Care for peace: It was a humble quid-pro-quo idea that couldn’t fail … or could it?
The idea was that our Marin-based nonprofit, aptly named Care for Peace, would help the underserved villagers in one rural township in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) build, manage and operate their own sustainable health center.
Our grand vision was, and still is, that there is a direct correlation between providing “care” through public health, education and economic development services to the underserved people of the world, and the “peace” desired by government and the people.
The Care for Peace mission got off to a great start five years ago when we selected a remote township to build our first solar-powered health center that now awaits telecom and televideo connectivity to medical facilities in Myanmar and the Center for Telehealth at the University of Virginia in the United States.
Our agreement with the Union government is that, once completed, the tele-connected health center will be replicated in at least 250 rural townships nationwide.
Until earlier this year, everything went along according to plan when it became apparent that our development mission needed to be set aside in favor of helping the government address the horrific Rohingya refugee crisis of some 1.2 million destitute refugees who are currently overflowing Myanmar into Bangladesh.
In 2012, we met with the newly-assigned U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar, the World Food Programme country director and resident representative, and the World Bank country manager, among others, all of whom were very positive about our desire to help build Myanmar’s health care infrastructure in the rural areas where both care and peace are needed most.
However, we were also apprised of the cold truth that Myanmar is a failed nation trying to struggle back into the family of nations after a half century under a brutal totalitarian regime not that different from the conditions in North Korea.
We knew what we were getting into.
Today, in much the same way the first responders attacked the recent Santa Rosa wildfires, many international non-government emergency response organizations, like the International Rescue Committee, are doing everything in their power to help deal with the overwhelming Rohingya humanitarian emergency.
My thought is that while the Myanmar government and their international advisers develop a long-range strategy for a peaceful solution to the problem, and while the emergency crews eventually wind down their life-saving activities, many small interdisciplinary “Care Teams” comprised of Myanmar citizens should be employed to begin working with Rohingya families for as long as it takes to ensure each Rohingya person is able to pursue the same opportunities as everyone else in a truly free democratic society.
If invited, Care for Peace is prepared to amend its long-term health center development mission, to continue working with our dear friends at all levels of government and field in Myanmar, and to help create, train and manage the care teams and their partner Rohingya families.
I wouldn’t be so optimistic during this dark time in Myanmar had I not come to the scene with a vision that “care for peace” is the antidote to “killing for peace” wherever human-inflicted pain and suffering occurs in the world.
Myanmar’s drive towards democratization could crumble under the weight of its Rohingya problems.
Even if that happens I truly believe that “care for peace” will long endure, even if Care for Peace does not.