For the past couple of years I have been working with a gentleman who spends his time raising money to build schools for rural area villages in Myanmar (also known as Burma). I haven’t actually been to any of those villages or visited any of these schools, but I support this project and hereby give it some extra attention.

100 Schools

The name of the organization, 100 Schools, sounds very ambitious, but I’m proud to report they’ve already completed 44 schools to this date. Some time in the middle of next year they are planning to reach the half-way mark and open their 50th school. I’ve been told it will be quite a celebration. My involvement with this project is mainly on the technical side of things which consists largely of building and maintaining the website. When I first began working with 100 Schools, their slogan was “Building them one at a time in Myanmar (Burma)”, but we’ve since dropped that line. Now there are times when multiple schools are being built simultaneously.

Schools in Rural Myanmar (Burma)

Building schools out there is not as simple as sending a construction team with large equipment and setting them to work. Most of the time, the village itself is deeply involved in the building process and many materials such as bricks are made locally. 100 Schools has it’s own dedicated team of Burmese workers, but the parents of the children who will be attending the school in the future are very willing to donate time, materials, and food. The building process becomes a project of pride for the village, because they are not only helping to build a building, they are helping to build a better future for their children.

After completing the structures that are the schools, 100 Schools also supplies materials for the schools to run- things such as books, uniforms, desks and blackboards. They even have a scholarship program for especially talented students.

Raising Money

Now of course the money for all this doesn’t grow on trees. I’m also not writing this to specifically ask you to donate a couple of dollars. I just want to point out that all of these schools have been paid for by generous donors from all over the world. With this blog post I just hope to give 100 Schools a little extra publicity and to share a little of what I’ve been involved with for the past few years, even though my involvement is on a relatively small scale.

If this endeavor interests you, have a look at the website (made by yours truly): 100schools.org
And while you’re at it, give 100 Schools a “like” on Facebook: fb.com/100schools