WIDE HORIZONS

WH Students Newsletter 2014 - 2015 Academic Year

Volume 2, February 2015

The Wenhui Award for Educational Innovation in Asia

and the Pacific-Honourable Commendation Recipient
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CONTENTS

2014-2015 Graduation Ceremony Invitation Card

2014-2015 GRADUATION CEREMONY

INVITATION 2
INTRODUCTION 2
UNESCO AWARD 3
TIME FOR A WH PARTY!

BURMA EDUCATION LAW TRAINING 4

VIDEO EDITING TRAINING

STUDENT RECRUITMENT

ROOM TO GROW PROJECTS

LACK OF FUTURE FUNDING

SAVE THE DATE

FOR OUR
GRADUATION CEREMONY

WARMLY WELCOME FROM OUR PROGRAM

March 20, 2015

Hsa Htoo Lei Learning Center
Mae Sot, Thailand
Design: Wah Ai Hpaw

FINANCIAL LITERACY TRAINING

STUDENTS WORK PLACEMENT

BGET TRAINING 9
FUNDRAISING EVENTS 10
CARTOON 11

INTRODUCTION

Hello dear friends!!!

Nice to meet you all here again!! This is the second volume of our Wide Horizons 2014-2015 academic
years students newsletter.

Firstly, let me introduce a little bit about what we are going to include in this newsletter. This newsletter
will focus more on the activities that we have done during the second and third trimesters. We received several
interesting and useful training and workshops on topics such as video shooting and editing from a professional
journalist, controversial education laws in Burma- from Burma Partnership, financial literacy from Khom Loy
Foundation and sustainable living from Border Green Energy Team (BGET). Besides that, four of our proposals
which we designed and wrote ourselves were accepted by the Room to Grow Foundation and we are now implementing those projects. Furthermore, we celebrated our cold season party gratefully with our CBOs friends
and alumni around Mae Sot.

In this newsletter we will also be looking forward to the future and two students will share about their
plans after graduation from WH. Finally, this newsletter will also give details about student recruitment and
information about our fundraising events coming soon.

All in all, we all thank you for supporting us and for giving your times to read our newsletter. Thank you!

Written by: Ne Hser

Wide Horizons goes to CHINA to collect our UNESCO award!!

WH teacher Kristian receiving UNESCO award!!

This award shows that Wide Horizons is an
establishment which encourages formal, non-formal and in-formal learning that enhances knowledge, skills and competencies for personal, social
and economic development.

We are very honoured to have received this
award and are hopeful that it will help us in our
fundraising efforts to keep our Wide Horizons open
for future students.

For more details, please visit the UNESCO
Bangkok website or contact us!

Written by: English teacher Ruth

ide Horizons is very grateful and extremely proud

to have received an honorable commendation
from UNESCO. Our very own Community Development teacher, Kristian, went to CHINA to accept the certificate on behalf of Wide Horizons in November 2014.

The UNESCO Wenhui Award for Educational Innovation 2014 was for Innovation for Lifelong Learning:
Bridging to the Future. The theme of the award, according to UNESCO, surrounds the importance of learning
throughout life for human fulfillment, peace, sustainable
development, economic growth, gender equality and responsible global citizenship.

UNESCO CERTIFICAT

Time for a WH party!

In December 2014, Wide Horizons hosted our
first Cold Season community party!!

WH cold season party

We celebrated our party with around 100 people,

including community based organizations (CBOs)
around Mae Sot, alumni, other friends and students
from other schools. It was nice to spend time together socially, and get to know each other better
and share together. The WH alumni especially, love
coming back to WH and catching up we were
happy to meet each other and get tips from them!


At our party, we cooked mohinga (a great,
yummy local soup) for everyone, played games,
sang songs and had a shop where we sold our new
stylish WH t-shirts and calendars. We all felt happy
with our friends and we could say thats it is one of
our most memorable parties in our lives.


Written by: Mg Sunn

WH students get the lowdown on the controversial National

Education Law

Burma Partnership, an organization who is
working for democracy human rights in Burma,
came and give training at Wide Horizons (WH)
School in December 2014. The training was about
the recent National Education Law in Burma it is
very controversial and many students are currently
marching in protest about it. Firstly, we learnt about
the education law reform first draft in March, 2013
and second draft in June, 2014. Moreover, the final
draft approved in September, 2014.

Hundreds of Myanmar university students are
currently illegally protesting against this law because
they say it will curb academic freedom. They need
academic freedom. Although the government says
the new higher education law will give universities
more autonomy and allow an independent body to
coordinate their functions, the students say the law
will actually reduce autonomy.

Furthermore, the students are protesting
against the National Education Law because it does
not represent the interests of the people and the students. The Law, according to them, will be an obstacle to academic freedom and the development of education. Therefore, the students are against this new
education law.

After this training it was very useful for WH
students who gained many critical thinking skills
and information about current events in the country.
Moreover, we WH students eagerly appreciate Burma Partnership coming and sharing their knowledge
with us. Thank you!


Written by: Nan Min Min Soe

WH students learn how to make advocacy videos from expert journalist!

LightsCameraACTION!!!!

ide Horizons students are very enthusiastic to

learn about different things and take initiative to
create what they have learned. In November 2014, WH
students learned video editing training and made short
videos themselves to show their talent. This is very useful for our future jobs and we can help our home organizations very much with this skill. The training was
given by Sayar (teacher) Nyan Soe from the Democratic
Voice of Burma (DVB) who is really experienced in video shooting and editing.we learned different techniques
and methods of video shooting and editing using complicated software. To practice our new skills, our teacher
gave us a topic which was the Burma peace process,
we designed, shot and edited our own videos about this
topic in small groups. At the end of training, Sayar Nyan
Soe was amazed at WH students videos and he even
published news about his training workshop on DVB
Youthvoice. We were very proud!

Written by: San San Moe

Welcome to join funny Wide Horizons!

ide Horizons School will start recruitment soon for 2015-2016 academic
year. Therefore, we would like to welcome everyone to enjoy Wide Horizons
program for one-year, which can definitely change
your life and you can develop your community situation to be better as well. Furthermore, you will have
a lot of fun with different people from all over Burma
and all over the world for example Denmark, USA
and England!

organizations (CBOs) around Mae Sot.

(Computer skills) students have to learn Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel, InDesign, Photoshop, video shooting and editing, and how to create a webpage and website.
Wide Horizons is looking for people who;
Have worked in a community organization for at
least a year
Have intermediate English language skills
Have basic computer skills
are between the ages of 20 35

We are happy playing games with Denmark university students

Education is the most powerful

weapon which you can use to

change the world
Nelson Mandela
When students join Wide Horizons, they will inevitably get three advanced skills;
(English advanced) students have to study professional speaking; listening, writing and they have to
learn how to write professional reports, emails, essays, CVs, cover letters and write newsletter. They
also learn about politics, philosophy, law, history
and public health and creative writing as well as
reading novels and articles.
(Community development) students have to learn
project management, proposal writing and receive
many kinds of training from many local and international organizations. Additionally, they often
have chances to visit different community based

If you are hard-working, motivated and care
about your community, you will be a great student
at Wide Horizons!

To apply to the Wide Horizons program,
Wide Horizons staff and alumni will travel to recruit different students that come from 13 different
places around Thailand, including refugee camps.
Furthermore, they also will recruit inside Burma
as well (Mawlamyine and Hpa-An). Before they
start to recruit, they will deliver presentations at the
various different places. Thus, if you would like to
know more information, you can feel free to visit
the Wide Horizons Website or our Facebook page.
Your life will never be the same again!


Written by: Khun Like Yu

Wide Horizons and Hong Kong University students

Students dont just learn inside the classroom...

WH Community Projects
Working with communities is very important for Wide Horizons (WH) it is what we all came here to learn
about!!
few months ago, we learned but we were sure we could try students, teachers, and technicians
how to write proposals. We hard and give the communities the and parents - both now and in the
future. Furthermore, we, the WH
then applied and tested our pro- help they need.
posal writing skills by visiting
In January 2015, we started students are also beneficiaries becommunities and doing needs to implement our projects. Each cause we learned how to write proassessments there. Afterwards, team acted as project managers posals and do the projects for our
communities in the coming future.
we wrote proposals for Room to for the proposal they had written.
Grow Foundation a great and 1) At Thu Kha Hang Sar
very useful organization which School, we planted a ginger garsupports various projects along den;
the border.
2) At Irrawaddy school, we
provided school furniture, including tables and benches and we repaired the roof;
3) At Kwe Ka Baung School,
we planted an agriculture garKKB Gardening Project
den including watermelons and
morning glory, and made our own Since we started our implementation, we did not do any harm to our
eco-friendly fertilizer; and
TKHS Ginger Project
4) At Elpis School, we built communities and we helped them
a lot so we are satis fied and happy
Before we wrote our propos- fences for their boarding house.
with our projects. However, right
als, we divided ourselves into 5
now, we are really sorry and worgroups. Each group took responsiried for our WH program and fubility over one site and wrote their
ture community projects, because
own proposal. The groups then
of the lack of funding WH has for
switched proposals to peer review
next year. If other donors continue
each others work and learn from
to help our programmer, WH will
each other. Thereafter, in October
be more sustainable and WH can
2014, 5 proposals were submitted
continue to do these kind of proto the donor and we were very exIrrawaddy Roof + Furniture Project
jects, and other different projects,
cited to wait for the results. In De-
cember 2014, the donor came to The main goal for all four pro- in the future for many communiWH and each group had to pres- jects was to fulfill the needs of ties.
ent their proposal to her in a sales the communities. During our im- Written by: Naw Lay Lit Ray Thaw
pitch format we were very nerv- plementation we had many team
ous! Finally we found that 4 pro- members to coordinate such as
posals had been accepted! After parents, school teachers, school
we heard the information, every students, technicians and WH
students, teachers and coordina- students, WH teachers, and WH
tor had a face full of smiles and coordinators - all were human reeveryone kept talking about the sources for these great projects!
accepted proposals, even during We worked together with unity
lunch time! We knew we would and without tiring. The beneficiarElips Fence Project
be very, very busy in trimester 3,
ies in our projects are the schools,

Wide Horizons needs your help!

ear reader! I am Chan

Lawi a current Wide Horizons students. I want to
share what I have learnt from WH
such as community development
skills, proposal writing, report
writing, advanced English skills
and advanced computer skills, as
well as critical thinking and other transferable skills. Now, I really want to express our current
situation and experience at Wide
Horizons. WH program is focused
on community based organization (CBO) on Thai- Burma border, as well as all around Burma
because those communities really
need this program to get the skills.

Therefore, it is helpful for the

communities.

Before I came here, I just
heard about WH school but I
didnt know these kinds of instruments and how they were useful
for the communities. Now, Im
sure about how useful WH is it.
Thus, I know that I also can develop my community after I graduate
from this school because it has
given me a lot of knowledge, experiences and skills that I can use for
my future.

Unfortunately, one thing
that makes me feel sad is the situation of our WH program because,
the budget will run out this year.

I worry for new generations because they will not have an opportunity to study at WH like their
brothers and sisters. When I think
about them Im so sympathetic.
So, I would like them to get the
same opportunity like us because
this program can effectively develop our communities in the future.
Please help us! We will do fundraising soon, online and through a
fundraising party in March 2015,
so please give what you can. Thank
you for reading and please contact
WH for more information.

Written by: Mi Chan Lawi

Money, Money, Money!!

30 students received financial literacy training in the
form of Training of Trainers (TOT). They then delivered the same training workshop to over 50 women in
a local community.

WH & BGET students are giving financial literacy training.

In January 2015, 23 WH students and 7 Border
Green Energy Team (BGET) students received TOT
financial literacy training from Khom Loy Foundation
(KLF).

We learned about these topics;

Market session (This was an activity where
the participants had to work to earn money and
buy rice to eat. The activity taught the participants
that they have to work every day to get enough
money to reach their goals and achieve what they
want).
Goals and money beliefs (identifying, analyzing and challenging current beliefs)
What are savings? Making saving plans
Making household budgets
Time management

We received training on these topics in English
and a week later, delivered it to a migrant community
near to WH school, in Burmese.

Before we would go to deliver training, we
had already learnt how to be effective trainers from
KLF because the training was designed in this format. This training enabled us to become financial literacy trainers in the community in the future and we
are very thankful to KLF for teaching us.

Written by: Tai Leng

The future is nearly here

Whats next for our WH students?

he Wide Horizons Community Development Program (WH) has been famous along the Thai-Burma
border and inside Burma for a number of years. Everyone knows that if you studied at WH, you have
many skills and can work very hard! WH provides lifelong learning education to ethnic young people
and each year, hundreds of them sit entrance exams and are eager to come and study at WH. Currently, over
200 of young adults have been trained by WH and they are now working in many different community development sectors, using the skills that WH provided to them effectively. Pwint Moe Thu, a WH alumni who is
currently interning at Khom Loy Development Foundation said If you are trained by Wide Horizons, you will
be a good organizer and a practical leader in the future.

After living and studying at WH campus in Mae Sot for
10 months, the students have to return to their host organizations
to complete their work placement. This is the opportunity for
the students to practice their new skills that they have learnt at
WH such as practical experience, knowledge and skills about
community development. Furthermore, the students are able
to contribute to the capacity development of community based
organizations (CBOs) along the Thai-Burma border by sharing
their newly gained skills.

In this academic year, there are 23 students at WH who
came and studied on behalf of many different organizations
along the border-line and inside Burma. We are all excited for
our work placements to begin! Tai Leng, a current WH student
from Kaung Jor Shan refugee camp said Wide Horizons program is a place that produces community changers. In addition,
he said I have plans to start a new program in my camp, similar
to WH and using what I learned from my teachers and my experiences at WH.

I do believe myself that I am able to set

up a new program because I have gained
so many valuable skills in WH during this
year.


Moreover, Hser Khu Paw, another current WH student from Back Pack
Health Worker Team (BPHWT) added, I
believe WH has provided enough skills
for my work placement. The skills that I
gained from WH include proposal writing,
report writing and project management
which are all so necessary in our organization. After this graduation I want to share
my English and computer skills to other
youth as well.


During the work placement, the
students are required to submit quarterly
reports to WH, describing our duties and
responsibilities, our progress, and any
challenges we might be facing during our
work placement. This means we will be
continually supported by WH, and can ask
them to support our future projects also.
We know we will be part of the WH family
forever.

Written by: Si Thu Aung

 Can you make natural fertilizer or houses out of mud? We can!

BGET Sustainable Living training in Nu Boh

n October 2014, the Wide Horizons students

together with some American Where were the
dragon students went to the Border Green Energy Team (BGET) training centre in Nu Boh. There
we learned many things such as; adobe building,
compost making, bio char, natural soil fertilizer,
water filters, solar power energy and methods of
raising pets. We learned theory in class and then
we practiced our new skills in BGETs sustainable
training areas. We had a great time!

WH and Dragon students are digging and stepping

My favorite lesson was about adobe building
making. We dug mud from the ground, stepped on
it and mixed it with rice husk. We stepped on it to
mix it together and until it was sticky enough to use
for building. Similarly, some students carried and
moved the mud bricks and started to build a wall.
Everyone was working very hard and this job was
very fun and interesting.

Whilst at BGET, Khom Loy Foundation also
gave us training about how to make compost, which
was very useful for us. The structure of compost is
to firstly put green grass down, and we can use any
grass for it. After this, we have to put rice husk-this
should be spread on the grass to cover the grass.
Next, we have to put cow manure, and the last step
is we put coconut husk or sawdust over it. Finally,
you can put water onto it. This can be used as natural fertilizer, useful for raising pigs and chickens.

In the same way, to make Bio Char, we were
working very hard.

We had to chop dried wood into small pieces and put

it in a metal barrel until it was full and we burned it.
When half was burned, we moved the barrel and put it
in to the mud, and we covered it for safety - we closed
it with the mud without hole and air to enter put it in
the mud until the fire wood became ash.

During the training, WH students and the American Dragon students were living, eating, sleeping,
working, playing and singing together, as like as a
family. In the evening we went swimming in the river.
Furthermore, on the last night of our training, all students celebrated a farewell party where we shared our
cultures, sang, danced and had a talent show - we all
were very happy that night. Moreover, on the last day,
we all hiked to the top of the mountain and visited the
pagoda. There is very beautiful place and you can see
very far because that mountain is very high.

Everything we learned during out BGET training was certainly useful for us, especially people who
live in villages because all of these courses are sustainable for humans and for all the living things in the
world. If we can build Adobe houses in our villages,
we can save money!. Moreover, you do not need to
worry about deforestation and global warming. For
the compost, it makes you healthier if you plant vegetable with compost, every vegetable is very fresh and
really pursues you to eat. We are very thankful for this
training!

Written by: Khun Michael

We receive certificate from BGET

 It could be YOU!!!
Wide Horizons will be fundraising in March 2015!!! We have a party on 20 March and we will have fantastic
student performances, delicious Burmese food and juice and a raffle draw! The prizes will be:

First prize: New Honda Wave 1

Second prize: New Refrigerator Third prize: Samsung Phone

1.

1.

42,000 Thai Baht

6,499 Thai Baht

1.

3,000 Thai Baht

Other prizes also include: - 2 bicycles, a rice

cooker, an iron!

ote: You do not need to attend the party to win prize. The raffle draw will take place at 8 pm. We will announce

the winner on our Facebook page after the drawing.

ONLINE FUNDRAISING!!!!
Wide Horizons will be crowd funding online
If you donate online, you will get a set of WH postcards, a T-Shirt or a personal video message from our WH
students!!*
*pending amount given
Please visit this website link for our crowd funding: http://igg.me/at/GR8JnpJ2Xng/x/9976412
Written & Design by: Moe Moe Myint
Extra Information for Raffle
Time: 8 - 10pm
Date: 20 March 2015, Sunday
Phone: 0856066973
Place: Wide Horizons, Mae Sot, Tak
Contact: widehorizonsmaesot@gmail.com

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Layout Team

Aung Than

Naw Min Min Soe

Mi Chanlawi

Htoo Lar Paw
Burmese Translation Team

Khun Michel

Khun Like Yu

San San Moe

Lahtaw Roi Nan

Khaing Zaw Win

Ah Kin
Karen Translation Team

Htoo Htoo

Hser Khu Paw
PROOF READING TEAM

Saw Than Than Lay

Saw Blet

Moe Moe Myint

Wa Ai Hpaw
COORDINATING TEAM

Ne Hser

Wah Ler Shee
ENGLISH WRITING TEAM

Si Thu Aung

Thai Lend

Naw Min Min Soe

Lay Lit Ray Thaw

San San Moe

Mi Chanlawi

Moe Moe Myint

Ne Hser

Maung Sunn
Cartoon

Gay Nay Dee

WIDE HORIZONS STUDENTS 14 - 2015

Cartoon: Gay Nay Dee

Frame Designer: AUNG THAN

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WIDE HORIZONS CONTACT ADDRESS

Address: Wide Horizons School, P.O. Box 27, Mae Sot,

Tak, 63110, Thailand.
Coordinator: Maung Myo Htun
Phone: 08856066973
Email: widehorizonsmaesot@gmail.com
Blog: www.widehorizonsprogram.blogspot.com/p/
home.html
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Wide Horizons, Com

munity Development Program

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WH Family