As our roads begin to fill up with honking horns of a morning as people return to the office a monastery in Yet Chaung Village remains tranquil. Though Myanmar’s schools are closed, the monastery’s silence is broken occasionally by the sound of children flipping through their Mg Mg the Kyat book. Eager to begin to operate our workshops, Cufa Myanmar has begun to use the local monastery as a place to host our lessons in Financial Literacy and Credit Union Development.
The sound of the bells are interrupted by the children as they form a circle to play one of the program’s educational games, a reprieve from the stress that Covid-19 has caused. In a country that is continuing to see its cases grow, a tension sits in the air about when the virus will come to their area. Our project officers are noticing that the children practice better hygiene practices than before the lockdown, something that will prove beneficial post the lockdown. As the children play a game about what they just learnt, the opportunity to learn and play, and for a brief moment forget about it with your friends, is the least that Cufa could do.
In the same monastery the next day, a group of young, entrepreneurial women listen attentively to a Cufa volunteer discussing the best practices for operating their business during Covid-19. Their children would have been in the same monastery the day before, and much like them, the women are eager to return to their lessons. These women are a part of the Cufa Credit Union Development Program, aimed at assisting communities to develop their own community banks. These women have been working with Cufa for sometime, and so we are delighted to share that these women have put into practice their training over the course of the lockdown. Spurred on by the difficult economic circumstances, many have begun to tighten their budgets and look to use their communities credit union to their advantage.
Cufa’s Credit Union Development and Children Financial Literacy Programs having been operating in Myanmar 2016 and 2018 respectively has seen significant positive responses. In Myanmar alone, we have been able to reach over 2,000 students across 22 schools through our CFL programs. Our CUD program continues to grow, with over 30 Credit Unions being maintained across over 2,250 members involved.
The monastery returns to the sound of bells and chimes as the women leave, the sounds of horns intermittently break the sounds of the nearby forest, heralding a slow return to normalcy.
