< 1 min read

I care more than you do: Trash-dwelling Burmese migrants are the casualties when various nonprofit organizations argue over turf.

"When he came to Thailand seven years ago, [Fred] Stockwell’s community-based organization, Eyes to Burma, was the only one serving the roughly 400 migrant squatters settled on the mountain of trash. Decades of strife in Myanmar had already made the border city a philanthropic boomtown, but only in the last few years has the city’s landfill caught the attention of the smattering of NGOs, community-based organizations, religious ministries, and volunteer teams who come bearing rice, shoes, toys and, of course, their own cameras.... The result has been, at best, redundancy and inefficiency. Rather than moving forward, the villagers treat the endless parade of startup projects, mission teams, and well-meaning teenagers as a kind of consumable resource that allows them to remain on the trash." -- Jared Downing, Slate.com


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *