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APCD Mission
Networking and Collaboration Mission to Myanmar
10 - 14 March 2008
The purpose of our mission to Myanmar was: to establish collaboration with the Department of Social Welfare, Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, to establish self-help organizations for persons with hearing impairments and/or an intellectual disability and their families; visit related groups and organizations and exchange information on the deaf and intellectual disability fields as well as exchange information on deaf and intellectual disabilities.
The mission team met with Mr. Sit Myaing, Director General of the Department of Social Welfare, Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief & Resettlement, in order to continue our relationship and further collaboration with his successor since he was retiring at the end of March. He confirmed that the government will support the creation of a unified deaf organization since there are two different deaf groups; the Yangon Deaf Association and Mandalay Deaf Association. The deaf groups expressed their appreciation for APCD.
The mission team visited a school for disabled children and met with a Parents Group of Disabled Children and a Special Olympic Commission to discuss and exchange information on concerns such as education for children with disabilities, job opportunities, rearing methods suitable for the children and how to organize parents groups. They would like APCD to organize a workshop and/or seminar in Myanmar so that they can have more information regarding the afore-mentioned matters.
APCD arranged a workshop at the JICA Myanmar office on three main topics; Introduction to the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) by Mr. Surachet Lertsajayan a representative of WFD, Introduction to the National Association of the Deaf in Thailand (NADT) by Mr. Suwat Uthamaphethai, President of NADT and the Real Meaning of Disability and Equity by Ms. Jirat Wachirasereechai, Chief of HRD, APCD. The participants of the workshop included twenty members from the Yangon Deaf Association, five members from the Mandalay Deaf Association and another five from the Mary Chapman School for the Deaf.
The problems of the Deaf in Myanmar can be attributed to a lack of sign language interpreters, different sign languages used between the deaf schools and the community, limited education, limited information received from the media, and an inadequate support for their budget; two groups of deaf persons need to be certified by law to qualify to request support from WFD. We realized through this workshop that the Thai resource persons were effective and had good advice for people in Thailand's neighbouring countries such as Myanmar; the climate, history, culture and social & economic situations are similar as compared to the same factors of developed countries.
