Photo: AFP via Getty Images, showing the extensive damage from the earthquake.
Earlier today, a massive 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck the heart of Saigang and Mandalay in Myanmar. The impact was felt as far as Thailand, with our team reporting significant tremors and mild damage to our KGED center in Mae Sot.
In Myanmar, tremors were felt across several towns, including Sagaing, Mandalay, Kyaukse, Pyin Oo Lwin, and Shwebo in upper Myanmar. According to our Shan team member, the impact was also felt significantly across Shan State.
Early reports from the Mandalay area have catalogued the collapse of bridges, temples, and high-rise buildings. Hospitals in Mandalay are being inundated with survivors, with some receiving treatment on the street due to the overflow of patients.
The full scale of the damage and the number of deaths is still unclear. More than 140 deaths have been reported thus far, and the death toll continues to rise. Given the ongoing civil war in Myanmar and the junta’s often limited transparency, information about the full extent may be limited.
Our local partners near Taunggyi, southeast of Mandalay, are assessing the immediate and most urgent needs. Our relief team is rapidly mobilizing and will arrive in the country tomorrow to help with the assessment and immediate crisis response.
Before the earthquake left the country in tremors, Myanmar was already in the middle of a dire humanitarian crisis. According to OCHA, one-third of the population and 6.3 million children require humanitarian assistance.
This is our lane: rapid relief for kids and families in times of crisis.
We’ll be responding in the hard-to-reach places, meeting the needs of those who might otherwise fall through the gaps.
We'll be sharing updates as our crisis response unfolds in the days ahead. Please stay with us as we stay with them.
To fuel our team’s response on the ground, visit https://prtns.co/earthquake.
Your gift will go directly to meet the needs of these kids and families.
How do you respond to that? Is, “I’m so sorry,” good enough?
How can you sleep when you know that your parents can hear the sounds of fighting all around their village at home in Myanmar?
How can you focus on studying when you're scared that the next time you try to go home or even renew your passport, you will be drafted into the army that is killing your own people?
I’m used to my students' laughter and smiles, their enthusiasm for life and their incredible motivation in the face of difficult odds, but there is a point where reality becomes overwhelming and anyone would feel trapped.
The recent announcement about the enactment of the draft by the Myanmar military is causing worry and fear for young people from Myanmar both inside and outside the country. To try to enforce this law, the government will not allow young people to leave the country or renew passports until they have fulfilled the draft requirement. This will affect almost all of my students who are studying for their GED Exams within the next couple years if not months as their current passports expire or their visas for Thailand run out.
Here are some glimpses into the lives of my students as they grapple with this new reality:
A 17-year-old girl will have to return to Myanmar in 6 months when her visa expires unless she can find some alternative visa to transfer to in the meantime, which is very unlikely. By that time, she will be 18 and would not be let out of the country again. She said to me, “I’m so worried, I just want to cry. I can’t go back. I don’t know what to do.”
Another student told me that the active fighting has now reached his home village. Even though his relatives had scraped together enough money to pay for a flight out, they were turned back at the airport. Apparently, all flights had been grounded to prevent people from leaving the country.
A young man summed up his feelings saying, “I just don’t know what to do anymore. My country doesn’t care about me, and no one else wants us. I don’t belong anywhere.”
“My country doesn’t care about me, and no one else wants us. I don’t belong anywhere.”
As my students were confronted by the news and public discussions surrounding this draft order, the conversation spilled over into our class time. Many of the students expressed anger and frustration, obviously fueled by the fear they are feeling. They reacted to the way that academics handle this topic as a theoretical problem to be examined and debated, rather than an alarming reality. For the students, this is personal and is already impacting their lives. It is not just a projection of what might happen in the future.
In their own words:
“This has been our life for years already. Our people have been forced out of their homes continuously over the past decades. That is why there are so many of us in Thailand. It is not easy for us. We did not want to leave our homes.”
"We did not want to leave our homes.”
“What about the poor people who cannot pay money to leave the country? What about the children who are trapped by the fighting? What about the old people who can’t get visas for anything and have to stay where the fighting is? Who is thinking about them?”
Together we contemplated how we can turn these feelings of frustration and helplessness into something productive. What small goal can each of the students set their sights on to give them purpose right now, so they are not dragged down by despair?
At the end of the conversation a 19 year old girl who had listened quietly to the others came to me and said, “I am not going to get angry, because that won’t change anything now. Right now I will just focus on my studying. Then in the future I will be able to teach and help improve things and help people. That is the only thing I can do now.”
Photo: Fire consumes Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh (Credit: Ro Yassin Abdumonab)./a>
1.
This week.
our team has been responding to the fire that broke out in the Rohingya refugee camps near Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh on Sunday. 2,000 homes were destroyed, leaving around 12,000 people without shelter. We are heartbroken for our Rohingya friends who are facing unimaginable loss once again.
We’ve delivered food packs with staples like rice, oil and spices to support 1,000 people, but the needs are great. You can help fuel our ongoing relief effort here.
2.
#GivingTuesday
may be a distant memory, but we haven’t forgotten the power of this community to come together to ensure 6 Rohingya villages in Myanmar have the security of a regular supply of rice. The first distribution of 50kg bags have made it to our Rohingya friends who, whilst also having food for their kids, know for certain that they haven’t been forgotten. This is what it looks like when we put love into action.
Photos: our team delivering rice to one of the 6 communities you're supporting.
3.
Nahida is Rohingya
but she doesn’t know what Myanmar looks like. As a second-generation refugee, she and her family still experience so many of the same challenges as those who fled the 2017 genocide. One of those is access to education. But you’re doing something to change that.
4.
Wednesday
was International Women’s Day and to mark the occasion, Women’s Initiative for Self Empowerment featured our very own Middle East Director of Operations, Hanin, who has most recently been leading our earthquake response in Syria and Turkey.
Read more about her inspiring journey breaking through the social norms in her community.
5.
In Michigan
this weekend? Drop by our stand at the Ada / Forest Hills Community Expo and say hi! We’ll have something special for you to try from our cookbook and give you the chance to travel virtually with us into the earthquake zone in Syria.
#WhatsHappeningInMyanmar: The Double Crises of Military Violence and Rising COVID-19 Cases
Since our last update on the situation in Myanmar in May, violence in the nation has continued, spreading throughout the country and into states that were peaceful before the February 1 coup. The toll on the people in Myanmar has been excruciating as 911 people have been killed, more than 6,694 arrested, and 230,000 people have been displaced.
Although the leader of the coup, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, met with ASEAN leaders in April and committed to their peace plan, the military’s acts of violence have continued with no end in sight. The Myanmar military’s tactics have been to restrict “access to food, funds, intelligence, and recruits”, a strategy that they have used in the past to splinter social cohesion and decrease civilian support for resistance groups. These tactics have also been used indiscriminately against aid workers as military forces have destroyed relief supplies and have killed two aid workers. Our amazing local team has continued to deliver supplies and provide support to people who have been displaced in the midst of these incredibly difficult circumstances.
The crises caused by military violence is multiplied by the continued surgence of COVID-19 cases in Myanmar. From June 19 to July 5, the number of new COVID-19 cases per day in Myanmar rose from fewer than 500 to nearly 3,000 new cases per day. People have struggled to access direly needed health care as the oxygen supply in the nation has dwindled far below needed amounts and health care workers have left hospitals to join the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) in a stand against the military.
Our local team is seeing the impact of COVID firsthand. In places like Kachin State, cases are rapidly rising, with 238 cases in Mai Ja Yang alone. There are also 11 people with COVID, including the 7-year-old son of one of our volunteers, in one of the IDP camps where we run a Community Support Network (CSN) program. It is grievous to see those we care about facing risks to their safety and health in conditions where they do not always have access to adequate systems of care.
We are also deeply concerned for our Karen friends in the Mae La refugee camp near Mae Sot in Thailand, as the first case of COVID-19 was reported there last week. Following the news that a positive COVID case had been reported, the camp leader closed schools and travel between sections in an endeavor to protect the community from further spread. Our concern is that in the close living quarters of the camp, where social distancing is difficult, there is a high risk of exposure. We are especially worried about the 4 local boarding schools we support there which house 234 students.
In the midst of this crisis, our local team is striving to help the students retain rhythms of their daily life under safe conditions. One of our local team members shared with us,
“For me, I don't really feel worried because we were already aware of this (the risk of COVID-19) and are ready to protect ourselves and the children. We can learn and sing freely on our own campus. All the students seem happy and no one feels lonely. For protection, we always wear masks and wash our hands with soap."
COVID-19 prevention has been an important component of our work in these areas over the last year and will continue to be one of our key areas of focus. As always, the safety and health of the communities we partner with is our number one priority in the days and weeks ahead. We are so honored to work with a team that leads with love and for your support which allows us to respond in these moments of crisis with action.
Help children like Saw Eh Taena breathe a sigh of relief this summer.
Myanmar is at war, still, and very little is going right. Summer rains bring flooding and increased risk of illnesses. Civil war has eaten up the country’s budget, bringing the health system to its knees. There’s fighting almost everywhere. Even getting around is difficult; help might be a day away by truck, bike, or boat during the rainy season.
Then, the earthquake in March caused massive infrastructure damage and became an opportunity for the military government to further harm communities in regions they want to control.
15 year old Saw Eh Taena lives here. He has asthma and when he gets sick, he can’t breathe properly. Anyone that has ever watched a child gasp for air knows—it’s frightening.
What’s worse is when there’s no hospital to go to for treatment. For remote communities like his, medical care can be days away and only reached by foot. Because wars steal kid’s access to healthcare, Partners supports local clinics and health workers in these hard-to-reach places.
“I have been to this clinic many times,” Saw Eh Taena shared outside a Partners-funded clinic. Each time, health workers had the medicine to treat him and vigilantly monitored him when his symptoms were so bad he needed to stay through the night. Today, “the attacks are basically gone”, he said. It’s your love-in-action that stocks medicine cabinets and trains the health workers that make this life-saving work possible.
Photo: The clinic where Saw Eh Taena found help for his asthma in Karen State, Myanmar.
But good health isn’t all that’s stolen. When it comes to education, even before the earthquake, approximately 3.7 million children in Myanmar didn’t have access. As kids are recruited for fighting and schools are attacked, it’s clear that wars disrupt learning.
“Because of the conflict, I have to study in the jungle. When the jets fly over, children cry, and the teachers find it hard to care for all of them. Children sit on the ground, with not enough notebooks and pens”, said Saw Eh Taena. His mother is like most parents in war zones; she believes education is the key to giving her child a future beyond the violence and poverty they are experiencing; a life defined by more opportunities and dreams fulfilled.
"When the jets fly over, children cry, and the teachers find it hard to care for all of them."
The children who remain determined to attend these hidden schools are the reason that your love-in-action is more vital than ever—strengthening their schools by providing essential learning supplies and providing support for safe boarding homes where students displaced by fighting can continue their studies.
Wars also strangle economies and livelihoods. They make it harder for parents to put food on the table for their kids. “We don’t have time to grow rice or vegetables. The transportation of goods is difficult, so the price of food goes up significantly, especially during the rainy season.” Love-in-action delivers bags of rice to communities like Saw Eh Taena’s when all other avenues of keeping children fed are exhausted.
“I feel hopeless in this situation...I can’t learn in this environment. I feel like I am not free.”
Photo: Medicine supplies are running low at many clinics.
Through the summer, more brave team members will deliver what war has strangled, disrupted, and stolen from children caught in the crossfire. It’s the same love-in-action that has been at work in war zones since 1994, partnering with local networks to get help where others can’t so that kids like Saw Eh Taena aren’t robbed of the joy of good health, the freedom of a full education, and the satisfaction of having enough to eat.
We are grateful for a generous supporter who has offered a $25,000 Summer Match Challenge, making it possible to help even more children, like Saw Eh Taena.
As the days get longer,—as global support for relief and development is on the decline—we encourage you to consider sharing the warmth of your summer with Saw Eh Taena and other children who grow up in conflict zones. You can rest assured knowing that when you give, you gift will be matched for double the impact, meaning even more kids will receive critical medical care, access to life-altering education, and the sustenance they need to learn and play.
Amidst the fall of the Assad Regime in December 2024, a monumental moment in Syrian history was also marked by another historical moment in the Kurdish territory. Displacement in Northeast Syria is back at record-breaking numbers. Many families,
individuals and minorities have fled to the Kurdish territory of Syria.
But through the violence and persecution families have endured,
one undeniable truth has emerged: the resilience of children displaced by war.
The Silent Suffering of Families.
The number of Internally Displaced People (IDP) in northeast Syria has reached an alarming scale, with thousands of families forced to leave their homes, primarily from Afrin. Many of these families sought refuge in Sahba, south of Aleppo, during the civil war that began in 2011. Now these families have been displaced once again due to the ongoing conflict. Families are living in makeshift shelters, abandoned buildings, and repurposed schools. Resources are stretched thin, with little to no support from international humanitarian organizations. Families struggle to stay warm in overcrowded shelters.
As our relief team visited one of the shelters, the air was thick with the smell of burning plastic – a seemingly desperate line of defense
against the freezing temperatures. Hygiene facilities are inadequate or non-existent.
While host communities have done their best to step in by cooking meals for the displaced, the thousands of people arriving mean more food support is needed than they alone can provide. Parents who have fought tirelessly for their children’s well-being are exhausted, left hoping that someone will stand alongside them to keep them safe, healthy, and in school.
The Weight of Trauma
No matter where it happens, war steals childhoods. Many children
have witnessed atrocities beyond comprehension. In an abandoned regime military housing complex, where over 3,000 families are now
taking refuge, a mother recounted to us how her two sons had been
injured by mortar strikes when they were living in Sahba. Some watched as loved ones were executed, while others recall harrowing escapes through war-torn landscapes.
In Raqqa, a 14-year-old boy named Said told us his family was forced
to flee Sahba with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “I don’t know why we had to leave,” he said. “They just wanted our land.” His
family endured freezing nights on the roadside during their journey
to Raqqa, and though they had found shelter in a school that Partners had previously helped rebuild, they were struggling to stay warm. “It’s so cold,” Said whispered, his voice reflecting the hardship he had endured.
Children a Symbol of Resilience
Despite these dire circumstances, children continue to be the unwavering torchbearers of hope.
The schools that have been repurposed into shelters still echo with the sounds of young voices playing. In a repurposed school just outside of the city of Qamishli, where 96 now reside, hanging on to hope, children climb atop water trucks to play, momentarily escaping the weight of displacement.
In Raqqa, groups of children chase each other around schoolyards, creating makeshift goals out of rocks and kicking a deflated football that they found when they moved into the premises. Their laughter, a stark contrast to the grief their parents carry.
Their spirits refuse to be broken, and they continue to find joy - even as they live in grave uncertainty.
Carrying the Torch
While governments turn a blind eye and larger international
organizations hesitate, children in Northeast Syria continue to remind the world of the urgency of their situation. They embody a future that is not yet lost, a group of people that refuse to be erased. Their perseverance when faced with immense hardship is a testament to the resilience of the Syrian spirit.
Even in displacement, even in suffering, these children are the light
that refuses to be extinguished.
Written by a Partners team member while on the ground in Syria in December 2024.
Photo: Rohingya children in Sittwe, Myanmar after Cyclone Mocha ripped through the community in 2023.
If we told you about a community of refugees, where over half a million of the population are children, what community comes to your mind?
Don’t worry, this isn’t a trick question.
With so many children affected by conflict and oppression around the world, it’s gut wrenching how quickly it takes to think of one.
But what if we told you that the community we’re referring to, this time, is one of the most persecuted minorities in the world?
If you answered Rohingya, you’d be correct.
The stateless Muslim minority group has been subjected to grave human rights abuses by Myanmar authorities for decades. Violence in September 2017 forced an additional 890,000 to flee to Bangladesh, leaving them in an extremely vulnerable state. There are still over 150,000 displaced in Myanmar with limited freedom of movement or access to food, water, sanitation, healthcare and education.
Especially in Sittwe.
These are 6 pressing updates you should know about Sittwe’s escalation of violence:
The Arakan Army (AA) announced they now controlled the border township of Maungdaw in northern Rakhine State on December 8, 2024. This gave them control of the entire border area between Bangladesh and Myanmar. Fear continues to increase within the Rohingya community in Sittwe as the AA nears the capital. Intense fighting has erupted in the surrounding areas, and the Myanmar Military has increased security in the area.
The checkpoints inside the nearby camps have increased, and the Rohingya are forced to pay money to cross them, sometimes experiencing looting, the checking of their phones, and are often beaten without any reason. In the village where Partners’ adult school is located, people are not allowed to cross the checkpoints after 6 pm, so the class is now being conducted during the day.
People are trying to leave the town by boat. One of the unregistered Rohingya communities we support with monthly rice distributions had a leader arrested and accused of receiving money from people in his neighborhood who were leaving by boat. We heard that he was tortured very badly and not given food for days, before being released.
In January, all village administrators in the camps area were told to provide young men for conscription. Those who refused were threatened with their villages being burned down. Additionally, people, including young boys aged 13-15, were being randomly arrested. In one seaside community, we occasionally support, the military arrested 70 people for conscription, with over 20 of them being underage. Parents had to pay money to release these young boys.
The internet connection in Sittwe is almost completely down, and mobile services have been largely cut off outside of small pockets of connection in the downtown area.
Meanwhile, more than 5,000 displaced Rohingya sheltering at a camp in Rakhine’s Pauktaw township are in urgent need of food after not receiving aid for more than a year, according to Radio Free Asia.
Last week, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced devastating cuts to food support in Myanmar. The cuts will impact almost 100,000 internally displaced people in central Rakhine who will have no access to food without WFP assistance, including Rohingya communities in camps.
“Overall, the situation in Sittwe has become very tense. I would personally describe it as a ticking time bomb, with people unsure of when it might explode.” - Partners team member
We’ve been working alongside the Rohingya since 2012. Over that time and to this day, our team has been responding to the ongoing critical needs of displaced and oppressed Rohingya communities, as well as empowering them through sustainable health and education initiatives.
You can help fuel our ongoing response providing emergency relief and establishing access to healthcare and education for refugees in Bangladesh and displaced families who are suffering extreme persecution in Myanmar.
Saw Be Bay is a young man with perseverance. He was a boy with perseverance too. He has lived a life that wasn’t always easy, but also wasn’t always so hard. As a kid, his father was an elephant caretaker in their village, and his mother and 5 siblings kept life lively.
Then came at least 3 moments in Saw Be Bay’s life; pivots, story-markers, where life changed—never to return to anything that it formerly was.
1. At 5 years, old his mother died.
2. After finishing the 4th grade, Saw Be Bay’s village school no longer offered education. So at 11 years old, he moved to a neighboring village, lived with his uncle and his uncle’s three children, and continued going to school. Separated from his immediate family, he worked hard at his education. He also took on farming and fishing to help his uncle’s humble household.
One rainy night, life got harder.
While out fishing, Saw Be Bay slipped and fell on a large rock. Hard. He was in so much pain, but he knew he had to get himself back to his uncle’s house. When he reached home, he told his uncle what had happened, but not how much pain he was in. He hid how hard it was to walk. Over time, the pain began to lessen so he tried to play cane ball, football and go fishing as usual. But the pain, and even a sickness associated with it, reappeared. Even so, he received no proper treatment.
Over the next 10 years the pain became so unbearable, he could no longer walk.
3. The Myanmar military dropped a bomb near his village. Everyone ran, but Saw Be Bay could not. Terrified, he crawled on his belly to hide in a bush, believing he would die.
But he didn’t.
Like so often during times of suffering, dawn comes just after the darkest night. His schoolmistress introduced him to a Partners staff member who was traveling in the area. Together they came up with a plan. Partners staff took him to the hospital and paid for an initial diagnostic test. They helped Saw Be Bay submit that test to Burma Children Medical Fund, and his case was accepted. The surgery that he needed was going to be paid for by BCMF, but that’s not the end of the story.
The same perseverance and internal grit that Saw Be Bay had shown in his childhood was what he showed as he went through a difficult surgery and five months of treatment.
Partners' Patient Care team took him to the hospital, provided food and hygiene items, and supported him throughout his treatment. They also made sure he had a place to stay—in a patient house provided by a friend—so he could be taken care of while he got better.
It wasn’t a magic wand. It wasn’t a quick fix. It was the heart of a young man, a local community who showed up day-after-day, and a community of generous people who stopped, saw, and responded to his needs.
Saw Be Bay didn’t stop. He didn’t die. He pushed through the hard times and life-pivots. He returned to his village—now able to walk without pain—not even feeling the aches and constant fevers like before.
Health is something we often take for granted until it's gone—then it becomes the only thing we can focus on, consuming all our attention and energy. Now, no longer in a state of physical suffering, Saw Be Bay has begun to imagine a different kind of life. His experience and healing have revealed a dream of one day serving his community as a medical professional. He hopes to live the rest of his life helping others who are suffering.
If you’re moved to help a child in need of medical care and be part of a transformative story like Saw Be Bay’s, you can support Partners Patient Care project by making a donation here.
