NICA in Burma and Emergency Response

Time: July 5th, 2008

Arthub is supporting a resource development project, Site of Rights and Expression – SORE in Yangon. The program started last month.

SICA brought 8 laptops inside Burma, which were given to 3 groups of young people to do research and activities outside the city. One of the laptops is permanently in a monastery because it was dangerous for the person to carry it with him everytime he traveled there. Security is very tight everywhere. The activities carried out ranged from teaching others how to do independent research to learning to teach English to young monks. This latter project was specifically requested by the abbot, because they want to be able to connect and study the knowledge of others.

In the villages of the disaster areas, the young people carried out post traumatic activities with young children. We hope to organise more seminars in the future and are waiting for additional funding to organise IT training. During the monks 1st anniversary (18th September) increasing internet connection was cut to a slow trickle and all the dissidents’ site were attacked or shut down. We are waiting for a friend traveling into Yangon at the end of this month to bring back more hardware and books for teaching.

About NICA

NICA is an independent not-for-profit resource development centre for culture and the arts located in Yangon. The organization was established in early 2003. NICA has 2 main objectives:

1) to identify and support those aspects of arts and cultural practices within Myanmar that are in need of resource-building, to facilitate their development and

2) to facilitate access and exchanges between Myanmar arts and cultural practitioners with counterparts, organizations and provide opportunities outside of Myanmar.