Our family disability support worker looked at me as if I had completely lost my mind. "You want to do WHAT?"
Let me start by being brutally honest. This isn't just about these two remote orphanages. Yes, their plight is pitiful. Living in tents, some of them, inadequate diet and medical care, all of them. But when my Myanmar friend mentioned them to me, it wasn't just pity that moved my heart. It was a strange sort of stirring, a sense of "Perhaps there IS something I could do, after all, for the world beyond my front door." A stirring of joy, hope even. Like that moment when the human children visiting Narnia hear the name of Aslan for the first time. They don't know who he is, but something is changed within them. That is what happened to me, when I heard about these two orphanages that needed help.
You see, my situation is really quite difficult. I can't go back to work. Churches need pastors, vicars, who are mobile and available, and able to give above and beyond their contract to the community. I don't have that capacity, my family life is too unpredictable and the demands at home too total. I would be a waste of space as a vicar right now. There's academia, of course, but even universities expect you to be there on a regular basis. Lectures can't be subcontracted out. So no joy there.
So then my mind turned to voluntary work. But even for voluntary work, you have to be predictably available. It's no use saying to a church, a school or a charity: Yes, I will work for you for free, except that I can't tell you in advance when that will be, and also I can't guarantee to keep my promises, or show up even when I've said I will. Because my son is in and out of pain, and when he's in pain, he needs me at home. That's just how it is, and we've been told to expect it to continue for quite some years. And my husband works irregular hours, and isn't at home much in the evening. So I'd be a dead loss to a charity/voluntary organisation too.
So really, professionally speaking I'm stuffed. I can't update my skills. I can't even study away from the house on a regular basis. I could take a job teaching English via Skype to Chinese students for tuppence an hour, but fortunately at the moment our financial situation is not so dire that I need to. So I've been trying to find something that would...make me happy. Make me feel that perhaps there was a role for me outside my home, some way of polishing my community development and support skills. And this fits the bill.
I don't need to leave the house to do it. I will probably need to set up a registered charity, at some stage, if I get enough sign-ups to make this project workable, more than an unrealistic idealistic flash-in-the-pan. I will need to set up systems to make this financially accountable and transparent. But that's not difficult, it has been done by many before. (In that sense these small projects are often easier: they have minimal administration costs and so the money goes where it is needed, in a way that doesn't always happen with the big charities. I don't need to be in Myanmar. It may well be that I choose to go there, at some point, at my own expense, to learn more: but for now I have sufficient local contacts and am building good enough bridges with embedded local NGOs so that I will have people on the ground that are trustworthy, who can handle the practical project delivery side. So in fundraising terms, most of the work can be done from here, the same desk where I piss away hours on Facebook. It's practical, simple and effective. It will give me some new skills in an area where I have some professional background (community development work in Southern Africa) and interfaith work (working with Catholic and Buddhist orphanages). It will enable me to, you know feel that I am going somewhere professionally and personally, not just changing outsized nappies and waiting for the next crisis with school.
And, incidentally, it might save some children's lives too.
But I need you guys to make it happen. Otherwise I've lost before I start.
I am asking for everyone who wants to get involved to give the cost of rice for one orphan annually, for a period of three years. That is $5 per month. I have chosen three years because it will allow enough time to steer these orphanages through a tight patch, and set up some more sustainable longterm funding.
Be reassured I don't want the money now: I don't have the systems in place to receive it yet. I hope to get enough interest that it is worth setting up a registered charity, so if in NZ you will get your tax back. Which means you are really only giving $3.50 per month. So yeah. Please think about this if you want to help Myanmar. But really, to be completely honest, it's not only the kids you will be helping. Please consider a donation if you would like to be a supportive friend to me.
To make it really easy, I've put four options for you to contact me.
a) YEAH! This is cool! Put my name down and get back to me when you have more of a plan.
b) YEAH-NAH-NOT-SURE. I want more details, but I'm not ready to commit. Come back to me when you have more of a plan.
c) NAH, but I'm not offended that you asked. Good luck with it all. Don't ask me again.
d) NAH! You self-interested nitwit! I'll donate to proper charities, thank you! (Has your Bishop even approved this madcap scheme?)
So, of course our disability worker is completely right. It is absolutely preposterous and mad. But before I descend totally into the respectable dowdiness of middle-age, I'd like to have one last shot at the daring derring-do of youth. I'd like you to be part of it, with me. So yeah, get back to me. You'd better PM me with A,B,C or D, otherwise I'll be in danger of assuming that you haven't seen this yet, and PESTER YOU via private message like one of those annoying fundraisers we all loathe.
And, you know, thanks in advance.
