Day 228 - People

Today, I got the chance to meet Daniel and go with him to one of the slums in Yangon to see the work he is doing there.

But before I continue let me first say thanks to Daniel, for his help and support of the people you see in this post (and more), and the friends at My Place, who made this possible by introducing me to Daniel.

Every city has areas where poor people live who don't always have the means or  the support from the government to improve their situation and have to make the best out of their situation. We call these areas slums and we have all bee driving or walking past at one point or another.

So has Daniel but unlike most of us he decided one day to step off the bus and go to see if he can do anything to help the people living under poor conditions in one of the slums in Yangon.

He managed to set up a school for the kids and teaches them English and other skills that might come in handy for them once they grow up to find jobs or try and improve their situation. This alone is quite impressive but he manages to do all this without any government support and only by using his own money and with help from his family.

He is now working together with the people at the My Place charity but a lot of the work is still done on his own money and in his free time on weekends.

After learning that I am in Yangon, Daniel invited me to come and see the work he does and also meet the children he is teaching but also the other people living in the slums and showed me the conditions they live in.

Now, I could go on and say how poor these people are and under what horrible conditions they live in, that they are very unfortunate and that we should feel sorry for them.
This certainly is true but the people I met are great people, they are friendly, happy and make the best out of their situation, they help each other, they share their houses with other families (so 3-4 families live in a small house), they are proud people who despite everything smile and don't complain.

Sure, they live in poor conditions and don't have a lot of money but they are not poor because they have so much more than a lot of people I have seen every day on my way to work in London.
They have neighbors they care about, they help each other, they deal with everything as best as possible without constantly complaining, they do their best to improve their situation and don't wait for someone else to do something.
These are the people I have seen and met there, great and proud people, they all smiled and were welcoming.

Do they need help to improve their situation? Sure, they do need help and especially Daniel needs help so he can work with the children and provide them with an education.

So if you're in Yangon, do get in touch with me or the people at My Place and see if you can help Daniel and support his help with the kids.

Just as a note, none of the photos were directed by me, the people chose where and how to pose and just asked me to take a photo of them. This is a longer series with a lot of photos but I felt it was necessary to portray it better.

You can find even more photos from the day on my Flickr set here.