With heavy hearts, the Board of The Mandalay Projects has made the difficult decision to suspend services in Myanmar. Read the full announcement here.
We revisit all of our partner sites from time to time to ascertain how impactful our previous project work has been. The Kin Ywa Orphanage & School was one of our earliest partners โ we established a medical clinic there in 2005 and co-sponsored the construction of a new dorm building in 2006.
Our 2017 visit to the site was our first for many years. It was good to see the medical clinic was still up and running, and that the dorm was in full use. The manager (Sayadaw U Wilatha) gave us a warm welcome and showed us around the entire compound.
On our initial visit, back in 2005, there were around 30 resident children, who were generally in fairly poor health. Today there are 78 residents, mainly from the Pa-O ethnic group, and their health appears to be quite good, apart from occasional skin disease (which is prevalent throughout the neighbouring village).
There are around 60 families in Mawlamyine who donate rice or meat curry, or firewood for the kitchen stoves in the orphanage, which is sufficient to feed the children twice a day.