rights violations and is churning out refugees and displaced persons almost every day. Unofficially, the figure is between two to three million refugees in the peripherals of Burma. These persecuted people have fled to neighboring countries and some of them reside in refugee camps all along the Thailand-Burma border area, while a great many of them - especially those who have fled to Northern and Western Burma – have become displaced persons and have filtered into the nearest town or city of their respective countries. These refugees, internally displaced persons (IDP’s) and migrant youths are prevented from further studies because they have to eke out their livelihood in any available way, and a great many of them have to help support their families. Others cannot make their identity known for political reasons. For those who manage to make it to the refugee camps, education comes to a full stop after high school (or post ten).
Annually, the refugee camps in the Thai-Burma border regions are churning out about 3,000 high schools graduates. Very few of them have little or no hope for further education. Some have found jobs with non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) at minimum wage, but most are unemployed. Some sneak into towns to work as illegal immigrant workers, playing cat and mouse with the respective country's security authorities. Others have become desperate and have gone out to the front lines to battle the Junta. Some have married early with the end result being a population explosion in these refuge camps. This poses a problem for the donor NGO’s and creates a threatening situation for the local populations, as their numbers soon surpass the local population. Less than one percent of these youths get scholarships sponsored by various NGO’s to study abroad, and those that do face great difficulties as they are placed into entirely new atmospheres with different value systems, languages, climatic conditions, and foods. Obviously very few would be able keep up with the modern ways of life at universities abroad. It would seem that the prospect of these refugees is for little or no future at all. There should be some alternatives to ease all these tensions and to create more opportunity for them. Hence continuing education becomes a strong alternative. The AEIOU Programme is founded on the belief that by providing education and training for these young people, they will then be much better equipped for this modern world and become good leaders of their own society as well as be an asset to their host country.
 
2 Burma
            Even though AEIOU sees the need for this type of programming for all refugees, IDP and migrant workers residing in Thailand, Burma is the only country in peacetime that is forcibly driving out its citizens by the regime's gross human rights violations, and because space within this Programme is limited, AEIOU has chosen to give priority to the refugees from Burma.
The Thai government is gracious enough to have allowed various refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border to set up according to their ethnic tribes. Hence there are numerous Karen refugee camps, Karenni, and Mon refugee camps. The Shan (Tai Yai), because of their similarity to the Thai people, have easily merged into the population and have not been allotted a refugee camp. Hence, the greatest numbers of internally displaced persons are from the Shan population.
            Thailand is not a signatory to the 1954 Geneva Convention on Refugees and it is within its national sovereign power not to let the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) come to the aid of these refugees. AEIOU, being an apolitical group, will not indulge in the hidden political agenda of any country, and like other humanitarian organizations, chooses to work silently in the educational field. Being part of the mother organization of Empowering Women of Burma (EWOB), which is legally registered in Canada with a charity tax number and cooperating with CCSDPT, we always try to keep a low profile. 
 
3 General Surveys
            The founding members of AEIOU were Burmese refugees themselves in 1988 and are very familiar with the plight of the refugees all along Burma's peripheral, especially those of the Thai-Burma border area. They clearly understand their belief and values, and can speak the language of the refugees, as they themselves is but one of them.
 They witnessed first hand the dire need of these refugees, especially those of the women and children. In direct response to these needs, EWOB was founded in 1992 with one sewing machine. Since then they have been working in various capacities with dedication and determination. Being members of the academic community in Burma, and having a good knowledge of the education system of Burma and abroad, the executive members of EWOB also saw the necessity of educating the youths in the peripherals of Burma and embarked on a general survey and a meticulous research project.
            This research discovered that the education of these youths is entirely in the hands of the refugee education committees that work in cooperation with international NGOs cum donor. In order to help the education of a community, one must have an intimate knowledge of the education patterns, backgrounds, values systems and aspirations of the local refugees or IDPs.  Most of all, there must be an intimate knowledge of the psyche and the rationale of the people who have fled. 
            To help the tertiary education of these unfortunate refugees, some well-meaning organizations embarked on a scholarship program, selected bright students, gave them a short training and then sent them abroad for further studies hoping that somehow they would eventually return and serve their own community. However, after a couple of years, they discovered that very few if any came back, having sought asylum in the countries where they studied. This, indirectly, is tantamount to helping the brain drain of the refugee community. This is especially prominent in the Burmese ethnic community.
            Since the best brains and potential leaders are taken away from their community, the remaining refugee community has to cope with whatever mediocre think tank people can marshal. In short, these scholarship programs - however well-meaning - seemed not to be so beneficial for the refugee and the IDP communities. What we also discovered is that these educated youths, who in the course of time attained a citizenship in their respective countries, now began to sponsor their near and dear ones to join them to start a new life in the country of their choice. Even though it is good for their families, the mass of the refugees did not benefit. Once these expatriates accumulated enough money for their traveling costs, they often visited their old refugee camps. Their old compatriots welcomed them with open arms. However, seeing a lifestyle that was so different from theirs, these remaining refugees began to wish that they could be like them and wanted to live abroad. In other words, the effect was that they began to admire what is foreign and cared little for their own kind and country. Thus sometimes these education programs seem to harbor both negative and positive effects on the refugee and IDP communities.
Sensing some of these negative aspects, some organizations launched a distant learning program by correspondence course. Off and on, foreign teachers would sneak into the border camps to give short-term courses. However, the teacher-pupil contact was minimal, and even though they were given certificates and degrees, the standards were not as desired because of their locality and the minimal teacher-pupil contact.
In a bid to solve these problems, Burmese expatriate academics, led by EWOB, came up with the idea of an “open” university learning program, which they named as the AEIOU Programme. The first semester is in Chiang Mai in cooperation with Chiang Mai University, and in the second semester these students will have to go back to their respective communities and refugee camps to implement assigned tasks. Thus they will not be cut off from their roots and at the same time will be able to serve their community with the knowledge and wisdom they gained during their sojourn at Chiangmai University.
 
4 Tentative Plan 
Since the Burmese military took over the country in 1988, the education curve has gone down drastically. This has been felt mostly in the tertiary education as the universities and institutes of higher learning are closed most of the time. Only a few wealthy youths, and those who have connections with the military are able to go abroad to study. Since the pro-democracy movement was initiated by University students about 10,000 of them had to flee to the peripheral of Burma, where some of them have tried to resist the Junta, but many of them have had to leave for third countries.
            The basic education (primary to high school including post ten) of the refugees in the peripherals of Burma, has been initiated by their respective education committees with the help of International NGOs.  However, after high school or post ten, education comes to a full stop. This is where EWOB attempts to fill in to give opportunity to educate these young and bright students. Later it encompass the youths of Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) as well as those of migrant workers and starting from 2006 we have encourage the students from inside Burma to attend our Programme. This tertiary education was launched with the sole purpose of making them good citizens if not future leaders of the country.
            Initially EWOB was set up in 1992  to help the needs of women and children, initiating services of skill training like, giving sewing and weaving, typing, etc. Soon the need felt for setting up of nursery schools was felt and EWOB embarked on nursery school teachers' training program. As EWOB does not enjoy the support of a big humanitarian organization or big NGOs, it has to spend some six months of the year lobbying for funds from Churches and from other sympathetic and compassionate persons or groups. With whatever resources we could marshal then it embarked on for another year. However, after a decade, the EWOB members (composed mainly of University professors and educationalists) thought that it was time to venture into this tertiary educational field. This proposal was drawn up after making an extensive study of what was in place and of what was needed, while attempting to draw lessons from others who had gone before us.
             EWOB is not a non-governmental organization even though it is operating on the NGO line.  It is but a humanitarian and volunteer organization with the spirit of. "Cetena" patriotism residing outside of Burma that really knows the concept of education, the psyche and the rationale of the Burmese -especially those of the ethnic nationalities, as the founding members of EWOB themselves belong to these ethnic groups and have a long experience of teaching inside and outside of Burma. Its vision on education not only prepares the role for the educated youths, but also the future education of the country to a sustainable and equitable form for the national solidarity for the Democratic Federal Republic of the Union of Burma. So after a three years of pilot project, we cooperated with Chiang Mai University and launched a full Programme in 2004.
            Its main aim is to give alternative education that intends to elevate the skills, knowledge and capacity of the students. It is an attempt to develop and prepare a new generation to become natural leader of future Burma. Our goal is to make the refugees and IDPs self-reliant and to empower them to help themselves. It teaches them about human dignity as well as absorbing the important of peace, sustainable development, and imparting knowledge applicable to relieving the suffering of the people.  
 
5 Main Output  
The current system of education in Burma has failed to reach interest, or challenge of the Burmese people. The AEIOU Programme is our humble attempt to find ways to make education available to the marginalized youths captivating and rigorous enough so that they are capable of understanding the kinds of challenges they will face, capable of thinking globally and acting locally with comprehension, not be afraid to tackle hard problems, and less susceptible to lies and spin. Hence our main goals are:

*           To instill the idea of Democracy, Human Rights and the art of collective working.
*           To instill that the knowledge of freedom is not shirking responsibility but to shoulder it more.
*           To develop and encourage leadership so they will help in developing their own healthy and growing communities.
*           To equip them so they can join any work force or can be self-employed in their own locality.
*           To teach Developmental Studies and Conflict Resolution as part of their curriculum to enable them to lead and teach other in these areas.
*           To teach them Conflict Resolution so that they may be in a position to resolve their conflict peaceably.
*           To go from a marginalized people to respected and recognized citizens of the world.
*           To give them general training in the fields of ecology, biodiversity, energy, and sustainable development.
*           To teach them how to maintain their values and cultures in the face of ethnic cleansing.
 
 
6 Our Vision  
Our hope is that, one day, somehow or other, all the refugees staying in the neighboring countries will be repatriated back to Burma. It is our vision that these students will become good citizens and leaders in their community and at the least, be able to stand on their own  feet and live happily once they go back to their homeland. Others who chose to stay outside of Burma will still have a better position to cope with the rigors of life.
 
            The demand for tertiary education is great among the refugee youths, IDPs and migrant workers, and even inside Burma, hence we have endeavor to match it by sufficient and efficient faculty staff to run this Programme. We hope that one day this Chiangmai University AEIOU Programme will one day served as an alternate University choice for young Burmese students.
 
7 Mission Statement
            In corporation with the Chiangmai University to give a quality education and sound leadership to the selected students so that they may go back to their own community to serve better. To be a law abiding and good guest during their short sojourn in the kingdom and if possible to pay back the good will of the kingdom whenever they have a chance.
 
8 Pilot Projects           
            EWOB started the pilot project of University Upgrading Courses in Chiangmai under the umbrella of Santhi Prachadhama Institute in the shadow of the Chiangmai University, as we could draw most of the teaching staff from them.
             The understanding with the local administrative authorities is that no one from the Programme must be involved in politics of any sort, and that it must be purely a learning and studying institute, and we strictly adhere to this. The first pilot project was launched in 2001 with 12 students from the various ethnic refugees (see Photo), which we named as the University Upgrading Programme, and came under the well-known NGO Santi Prachadhamma Institute. All the local staff had been recruited from the institute, and the Director did the supervision. The teaching subjects chosen were more or less aligned to the training of a leadership program. Since we play a very low profile with much dedication, it was found to be successful. The second year project in 2002 was continued with active support from the donor who came and looked at our program and it went on smoothly. Meanwhile this University Upgrading Course (UPC) became very popular in the refugee camps because the students who went back to their camps and communities became natural youth leaders and excelled in their endeavors, and there was a great demand to expand this program. Hence, in the third year of the program in 2003, we ventured to expand our Programme and began to approach Chiang Mai University in this regard. We approached the faculty of economics, and after some negotiation, the dean kindly referred us directly to the President’s Office, which responded positively.
            It was only in 2004 that we are confident to launch a full project with whatever resources we could marshal and this proved to be very successful. Due to our very limited resources we started the classes with highly qualified volunteers professor and teachers. Starting in 2006, we plan to have full professors and have already put out several advertisements in the Internet publications. But this could not be achieved because our donors responded only one third of what we need
 
9 Huge Responsibilities 
            Calling students from various refugee camps and IDP areas posed a big challenge to AEIOU staff. In theory, according to Thai law, nobody must get out of his or her designated refugee camp. Hence, we had to first go through the bureaucracy of the refugee camp committee, and later had to tie up with the security authorities before we arranged for their transport to Chiang Mai. We have managed all these years through our indigenous ways. However, the cost of the students’ transportation has been staggering, especially for those students from Northern and Western Burma.
            Starting in 2006, we are also having a matriculation examination inside Burma as our clandestine research indicates that there are several dedicated youths from there desiring to continue their studies. This poses another challenge for us.
            Once the students arrived in Chiang Mai, they are provided stipend including messing, lodging plus pocket money. Some classes e.g. Computer Science and Laboratory are held at the AEIOU campus, while most of the major subjects and special lectures are taught at the CMU campus. Their security, logistics, and convenience are all taken care of by the office staff. He/she often has to come and reside with the students in the hostels to see to their needs.
 
10 Issues and Problems 
            Being a young Programme it is obvious that we have to face several difficulties, problems and issues. Patiently but with love and sincerity  that we try to solve it and most of them are successful. There won’t be enough space if we were to  write down all these adversities but we always endeavor to tackle it come what may. It is not a perfect Programme but we try to come t o perfection in line with the institute of higher learning as we want to give chances to the marginalized youths. The Programme wants to equip these youths with skills and knowledge and to be in a position to judge what in right and wrong in their rigors of life. Hence we call upon their respective community to support our endeavor.
            Through experience we discovered that without the participation of their community it is almost well neigh impossible e.g. a particular community send their students to study for one year only and in the next year that successful students are not allowed to continue their studies that our desired goal is not reached. Instead these youths are given full time job in their refugee camps, IDP areas and prevented them from assuming full responsible leadership. Hence we would appeal to the refugee committee of the various refugee camps, IDP areas to cooperate with us. If any one of them passed the exam to let them come and study for the next year and let him/her get his/her diploma or degrees.
            With this end in view the students and the AEIOU Programme work hand in hand to create a better world in their own nook and corner of the global village. One of the educational avowed goal is to be open minded and strong commitment to the betterment of their own community. In other words For a Better Future.  

For More Information

Contact (Thailand)

P.O. Box 19

Chiang Mai University P O

Chiang Mai 50202, Thailand

Email: maymay_yee@yahoo.com

Tel (66) 053 266 319 Cellular phone 07 180 5626

Fax (66) 053266 319 

Contact (Canada)      

 P O Box 95053

Kingsgate P O

Vancouver B C

Canada V5T 4T8

Email    profwin@gmail.com

Tel       (604) 288 0828

Fax      (604) 658 4135 

Editorial Contributors:

        Sandra St Amand, B. Ed.         

        Dr. Ba Thann Win, B.A. (Hons.)  M.A.  PhD

        Dr. Ma Tin Yee, B.A. Ed, B.A.  M. Ed.  PhD

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[1] AEIOU prefer the name of Burma rather than Myanmar, which we consider as both politically and phonetically incorrect. Politically incorrect because the Union of Burma was founded by consensus of the various ethnic nationalities under the leadership of Bogyoke Aung San in 1947, even before Burma  claimed independence from the United Kingdom. Phonetically wrong because the word Myanmar is derived from the South Indian tribe of Mrama where the spelling ma is pronounced softly as mother in English and should be spelled as Myanma and not Myanmar (extra r).