Tag: Refugee work

This year, I had the privilege of teaching at the SDC for a short, 3-month term. The SDC is one of the best run community-based organizations on the Thailand-Burma border. It gives an opportunity for Karenni and other Myanmar refugees to gain the building blocks for a greater civil society. I am lucky to have been a part of it. At the moment, I'm traveling between Karen and Shan states to enjoy some of the best the country has to offer: gilded pagodas rising to the sky, lively tea shops on quiet streets, endless friendly encounters with the locals. Today I gazed upon the wondrous surface of Inle Lake.  I'm visiting a country where members of the SDC students call their own, but where few of them have had the chance to live freely. Myanmar, in isolating itself from the world, has alienated its people from their land. Now, as foreign tourists spur the construction of five star hotels and the...