Mengelabah!
That’s “hello” in Burmese, the official language of Myanmar where I arrived a week ago.
Myanmar is home to 55 million people and only recently (2010) transitioned into a market economy following 60 years of international isolation under military dictatorship. Aung San Suu Kyi is probably the most famous Myanmar icon having followed her family legacy of fighting for democracy (her father led the independence movement when Myanmar was a British colony) and is now the chair of the National League for Democracy. She can’t become president as the constitution requires a president to have a thorough military understanding and no foreign blood or relatives. (Her husband was British and together they have 2 sons who live in the UK = disqualified).
More recently you will have come across stories of the horrific events carried out against the Rohingya in the Rakhine state. Myanmar remains a complicated country, home to 135 different ethnic groups speaking 111 very different languages. Hence the politically correct, though grammatically odd, description of “Myanmar people” and not “Burmese”. At the same time, Myanmar people are the most generous in the world. Ranked number 1 on a list where the UK and Germany are ranked 5th and 18th)
For an outsider like me, the complexity of the country is not immediately apparent. Yangon (the commercial capital - the government capital is a brand-new built city, Naypyidaw, very swish with stories of 12 lane roads) is a super charming port city, home to 6 million people.
Beautiful colonial-era buildings (that have seen better days) line the grid-system roads of downtown Yangon. It’s hot, humid and sticky. It smells a bit of a sickly-sweet fruit, fish sauce and jungle. Sounds a little gross but I love it. Everyone is roaming about in flip-flops, the men wearing longyis (long sarong skirts) and the women wrap around skirts with matching blouses. Many have yellow paint on their face. It’s from the Thanaka tree, which protects against the sun and helps whiten the skin. No thank you! After 4 months of British winter I welcome the sun. (Probably a good thing as the only sunscreen I’ve come across is 50+ and whitening).
I feel strangely at home in this city. Navigating it is so easy and I let my inner magnet tell me the way to the next bustling corner. I do most on foot, but distances can get quite long, so I tend to take a taxi back the 5 KM to my hotel, north of the centre (on Thursday I move in with a family). I order a cab through the “Grab App” a cash equivalent of Uber. Except that getting across the city is £1.50 at most.
My social calendar since arriving has been busier than my entire last month in London (admittedly, I’ve been a bit of a hermit). Over the past week I’ve been to art galleries, beer houses, a language exchange (which I left with 5 new Myanmar Facebook friends), yoga classes, went out for dinner with new friends and a sweaty bicycle tour to the outskirts of Yangon. I’ve gone to a market to buy fabric and get dresses made by a tailor. And I walked. A LOT (but not so much on the pavement as there are a lot of random holes into sewage). I’m starting to understand the place.
I’m very aware of the stereotypical “and the people are lovely” that’s often used when describing a new experience. But never have I ever come across a place that is as smiley, as welcoming and as relaxed as Yangon, whilst at the same time just leaving you be. I don’t get stared at, don’t get hustled and haven’t encountered any uncomfortable moments. Even the shopkeeper who from afar has a case of RBF turns that frown into a big, warm, welcoming smile as I approach.
The highlight of exploring was the bicycle tour through the rural villages outside of Yangon, where children came running towards us as we cycled by “Mengelaba! High five! Mengelaba”. Some ran out too late for the daily tourist Mengelaba-time and were visibly disappointed.
By the end of the day I must have received over a hundred sticky high-fives.
There’s beauty everywhere, and not just the lush green nature that dominates the city! The country is poor – (in fact the poorest in South-East Asia) but no matter how basic the home someone lives in, there’s a brightly painted door, a makeshift flower pot or a board game painted outside on the pavement.
There’s also a sense of optimism in the air – the country has been through its worst and is going places. With the highest growth rate in Asia (GDP growth is at 7% YoY) one can only hope that it develops inclusively, and that the fancy shopping malls popping up left right and centre next to simple neighbourhoods aren’t a prediction of what’s to come (I passed a mall today named “Myanmar Culture Village” which almost made me throw up. Thousands of years of cultural heritage condensed down to that!?)
But why am I here?
Prospect Burma (an education charity that sponsors Myanmar students to complete higher-education abroad) invited me to scope out their Fundraising Strategy in Myanmar. PB are a British charity and only set up an office in Yangon in 2016. The vast majority of their funding comes from the UK and they are looking to move some of these activities to Myanmar. And that’s where I come in: mapping out the Myanmar fundraising landscape with a plan of action.
The Myanmar office is based in an apartment above a shopping mall. Of course, we take off our shoes before we enter the office and spend the rest of the day barefoot (I love it… though not something I’ll be introducing to Octopus: 4 people taking off their flip-flops is very different to 800 people taking off their closed shoes and socks). There’s the country director, Mawia (pronounced Moya who kindly picked me up from the airport at 5am after a 17-hour trip), Shwe the Programme Officer and Yuper who’s in charge of finance and is the get-everything-done person. They are all super nice and generously share their knowledge and opinions with me. We don’t seem to run out of conversation and laugh a lot! We have a lot more in common than I initially anticipated.
The first week I focused on getting an understanding of Myanmar, Prospect Burma and their obstacles to fundraising. I hosted a workshop with the team, which started with post-its and ended up in a long discussion about some of the problems they anticipate Prospect Burma have with fundraising locally.
Many of the stories came as a surprise and disputed my initial assumptions. For example: knowing that Myanmar is one of the most generous countries in the world, I thought it would be a piece of cake to convince local people and companies who have the means to donate to support PB’s initiatives. But, as PB is a British charity, it is locally regarded as a well-funded International Non-Governmental Organisation (INGO). In reality it is an organisation who have an incredibly wide outreach with minimal overhead costs and in need of funds. This mis-perception is a hard obstacle to overcome, as the perception of INGOs are that Myanmar people (regardless of their wealth) are recipients, not donors. Also, making the case to donate towards higher education when some children lack the means to attend basic education make the stigma even harder. The quality of education in Myanmar however remains at the one of the lowest standard in the world. Completing a Bachelor’s degree here is worthless if not followed up by expensive vocational training.
The current questions I am facing are: who do we target? (individuals: locals? Tourists? Expats? Companies: local, international)? Large volume of small average donation size or do we go after big ticket donors? How do we ensure that no donor has an affiliation with the military (known as Cronies) or otherwise made their fortune through corruption? How do we reach the different segments and what’s the size of the pie? How can the local perception of the organisation be changed?
Honestly – I’m struggling to find the balance between being a macro-level PowerPoint monkey and focusing on tangible, practical ideas. I get distracted by having to deliver something comprehensive in less than 3 weeks. Also, I love Excel and I love data, but I’m afraid I’ll have to ditch that for now. Key for me is keeping the team involved to ensure that I’m working on things that are actually useful. I’ll continue to explore and understand the Yangon landscape first-hand. Preferably with a glass of cold Myanmar Beer and a tamarind leaf salad.
A big reason why I’m able to soak up everything around me is because I have an amazing team at home who are making sure I don’t have to worry about things back at Octopus. I am incredibly grateful to Henry, Marina N., Ed, Marina S., Dan, Simon S., Simon P., Sanders and Charlie for taking on the extra work, so I can fully focus on making the most of this incredible opportunity (A team with 2 Marina’s and 2 Simon’s is bound to be a dream team). Thank you also to Octopus, specifically Gina, Stu, Simon and Chris for gifting me this opportunity. It still feels too good to be true and I doubt that feeling will ever fade.
