Eleven-year-old Muang Zaw Naing is a student at a Partners Relief & Development supported school in Sittwe, Rakhine State, Myanmar. When violence broke out in 2012, the people of Ywar Thar Yar Village, including Muang Zaw Naing’s family, were forced to flee, leaving everything behind. Many villagers owned small businesses and stores in the urban area and sent their children to the community school.
Now both education and livelihood are hard to find within Sittwe, especially for the Rohingya. Parents make little on daily wage work in an area swamped with able-bodied and desperate men. Muang Zaw Naing’s father was worried that his five children would become illiterate and never have a chance at escaping the grinding poverty.
When a humanitarian crisis like this happens, the fallout escalates, and multiple catastrophes converge. Any savings or property a family accumulated are gone overnight and the economic toll can last generations. If children like Muang Zaw Naing go uneducated, they are on a precarious footing to start again and can be easy targets for exploitation. Schools are one of the very best ways to turn the tide of hopelessness and poverty in crises.
Muang Zaw Naing has now been enrolled for two years in the Partners supported school in Sittwe. He is a dedicated student and likes to study. He is provided with a uniform, supplies, and a classroom. Here he learns not only reading, writing, and math, but also resiliency and self-respect. With the education, Muang Zaw Naing receives he hopes to carry on through middle school and high school and eventually become a teacher in his own country.