Friday 6 December 2013

Aid Project "Humedica" & "Partner´s Relief and Development"

 
Since April 2012 we are travelling by bicycle from Germany/Austria to New Zealand. Due to the fact, that we will gain some attention on this trip by using Facebook and Blogspot, we decided to use this item to support people, who have not the same luck as us. Until today both of us had a very good life. We know that there are so many other countries with people, who have so many problems, not able to solve them by their own.

In November 2011 Gerd made a phonecall to Humedica (www.humedica.org) and Steffen Richter, the press spokesman, invited him to come to Kaufbeuren/Germany. It was a hearty welcome! Gerd met many people there, and it was a great pleasure to meet the founder of Humedica, Mr. Wolfgang Gross. A small guided tour through the organisation made an excellent impression.


Now we are glad to sustain „Partner´s Relief and Development (PRAD)“, the partner organisation of Humedica in Thailand (www.partnersworld.org), helping people from Myanmar !


Main fields are :

Healthcare
  • education of local people in first aid and basic medical treatment, i.e diarrhea, worms , malaria, pneunomia, nutrition, dehydration, hygiene and anaemie
  • implementation of a village health worker and introducing a hygienic education of local person
  • Medics/nurses are educated for a local group. their knowledge is up to make amputations (caused by landmines or bad accidents). Smaller clinics in bigger villages.
  • transport of patients and support, including interpretors.

Agriculture
farming support: visiting the farmers in Myanmar and showing how to grow plants and increase crop yield without fertilizer. Using fertilizers is a method from the Myanmar goverment to make farmers dependend on the state banks. The majority of the farmers are poor and have to run into debts.

Social development
support people to develop community spirit. , widows, pregnant women, stepchilds.

Education
Supporting schools.

Childcare
distribution of every day needed products like toothbrushes in the refugee camps (food is provided by other organisations)



Our visit in Mae Sot/Thailand at Partner´s Relief & Development:
We arrived in Thailand on Aug 2nd . After some days of sighseeing and organisation Gerd went by bicycle up to Mae Sot. Astrid arrived one day later with her friend Sophie from Austria. Marci Haigh ( Health Projects Manager, Mae Sot Branch ) was our contact person in Mae Sot and first gave us an excellent overview.
The next day we had a meeting in the branch office, where Marci explained us the structure and tasks of PRAD very detailed. We had a lot of questions as much of the things she told us were far beyond our life experiance. 


meeting so many great people from PRAD!

at the HQ, Marci gave as an overview about PRAD

 
Then we joined Marci visiting a young girl in the hospital, suffering from TBC (tubercolosis).
Naw K'Pru is a 15 year old girl who started to feel ill November 2012. She suffered from mild fevers, abdominal pain and weight loss. She started to get swelling in her abdomen. Local medics diagnosed her with abdominal TB and gave her 6 months of treatment. After treatment, she felt much better and gained back weight. The swelling in her abdomen remained. She was embarrassed because many people assumed that she was a young pregnant teen. PRAD helped her get to hospital and do some medical testing. They found a very massive cyst. This is locally known to be an after-effect of the abdominal TB. The cyst was pressing on her kidney causing some damage. We helped her to get surgery so that her kidney wouldn't be further damaged. Now she is so happy to have a slim tummy like her friends.



Two days later we visited a refugees camp, where a former patient of PRAD lives. Well, the people there have a very poor life. Only bamboo huts and most of them nothing to do the whole day. we had a long conversation with the woman and she told us her life:

Naw Wah Per is a 40 year old teacher from a small village in the mountains of Karen State. She lives in Kay Pu village which has been the setting of war for many years. She had to run from the attacks of the government soldiers and hide with her students in the jungle on many occasions. In late 2012 she suffered a miscarriage. Afterwords she felt sick and had abdominal pain for many months. The local medics did not have all the correct medicine to treat her. They sent her to the border area. PRAD arranged for complete treatment and also gave her a full health check up. After taking treatment and eating good food she felt much better. Now she has gone home to her village and will again work as a teacher with the start of the next school term.



at the refugee camp


Naw Wah Per, 2nd from left.



Well, the other refugees regarded us with curiosity and the security guard kept a wary eye on us. Taking pictures was allowed, but when Gerd startet to use the videocamera, the guard told him to stop.
If you see such a camp, it is very depressing. Astrid and me come from such rich country and these people have nothing, not even freedom. Albania, Laos and Cambodia are very poor, too, but people can move, here not. The political situation in Myanmar currently becomes better, but nobody knows, how long this process will last. Again time to think about the important things in life and how lucky we are, despite all the problems in Europe.
 

Gerd worked for a long time as a manager financial accounting and controlling. Therefore it was evident that we asked for much more details, how donations will be handled.

There are three posibilities to send money to our fundraising project:

  1. Website Partner´s Relief and Development (www.partnersworld.org)
  2. Betterplace (www.betterplace.org)
  3. directly connected with our blog/Facebook


ad 1.
Your donations goes directly to PRD. 11% of all donations is set aside to cover the salary and benefits of the local staff and 4% for the office rent and utilities.

ad 2. Humedica collects the money and transfers it without any deductions to PRD. 11% of all donations is set aside to cover the salary and benefits of the local staff and 4% for the office rent and utilities.

ad.3 the link on our blog will lead your directly to betterplace.org

All foreign workers at PRAD are volunteers who are independently supported. The local staff (from Thailand or Myanmar) are paid a fair salary which is according to their performance, qualifications and seniority.

Marci showed us the monthly profit-and-loss-report from the inhouse system and it makes an professional impression. Of course, Gerd did not checked the details by himself, but the acoounting and reports are examined by a Thai public auditor and we got it by email. We have no doubts, that all financial affairs are done in a very professional way.

For us it is a matter of heart to support PRAD and we would be glad, if more people could help them.
The costs for one person, coming from Myanmar, is 45 EUR and all kind of amount is highly welcome, whether you can donate 5 EUR or more.

Here are again the other links for donating:





Thank you so much for your help !

Merry Christmas !

Yours

Astrid Fischer & Gerd Müller


river between Thailand and Myanmar

brigde from Thailand (right) to Myanmar