A young family with a brighter future: new opportunities start to pay off in Myanmar

Myint Myint Kyi, known as Ma Kyi, is 22 years old and lives in Inn Tae Su village in Maubin Township of Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady Region. She is married and, with her husband, Ye Lay, 31, she has two boys: Zin Myo Oo is five years old and Shine Htet Lin is six months old.

Both parents are daily wage workers: he earns 5,000 Kyat ($3.70 US) per day and she earns just half that for similar work. Though they are always willing to work, usually there are only 15 work days each month – and only for six months of the year because there is no work in the long rainy season.

This couple is quite similar to many other poor and vulnerable people: once they have spent their saved money from their day wages, they must borrow money from money lenders who charge quite high interest rate (10  percent).

To try to get out of this too-common trap, Ma Kyi has seized the chance to join a series of education and training sessions offered in a CWS nutrition project that is funded by a Japanese food company, Aginimoto.  While Ma Kyi says she liked all the topics covered in the educational sessions, her favorites were the ones about basic nutrition and personal hygiene. She was also interested in learning about how to properly raise poultry and about how new possibilities relating to home gardening; after the trainings, she was given a rooster, three hens and seven types of vegetable seeds. These assets, combined with her training, set her on her way to more solid financial footing for her family.

Now, she waters the family garden every day and cares for the soil with natural compost. She says she has plans to make ‘green’ compost for her plants too. Also, Ma Kyi carefully feeds and waters her little brood of chickens and, like others in her group, she is hopeful to soon have more income from selling eggs and extra vegetables (after her sons have been well fed) and she plans to start to save some money for her sons’ education – as soon as she and Ye Lay pay off their debts.