Friday, March 25, 2011
Q&A
It's in the water, food, soil: But what are the risks?
By MIZUHO AOKI and JUN HONGO
Staff writers
Radioactive materials from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant have been spreading, contaminating milk, vegetables, water and soil in Fukushima and neighboring prefectures.
On Wednesday, 210 becquerels of iodine-131 per liter of water, more than double the government-set safety level of 100 for infants, were detected in water at a purification plant in Tokyo, and 163,000 becquerels of cesium-137 per kg were detected in soil in Fukushima.
Following are questions and answers about the effects of radioactive materials, including iodine-131 and cesium-137, that have been detected in food, water and soil.
How does iodine-131 affect human health?
Once ingested, about 30 percent of iodine-131 concentrates in the thyroid gland, increasing the risk of thyroid cancer, according to Kunikazu Noguchi, a lecturer specializing in radiation safety at Nihon University School of Dentistry.
"The thyroid gland collects iodine to produce hormones. So once a body takes in iodine, the organ collects it, resulting in high concentrations of the radioactive iodine in the thyroid," explained Noguchi.
Iodine was blamed for cancer cases following the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Will that happen in Japan?
Apart from the difference in the amount of radiation leakage in the two cases, Japanese in general consume more foods rich in iodine, including fish and seaweed, than the people around Chernobyl. Some believe as a result the presence of more nonradioactive iodide in their thyroids will reduce the intake and accumulation of toxic iodine.
Iodine not accumulated in the thyroid tends to pass into the bloodstream and is expelled in urine, Noguchi said.
What about cesium-137?
Unlike iodine-131, radioactive cesium does not concentrate in a specific organ, experts say.
It spreads almost equally, but mostly in soft tissue, such as muscles, Noguchi said. But people need to bear in mind that the half-life of cesium-137 is much longer than iodine-131.
What is a half-life?
A half-life is the time it takes for the radioactivity of a specific substance to decrease by half. Iodine-131's half-life is about eight days, while the half-life of cesium-137 is about 30 years.
After 16 days, iodine-131 has decayed to about a quarter of its original level. Within about 90 days, it is effectively harmless, according to Noguchi.
Cesium-137, on the other hand, sticks around for about 300 years, he said.
Because soil contaminated with cesium-137 continues to emit radiation for hundreds of years, it's important for the government to analyze the soil around the power plant and inform the public of the levels, Noguchi said.
Is there any way to remove radioactive iodine and cesium from foods?
Although complete removal is difficult, rinsing food with water removes radioactive substances from the surface.
"Think of it like a stain. It's better to use boiling water rather than just water. And it's even better if you use detergent, although it's not an option," Noguchi said.
Is it safe to shower or wash your hands with the contaminated water detected in Tokyo and Fukushima?
There is no problem using the water to shower or for other daily uses, such as laundry, according to the health ministry.
But it's best to avoid soaking open wounds in the water because radiation can be more easily absorbed into the body through cuts, according to Noguchi.
Can iodine-131 be removed from water and air?
At its water purification plants, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has opted to use activated carbon, which reacts with iodine-131 and, to an extent, absorbs it.
By the same token, household water purifiers that use activated carbon can filter out some radioactive iodine.
Boiling tap water can also be somewhat effective, a team of radiology experts at the University of Tokyo said via Twitter after the news of the contamination broke.
It's harder to remove iodine from the air, according to a spokesman for Shinwa Corp., which provides air filters to nuclear power plants. Their machines use special carbon sheets infused with iodide to extract radioactive iodine from the air.
Purchasing one for home use is not practical because each machine weighs a couple of tons and costs "probably about the price of the house itself," the spokesman said.
The spokesman also said Tokyo Electric Power Co. has asked Shinwa to keep some in stock as they may be needed.
Does iodine-131 have any medical uses?
According to the U.S. Environment Protection Agency, because radioactive iodine is taken up by the thyroid so readily, it can in some cases be given to patients with thyroid problems to aid doctors in making a diagnosis.
How can I know if I've been exposed to iodine-131?
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, some major medical centers are equipped to test for exposure.
But the Japan Radiological Society says those residing far from the Fukushima power plant don't need to take the test since even people evacuated from the vicinity haven't shown signs of serious exposure.
Why are children more vulnerable to iodine-131?
Preschoolers are about two to three times more likely to be affected by exposure to radiation than adults, according to the Japan Radiological Society.
This is because children's thyroids are smaller, explained Noguchi of Nihon University. A Japanese adult's thyroid weighs on average about 18 grams, whereas an infant's is about 1.8 grams, and a 1- or 2-year-old's is about 2.6 grams, he said.
Experts also point out that cell division is more active in children than adults.
But the special steps taken with children are only precautionary "just as every child needs extra care regarding any other issue," the society said.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
It's in the water, food, soil: But what are the risks?
Friday, February 25, 2011
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Myanmar builds over 8,000 more basic education schools for past 20 years
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90781/90879/6620444.html
Myanmar built 8,748 basic education schools for the past 20 years, bringing the total to 38,162 as of 2008 since 1988, according to the latest official progress-indicating figures published in Monday's New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
These basic education schools include primary, middle and high schools, of which the primary schools stood the most with 31,329 and schools with multi-media classrooms being 1,829.
A total of 20 teacher ship education colleges were introduced over the two decades.
Relating to higher education, 17 university colleges were built over the period, bringing the total to 44 in 2008.
Other figures revealed that the number of teachers and students went to over 260,000 and 8.83 million respectively as of 2008.
With regard to science and technology education, 30 technological universities, 4 such colleges and 26 universities of computer studies were constructed with one each of Aerospace Engineering University and maritime university added over the period.
Meanwhile, Myanmar has been striving for the increase of the country's adult literacy rate annually with the figures attaining 94.83 percent in 2008, up from 83 percent in 1996.
The Ministry of Education, international agencies, governmental and non-governmental organizations, regional and local authorities and the communities reportedly made the efforts.
In the formal education sector, endeavors for 100 percent enrollment for all school age children and all students to complete basic education were exerted as a mass movement.
The education authorities urged more active participation in the literacy campaign to improve the education and socio-economic life of the people.
Moreover, Myanmar is also striving for the rural schools to keep pace with urban ones to reduce the development gap of education between the two areas.
Source: Xinhua
Friday, March 20, 2009
The Ambassador of Japan from Bangkok opened the mobile Burmese Migrant Learning Center
http://democracyforburma.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/the-ambassador-of-japan-from-bangkok-opened-the-mobile-burmese-migrant-learning-center/
On March 16th His Excellency Kyoji Komachi, Ambassador of Japan to the Kingdom of Thailand attended the opening ceremony of Burmese Migrant mobile Learning Center which he officially opened that afternoon by cutting the ribbon.
This learning center, located in Tit Tit rubber plantation of Takua Hton District of Phang Nga Province in Southern Thailand, was established by Grassroots-HRE and has been financially supported by the Embassy of Japan in Bangkok, Thailand. The Ambassador of Japan said during a speech made at the ceremony that “I’m very proud to have the opportunity to attend the opening ceremony of this learning center as the Ambassador of Japan. Unfortunately, many children living in these communities are not receiving even a basic education and health service. I’m very glad to support the Learning Centers for the children’s education in this remote region.”
Mr. Kraisak Choonhavan, Chairman of Grassroots-HRE said during his speech speech that “In Thailand, the only Burmese director of a legally recognized Thai foundation is Htoo Chit and he is working together with Thai, Burmese, Mon, Rakaing, Karen, Tavoy, Karenni and many other foreign staff in order to help the Burmese Migrant community. I thank the Japanese Embassy so much for the financial support of our Learning Centers and also I thank the Thai Land owner for giving us the land on which to build the Learning Center”.
Phi Chindaphon, the Thai Land owner, said “I’m very happy to see the learning center for Burmese Children on my land. I’m ready to donate more of my land if necessary to build another”.
Furthermore, Director Mr. Htoo Chit said “Education is very important for our Burmese people. The important thing is that we can open the learning centers with the help of Thai people. We can’t survive without the help of Thais. That’s why I would like to request to the parents to be with disciplined and respect Thai Law”.
This Learning Center opening ceremony was attended by The Ambassador of Japan to the Kingdom of Thailand, Mr. Kraisak, Chairman of GHRE, Mrs. Charida Tajalang Sak, a board member of GHRE, The Local governor of Takua Hton district and other local authorities.
The opening ceremony represented the opening ceremony for 4 learning centers, all located in remote areas, which are supported by the Japanese Embassy under the mobile education program. Before getting the support from the Japanese Embassy for these 4 Learning centers, the so called mobile education program was run by GHRE staff and teachers who went to teach the children in those remote areas every weekend. Often, teaching was done under the shade of a tree.
Up till now GHRE has built 4 learning centers in these remote areas with 150 students attending there in regularly.
Grassroots http://www.ghre.org/en/
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Off to help kids in Burma
Bon voyage: Katie Andersen and Angela Colson left for Burma yesterday to begin improving the quality of early childhood education. Picture: Helen Nezdropa.
http://stgeorge.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/off-to-help-kids-in-burma/1457833.aspx
BY ALICIA WOOD
12/03/2009 5:08:00 PM
REBUILDING a community after a natural disaster is no easy task. Gymea businesswoman Angela Colson said Burmese residents are still reeling from Cyclone Nargis that devastated the region in May last year.
Ms Colson has worked with the Burmese community for five years, and co-ordinated an emergency relief collection after the cyclone struck.
She travelled on March 4 back to the cyclone-ravaged region with her friend, Katie Andersen, to help improve the quality of early childhood education.
Ms Andersen, an early childhood educator, and Ms Colson will meet with staff from orphanages and day-care centres to assess their level of training. "We want it to be a collaborative effort,'' Ms Colson said.
"We are hoping to create a program that empowers them to use their existing knowledge in an educational way,'' Ms Andersen said.
After the 10-day trip, the pair plan to return to Australia to create a training program for staff in orphanages and day- care centres. They will then travel back to Burma to work with staff to develop it, with their goal being an overall improvement in the quality of education for young children.
"The context is very complicated politically, and we are hearing there is an ongoing need, and ongoing health concerns, but we are just working in small areas and doing what we can,'' Ms Colson said.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
ျမန္မာစာ ျမန္မာစကားနဲ ့ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အျမင္(2)
Re: [freeburma] Re: ျမန္မာစာ ျမန္မာစကားနဲ ့ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အျမင္-RE: [8888peoplepower] to Ko Nyo Ohn Myint-Crying for PoliciesTuesday, 2 December, 2008 21:38
From: "phone hlaing"
(၁) အဂၤလိပ္စာကို လူတိုင္းေတာ္ေအာင္လုပ္သင့္ပါတယ္။
(၂)အဂၤလိပ္လိုအားနဲတဲ့ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားေတြကို မိမိတို ့သိတာတတ္တာေတြေဝမ်ွေပးဖို ့အတြက္ေတာ့ျမန္မာစာနဲ ့ေရးသားတင္ျပဖို ့လိုမယ္လို ့ထင္ပါတယ္။
ဘာျဖစ္လို ့လဲဆိုေတာ့လူေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားကအဂၤလိပ္လိုအားနဲႀကေတာ့အဂၤလိပ္လို ေခါင္းစဥ္ေတြ ့တာနဲ ့ကိုဆက္ျပီးမဖတ္ႀကေတာ့ဘူးလို ့ေျပာႀကပါတယ္။က်ြန္ေတာ့္အျမင္ကေတာ့မတတ္ရင္လဲအဂၤလိပ္လိုေရးထားတဲ့ေဆာင္းပါးသတင္းကိုႀကိဳးစားျပီး အဘိဓာန္ေဘးခ်ျပီးဖတ္ႀကည့္ေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။အဂၤလိပ္စာမ်ားမ်ားတတ္ေလ ကိုယ့္ရဲ့အသိဥာဏ္နယ္ပယ္ကပိုက်ယ္ျပန္ ့လာေလျဖစ္မွာပါႀကိဳးစားႀကည့္ႀကေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။ေအာက္မွာေရးထားတဲ့စာစုေလးေတြကကိုယ္ဘာသာစာေပကိုေလးစားဖို ့ထိန္းသိမ္းဖို ့ရည္ရြယ္ပါတယ္။အဂၤလိပ္စာကိုပစ္ပယ္ဖို ့မရည္ရြယ္ပါဘူး။က်ြန္ေတာ္ကိုယ္တိုင္လဲအျမဲတန္းေလ့လာသင္ယူေနပါတယ္။
ေလးစားစြာျဖင့္-
ဘုန္းလိႈင္
- On Tue, 2/12/08, BNyein@aol.com
From: BNyein@aol.com
Subject: [freeburma] Re: ျမန္မာစာ ျမန္မာစကားနဲ ့ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အျမင္-RE: [8888peoplepower] to Ko Nyo Ohn Myint-Crying for Policies
To: MAYKHA-L@listserv. indiana.edu, WorldwideBurmanet@ yahoogroups. ca, freeburma@yahoogrou ps.com, Democracy_forBurma@ yahoogroups. com.au, 8888peoplepower@ yahoogroups. com
Date: Tuesday, 2 December, 2008, 7:25 PM
အဂၤလိပ္လား၊ ဗမာလား မိတ္ေဆြတို႕ေရ အဂၤလိပ္က ုအထင္ႀကီးတာနဲ႕အဂၤလိပ္စာကိုေလ႕လာျပီးကြ်မ္းက်င္ေအာင္ေလ႕က်င္႕တာကိုခြဲျမင္ေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ္႕ကိုႀကိဳက္သလိုေ၀ဖန္လို႕ရတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႕ႏိုင္ငံကိုကြ်န္လုပ္ခဲ႕တဲ႕ေမ်ာက္ျဖဴေတြကို အခုထိမုန္းတယ္။ စိတ္Bွိတိုင္းသာျဖစ္မယ္ဆိုရင္အဲလီစဖက္ဘုရင္မႀကီးကိုကတံုး၊တံုးျပီးမႏၱေလးကနနးး္ေတာ္ေရွ႕မွာလက္်ာရစ္ပတ္ေစျပီးႀကိမ္နဲ႕ရိုက္လိုစိတ္ရွိတာေပါ႕။ဆရာစံ ကိုသတ္ခဲ႕တာေတြ၊ဒဂံုျမိဳ႕ကို၊ကိုမိုဒိုလမ္ဘဒ္စစ္သေဘၤာနဲ႕လာလူပါး၀သြားတာေတြအ မ်ားႀကီB 8ပါ။ကမၻာမေႀကစတန္းေပါ႕။(ဘာေႀကာင္႕စစ္တပ္ရဲ႕ျပစ္မွုုေတြေႀကာင္႕တိုင္းရင္းသားေတြဗမာဆိုရင္မုန္းႀကတာလဲဆိုတာကိုလဲနားလည္ႏိုင္စရာေပါ႕) ဒါေပမဲ႕အမ်ိဳးသားစိတ္ကိုထိပ္တန္းတင္ျပီး၊ကိုယ္႕စကားAကိုယ္စာေပကိုဘဲဦးစားေပးမယ္ဆိုခဲ႕တဲ႕ႏိုင္ငံေတြကိုႀကည္႕ႀကရေအာင္။ ေ၀းေ၀းႀကည္႕စရာမလိုပါ။ ထိုင္း၊ဂ်ပန္နဲ႕တရုတ္ႏိုင္ငံေတြဟာအ၈ၤလိပ္စာကိုဦးစားမေပးခဲ႕ႀက ဖူး။ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံဟာတႏွစ္ကို(၁၆)ဘီလ်ံခန္႕တိုရစ္ေတြစီက၀င္ေငြ ရွိတယ္။ ႏွစ္ေပါင္း(၂၀)ခန္႕ ႀကာတာေတာင္တႏိုင္ငံလံုးအေနအထားနဲ႕ေျပာရရင္အဂၤလိပ္စကားေျပာမွာခိ်ဳ႕တဲ႕တယ္လို႕ ေျပာလို႕ရႏိုင္တယ္ေပါ႕။က်ေနာ္အျမင္အရထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံမွာလူမ်ိဳးေရးစိတ္ျပင္းတယ္။ (ခြန္ထိုင္း)ဆို ျပီးဂုဏ္ယူႀကတယ္။ထိုင္းစာကိုအ ေလးေပးတာေတြ႕ရတယ္။ က်ေနာ္အေတြ႕အႀကံဳအရဂ်ပန္ ေရာတရုတ္ျပည္မွာပါတက္စီသမားေတြအတြက္စာေရးေပးထားရတယ္။အဂၤလိပ္လိုေျပာမရ ေတာ႕အခက္အခဲရွိတယ္ေပါ႕။
--ဂ်ပန္ကတိုးတက္ျပီးႏိုင္ငံျဖစ္တာေႀကာင္႕တိုးတက္မွဳ အေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားကိုဘာသာျပန္ႏိုင္ေပမဲ႕ထိ0င္းႏိုင္ငံႀကေတာ႕အခက္အခဲရွိတယ္ေေပါ႕။ယေန႕လုိအင္တာ နက္ ေခတ္မွာအဂၤလိပ္ဘာသာဟာကမၻာ႕ဘာသာစကားျဖစ္လာေတာ႕အဂၤလိပ္လိုမကြ်မ္းရင္ ကိုယ္ကတဖန္းရွဳံးတာေပါ႕။ ကမၻာမွာဘာသာစကားနဲ႕ပတ္သက္လာရင္လူပါးအ၀ဆံုးကျပင္သစ္ေတြဘဲ။ခုထိယူအ9 4္မွာျပင္သစ္စကားကိုဦးစားေပးတံုးဘဲ။ပဲရီမွာအဂၤလိပ္လိုတတ္ေပမဲ႕ျပင္သစ္လိုမေေျပာရင္ျပန္မေျဖႀကဘူး။ ဒါေတာင္(၂)ႏွစ္ေလာက္ကဘရပ္(စ္)စယ္မွာျပင္သစ္စီအီး၀ိုကျပင္သစ္သမၼတအေရွ႕မွာ အ၈ၤလိပ္လိုမိန္႕ခြန္းေပးလို႕ပြက္ေလာရိုက္သြားခဲ႕တယ္။ အေျဖကအင္တာနက္ေခတ္မ=E 1ာ အဂၤလိပ္စကားဟာစီးပြားေရးသမားေတြရဲ႕ဘာသာစကားျဖစ္သြားျပီမို႕လို႕ေျဖခဲ႕တယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံတိုင္းတိုးတက္ဖို႕အတြက္အဂၤလိပ္စာကိုအျပိဳင္အဆိုင္သင္လာႀကရတယ္။ Native Speakerဆိုရင္အေရွ႕ေတာင္အာရွႏိုင္ငံေတြမွာအလုပ္လြယ္လြယB 9အဂၤလိပ္စာသင္ခြင္႕ရႀက တယ္။ ဗမာႏိုင္ငံမွာဦးေန၀င္းရဲ႕မဆလေခတ္ကစျပီးပညာေရးစံနစ္ႀကီးပ်က္စီးလာတာေတာင္ လမ္းေပၚကလူတေယာက္ဟာယူႏိုးအုိင္ႏိုးေတာ႕ေျပာႏိုင္ႀကတယ္။ အေမရိကႏိုင္ငံစီလီကြန္ဗယ္လီမွာကုလားေတြေအာင္ျမင္တာအသံထြ ္မွာကုလားသံနဲ႕ထြက္ေပမဲ႕ကုလားေတြဟာအဂၤလိပ္စာႏိုင္တာေႀကာင္႕တရုတ္ေတြထက္ေအာင္ျမင္ႀကတယ္။၁၉၅၀ခုႏွစ္ေတြကရန္ကုန္ေကာလိပ္မွာအဂၤလိပ္လိုစာပို႕ခ်တယ္။ဒါကြ်န္စိတ္မကုန္္လို႕လား၊မဟုတ္ ဖူး။အဆင့္ျမင္႕စာေတြ (Advance Learning) အတြက္ႀကေတာ႕အဂၤလိပ္လိုမ တတ္လို႕မွမရ ေတာ႕ဘဲ။အင္ဂ်င္နီယာ၊ဆရာ၀န္ေတြရဲ႕ျပထန္းစာအုပ္ေတြဟာအမ်ားအားျဖင္႕အဂၤလိပ္ လိုေေရးထားတဲ႕စာအုပ္ေတြဘဲမဟုတ္ဖူးလား။ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္းတို႕ေခတ္လူငယ္ေတြဟာအဂၤလိပ္ကိုုေေတာ္လွန္ႀကေပမဲဲ႕အဂၤလိပ္စာ ေတာ္ေအာင္2ကိဳးစားႀကတယ္။ဘာေႀကာင္႕လဲ။ အဂၤလိပ္ဘာသာကို Communications Tools ဆက္သြယ္ေရးလက္နက္အျဖစ္သံုးႏိုင္ေအာင္အဂၤလိပ္စာေတာ္ေအာင္ႀကိဳးစားႀကတယ္။ ေတာ္ခ်င္ရင္ဘယ္ဟာမဆုိေလ႕က်င္႕ရပါတယ္။ အခ်င္းခ်င္းေျပာတာေလ႕က်င္႕တာလို႕ယူဆ ႏိုင္ရင္အျမင္ႀကည္ႏိFင္မယ္လုိ႕ထင္ပါတယ္။ အဂၤလိပ္နဲ႕ဗမာစာေရးျခင္းဟာအေရွ႕နဲ႕အေနာက္ျဖစ္ေနတယ္။ အဂၤလိပ္က I Love You. ဗမာက - မင္းကိုငါခ်စ္တယ္။ မင္းနဲ႕ငါေနရာေျပာင္းျပန္ေပါ႕။ဒါေႀကာင္႕ဗမာလိုေတြးျပီးအဂၤလိပ္ လိုေရးရင္ခက္ေနတယ္။ ဒါေႀကာင္႕အက်င္႕မရွိဘဲ9လြယ္ကူလွပါ။ ဗမာစကားနဲ႕ဗမာစာဟာက်ေနာ္တို႕အတြက္သဘာ၀ Mother Tongue စကားပါ။ က်ေနာ္အစကစာရိုက္ရတာလြယ္လို႕အဂၤလိပ္လိုေရးတယ္။ လြန္ခဲ႕တဲ႕(၂) ႏွစ္ေလာက္ကဂ်ပန္ျပည္ေရာက္ေတာ႕မွအဂၤလိပ္လုိေရးရင္ဖတ္ႏိုင8 0တဲ႕သူနည္းတာေတြ႕ရ တာေႀကာင္႕ဗမာလို ေျပာင္း ေရးျဖစ္တယ္။ျပသနာကလက္ေရးနဲ႕ ခ်ေရးျပီးမွေနာက္ တေယာက္္ကဗမာလိုရိုက္ေပးရ တယ္။ညံ႕လွခ်ီလားဗ်ာဆိုရင္လဲခံရမွာဘဲေပါ႕။ အက်င္႕မရွိေတာ႕မကြ်မ္းဘူးေပါ႕။ တခ်ိဳ႕ကေတာ႕ယူႏိုးအုိင0ႏိုးေလးတတ္ရင္ဘဲအဟုတ္ႀကီးထင္ျပီးႀကြားခ်င္သူေတြရွိမွာပါ။ သည္ညည္းခံလိုက္ပါလို႕ေတာင္းပန္ပါရေစ။ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရာက္မွ ဗမာလိုမေျပာေတာ႕တဲ႕သူေတြလည္းေတြ႕ဖူးတာဘဲ။ တိုင္းျပည္နဲ႕လူမ်ိဳးကို ခ8 0စ္တဲ႕စိတ္ရွိရင္ဗမာစကားတြင္မကဗမာဆိုတာရင္ထဲမွာအျမဲရွိတာပါ။ ႏိုင္ငံျခားေရာက္မွွဗမာစိတ္ေပ်ာက္သြားသူေတြရွိသလိုဗမာစိတ္ျပင္းတဲ႕ကျပားေတြလဲအမ်ား ႀကးီဘဲ။ တခ်ိဳ႕တေလဘ၀ေမ႕တာနဲ႕အမ်ားကိုမထိခိုက္ေစခ်င္ပါ။ ေစတနာမွန္ေပမဲ႕အယူလြဲသြားျပီးအေတြးလြန္သြားႏိုင္တဲ႕အႏၱရာယ္ရွိပါတယ္။ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္တို႕ေခတ္ကလည္းေကာလိပ္ေက်ာင္းထြက္ေတြကရြွပ္ရွက္ဒြပ္ဒက္လုပ္ႀကေတာ႕ အဂၤလိပ္စာမတတ္တဲ႕သခင္ေတြကႀကည္႕မရျဖစ္ခဲ႕ဖူးပါတယ္။0D အတိုကေတာ႕အင္တာနက္ေခတ္ႀကီးမွာအဂၤလိပ္စာဟာအေရးႀကီးပါတယ္။ ဗမာလူငယ္ေလးေတြကမၻာမွာျပိဳင္ႏိုင္ေအာင္အဂၤလိပ္စာကြ်မ္းေစခ်င္တာက်ေေနာ္႕ေစတနာပါ။ ၀ိုင္းေလွာင္ႀကရင္၊ 8 0ေျပာ၊မေရး၊မက်င္႕ရင္၊ ကိုယ္ဘဲရွံဳးတာေပါ႕။ က်ေနာ္႕အျမင္ကိုအရိုးသားဆံုးတင္ျပတာပါ။ လက္ခံတာ၊လက္မခံတာ၊စာဖတ္သူအတြက္ပါ။ အားလံုးကိုေလးစားလ်က္ ဘိုေက်ာ္ျငိမ္း To Ko MZW and like-minded friends,You said most of you do not know even how to type Burmese. If you can't, learn how to type it since Burmese is your mother tongue or the country's central (official) language. Nowadays everyone is using and praising Zawgyi font (I don't use it. Even Win Myanmar is not working properly with Mac.), and there are many and all are not that difficult to learn.I have been learning English for more than four decades to improve my language skill and I never denounce English language itself, but what I am talking about is most of us think or believe if we write in English, oh, it gives us a sort of intelligentsia feelings or greatness. I said in my letter that English is only tool, but nothing more, to communicate with someone who could not speak Burmese or to learn knowledge through books and multi media.?As you have said, yes we have many ethnicities, but you must learn and master the first (official, central) language. You can even get better chance or opportunity finding jobs than Burmans if you excel in both languages. English as second official language doesn't mean instantly that English must be a medium of communication among the entire citizens.?Please change your mindset if you can. I am not a 'mahabamar type', but to compare with other ethnic languages, Myanmar/Burmese is well-developed language and it has rich literature both classic and modern. If you are an ethnic guy, you have to adapt it to reap all the benefit connecting with it. Myanmar/Burmese language is in fact in any sense no inferior to any language. If you agree or not, our religions (Buddhism, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim) have taught us to thank our benefactors. I guess you have acquired your basic or higher education from Myanmar/Burma. Your parents and your country of origin are true benefactors for you. No excuse will do replacing our main language.************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* *****8
-----Original Message-----
From: phonekyaw
To: 8888peoplepower@ yahoogroups. com
Sent: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 7:11 pm
Subject: Re: ျမန္မာစာ ျမန္မာစကား နဲ ့ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အျမင္-RE: [8888peoplepower] to Ko Nyo Ohn Myint-Crying for Policies
ေလးစားအပ္ပါေသာ ျမန္မာမိတ္ေဆြမ်ား-
နက္ေပၚတြင္ ျမန္လုိေရးတက္၊ရုိက္တက္၊ ဖက္တက္ေစရန္ ရည္ဇူး၍ လင့္ခ္ တခုေပးလုိက္ပါသ ္။
http://blog. mghla.com/ 2007/07/blog- post_31.html
8888peoplepower တြင္ ပါ၀င္ေသာ members အားလုံးတုိ႔မွာ English စာမတက္သူမ်ား အျမားအျပား ပါ၀င္သျဖင့္၊ မိမိေဆြးေႏြးလုိေသာ အေၾကာင္းအရာမ်ားကုိ ျမန္မာလုိ ေရးႏုိင္လွ်င္ ပုိမုိအဆင္ေျပႏုိင္ပါသည္။ အထက္လင္ခ္တြင္ ပါရွိေသာ Instruction ကုိ Follow လုပ္ပါက မိမိကြန္ျပဴတာတြင္ ျ9 9န္မာလုိေကာင္းေကာင္းရုိက္ႏုိင္ပါေၾကာင္း....
အားလုံးခ်မ္းေျမ႕ပါေစ
ဘုန္ေက်ာ္(လူ႔ေဘာင္သစ္)
--- On Mon, 12/1/08, hein naing
From: hein naing
Subject: Re: ျမန္မာစာ ျမန္မာစကားနဲ ့ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အျမင္-RE: [8888peoplepower] to Ko Nyo Ohn Myint-Crying for Policies Reform
To: 8888peoplepower@ yahoogroups. com
Date: Monday,20December 1, 2008, 10:10 AM
သူမ်ားေျပာျပလို႕ၾကားဘူးတဲ႕အေျခအေနေလးေျပာျပတာပါ။ အဲဒါကေတာ႕က်ေနာ္တို႕ေတာ္လွန္ေရးအင္အားစုေတြထဲမွာပါပဲ။ အဂၤလိပ္တပိ0င္းျမန္မာတပိုင္းေျပာေျပာလာေတာ႕ၾကားေနရသူကေနျပီးျပန္ေမးသတဲ႕၊ မင္းတို႕က ေတာ္လွန္ေရးေအာင္ျပီးလို႕ တိုင္းျပည္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ရရင္။ တို႕တိုင္းျပည္ရဲ႕ ရုးံသုးံဘာသာကို အဂၤလိပ္ဘာသာကိုျပဌာန္းမွာလားလို႕ ေမးသတဲ႕၊၊ က်န္တာေတာ႕ မိမိကိုယ္မိမိျပန္ေမးျပီး၊ ျပန္ေျဖၾကည္႕ေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ္ကအဂၤလိပ္စာ မတတ္ေတာ႕ အဲဒီေမးခြန္းေလး သေဘာက်လို႕ လက္ဆင္႕ကမ္းလိုက္တာပါ၊ ၾကည္ၾကည္လင္လင္ျမင္ႏိုင္ပါေစ။ ဟိန္းႏိုင္
--- On Mon, 12/1/08, phone hlaing
From: phone hlaing
Subject: ျမန္မာစာ ျမန္မာစကားနဲ ့ကၽြန္ေတာ့္အျမင္-RE: [8888peoplepower] to Ko Nyo Ohn Myint-Crying for Policies Reform
To: 8888peoplepower@ yahoogroups. com
Date: Monday, December 1, 2008, 3:23 AM
ကၽြန္ေတာ္ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းျမန္မာဘေလာက္ကိုလုပ္ျပီး ပို ့စ္ေတြစတင္ကာစကမိတ္ေဆြေတြကဝိုင္းေျပာႀကပါတယ္ ျဖ0္နိုင္ရင္ ျမန္မာလိုဘာသာျပန္ျပီးတင္ေပးဖို ့ေျပာႀကပါတယ္။သတင္းကေတာ့အဂၤလိပ္သတင္းေတြမ်ားလို ့အခ်ိန္မေပးနိုင္လို ့အဂၤလိပ္လိုတင္ေပမဲ့အားလုံးအတြက္ေကာင္းမယ္ထင္တဲ့ျမန္မာေဆာင္းပါးေတြကို ျမန္မာတိုင္းဖတ္နိုင္ေအာင္ျမန္မာလိုဘဲ ရိုက္တ င္ေနပါတယ္။ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့ရဲ့မိခင္ဘာသာစကားကျမန္မာစာဆိုေတာ့ျမန္မာစကားနဲ ့ျမန္မာလို ေျပာတာေဆြးေႏြးတာကပိုျပီးနားလည္မႈရိွနိုင္မယ္ထင္ပါတယ္ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့သမဂၢမွာ ဂ်ပန္ေတြနဲ ့ေဆြးေႏြးရင္ဂ်ပန္လိုေျပာပါတယ္၊အေမရိကနဲ ့ဥေရာပကပဂိၢဳလ္ေတြနဲ E1ေဆြးေႏြးရင္ အဂၤလိပ္လိုေျပာပါတယ္။ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးျခင္းကေတာ့ျမန္မာလိုဘဲေျပာပါတယ္။ အသိပညာအတတ္ပညာဆိုတာ ဖေယာင္းတိုင္မီးကူးသလိုမ်ိဳးမွ်ေဝေပးႀကရတာဆိုေတာ့ ကိုယ့္နိုင္ငံအေႀကာင္းေဆြးေႏြးတာေကာင္းပါတယ္၊ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးတိုင္းကို မ်ွေဝေပးနိ=E 1င္ေအာင္ ျမန္မာလို ေဆြးေႏြးေရးသားႀကရင္ေတာ့အေကာင္းဆုံးလို ့ယူဆပါတယ္။ဥပမာေျပာရရင္ တရုတ္လူမ်ိဳးေတြဟာဘယ္ေနရာဘယ္ေဒသမွာဘဲအေျခခ်ခ် သူတို ့ရဲ့မိခင္ဘာသာစကားနဲ ့စာကိုတေလးတစားသင္ယူႀကပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့တေတြအေျခအေနအရပ္ရပ္ေႀကာင့္နိုင္ငံ ျခားေရာက္ေနႀကေပမဲ့ကိုယ့္လူမ်ိဳး ကိုယ့္စာေပ ကိုယ့္ဘာသာစကားကို မေမ ့သင့္ဘူးလို ့ထင္ပါတယ္။အေမရိကမွာအေျခက်ေနတဲ့(နိုင္ငံသားျဖစ္ေနတဲ့)ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ဆရာဆိုရင္သူ ့ကေလးနွစ္ေယာက္စလုံးကို ျမန္မာလိုသင္ေပးထားပါတယ္၊ ထိုင္းဝမ္းက ကၽြနေတာ့္သူငယ္ခ8 0င္းဆိုရင္ ျမန္မာျပည္ကျမန္မာစာေက်ာင္းသုံးစာအုပ္ေတြကို မွာယူျပီးကေလးေတြကိုစာသင္ေပးေနပါတယ္။သူတို ့တေတြဟာတရုတ္ႏြယ္ဖြားျမန္မာျပည္ေပါက္ေတြပါ။ ျမန္မာစာရိုက္ဖို ့အခက္အခဲရိွရင္ခြင့္လႊတ္ေပးလို ့ရပါတယ္။ဒါေပမဲ့ အဂၤလိပ္လိုေရးမွ ဂုဏ္ယူစ ာလို ့ယူဆမယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့မွားသြားနိုင္ပါတယ္။ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့ငယ္ငယ္တုံးက အိမ္မွာအဂၤလိပ္လိုေျပာႀကပါတယ္။အေဖကသားသမီးေတြအဂၤလိပ္စာေတာ္လာေအာင္လို ့ရည္ရြယ္တာပါ၊ အဲ့ဒီအခ်ိန္တုံးက ဂလိုဘယ္လိုက္ေဇးရွင္းဆိုတာေတြမရိွေသးပါဘူး၊ ဒါေပမဲ့အဖိုးက မ4္းတို ့ဘာလူမ်ိဳးလဲလို ့ေျပာပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာဆိုရင္ျမန္မာလိုေျပာဖို ့ေျပာလို ့အဲ့ဒီအခ်ိန္ကစျပီး ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို ့အိမ္မွာ မာမီေတြ ဒယ္ဒီေတြေဟာင္းဒူးယူဒူးေတြ ေပ်ာက္သြားပါေတာ့တယ္။ကိုယ္ပိုင္အယူအဆကိုယ္စီနဲ ့ေဆြးေႏြးေနႀကတာကိုေတြ ့ရေတာ့ဝမ္းလ=E 1ဝမ္းသာပါတယ္။ Transparency ရိွတယ္လို ့ထင္ပါတယ္။လူျခင္းမတူကဲြျပားတဲ့အတြက္ကိုယ္ပိုင္အယူအဆကိုယ္စီရိွႀကတာကို လက္ခံေပးနိုင္ပါတယ္ဒါမွလည္း တေယာက္နဲ ့တေယာက္ေဆြးေႏြးလို ့ရမွာ ဒီလိုေဆြးေႏြးျပီး အေကာင္းဆုံးအေျဖကိုရွာႀကရမွာမဟုတ္လား။အခုေရးထားတာေတြ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ရဲ့ကုိယ္ပိုင္အယူအဆပါ။ ဘယ္သူ ့ကိုမွလက္ခံပါလို ့မတိုက္တြန္းပါဘူး။ ကိုယ္ပိုင္စဥ္းစားဥာဏ္နဲ ့စဥ္းစားဆုံးျဖတ္ႀကပါ။ အားလုံးအမ်ားအက်ိဳး ကိုယ့္အက်ိဳးေဆာင္နိုင္ႀကပါေစဘုန္းလိႈင္
--- On Mon, 1/12/08, Ne Yaa Zaw
From: Ne Yaa Zaw
Subject: RE: [8888peoplepower] to Ko Nyo Ohn Myint-Crying f or Policies Reform
To: 8888peoplepower@ yahoogroups. com
Date: Monday, 1 December, 2008, 3:29 AM
Ko nyunt shwe
Most of us don’t know how to type in Burmese; and some of us don’t even apply for citizenship, and also I don’t think using English language to dialogue the Burmese politic is wrong, who care what they think of us. Beside, multi ethnic nation like Burma , English should be second official language, its nothing to do with stepfather’ language or not because English’ is the language accumulate all knowledge around the world. Take care,
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: 8888peoplepower@ yahoogroups. com
From: nyuntshwe@hotmail. com
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 01:40:43 +0000
Subject: RE: [8888peoplepower] to Ko Nyo Ohn Myint-Crying for Policies Reform
You may open the attached pdf-file to read the same message.
&J&JawmufjrefrmrdwfaqGrsm; cifAsm;?
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Mobile school for Myanmar kids
Safe school: The cabin that will be converted into a school for Myanmar’s cyclone victims.
http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file=/2008/11/15/central/2500806&sec=central
Story and photos by STUART MICHAEL
A Malaysian company that makes portable cabins has stepped forward to give child survivors of Myanmar’s Cyclone Nargis a chance for formal learning again.
As part of its commitment to education for children, VBM Distributors Sdn Bhd has donated an Expandable Mobile School (EMS) unit worth RM222,500 to Unicef recently.
The donation is in support of Unicef’s efforts to create child-friendly spaces that can serve as a makeshift school for children affected by the devastating cyclone which hit Myanmar in May this year.
Unicef Malaysia Advocacy and Policy specialist Dr Rudi Luchmann said reopening the damaged schools could do more harm than good to the children.
“This is why Unicef welcomes VBM Distributor’s mobile school unit.
“If these children can’t come to the school, we plan on taking the school to the students. This gift offers children who have suffered so much a safe environment to learn and play.”
“The devastation of Nargis has left so many children physically and emotionally traumatised by what has happened.
“Going back to school is therefore a crucial part of their recovery process because it helps them establish a sense of normality and support, while at the same time assists them in overcoming their distress.
It’s official: Mohd Yusof (second from right) presenting a mock key for the cabin to Hishammuddin (right). Looking on are (from left) VBM Distributors managing director Lam Kay Wah and Dr Rudi Luchmann.
“Most importantly, schools allow children to just be children again,” added Dr Luchmann.
Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein launched the event.
VBM Distributors chairman Mohd Yusof Isa said the company wanted to work with an established and respected humanitarian agency skilled in providing education to children in difficult situations. Unicef’s 60 years of experience in emergency work speaks for itself.
The mobile school unit consists of a classroom which can fit up to 40 students, a canteen for safe preparation of food as well as separate toilets for boys and girls.
The unit can be expanded to form more classrooms if necessary.
The easy-to-set-up school is also fire and water resistant and includes safety features that protect against natural disasters such as earthquakes.
The unit will be transported to the Unicef office in Myanmar where the necessary arrangements for its setup will be made.
The school will complement a range of other services provided by Unicef to get children back to learning.
These include the distribution of over 230,000 essential learning packages to primary schoolchildren in 1,427 schools, installation of 435 safe temporary learning spaces benefiting 43,000 students and supporting the repair of 919 damaged schools in affected areas.
More than 18,500 children are also now benefiting from psycho- social activities in 104 Child Friendly Spaces.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Myanmar: Teachers and pupils struggle in temporary schools
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/LSGZ-7L5K9C?OpenDocument
YANGON, 6 November 2008 (IRIN) - Of the 4,000 schools damaged or destroyed when Cyclone Nargis hit the Ayeyarwady Delta in May, almost half have been restored.
However, according to Thierry Delbreuve, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Myanmar: "Schools are being rebuilt but there are still 2,500 schools which need particular attention.
"These are still temporary schools. They need to be adequately equipped and buildings need to be constructed as some extensive damage has been done," he said.
Scores of schools were left with unusable latrines, while others reported widespread loss of school furniture, teaching and learning materials.
But despite the physical damage many have resumed classes, bringing a much-needed sense of normalcy to thousands of children.
At the Pyi Thar Yar primary school in the Ayeyarwady Delta, 56 students continue to hold classes in a temporary shelter, covered with little more than tarpaulin sheeting, while others are slightly better off. The primary school in the village of Hmaw bi, about 2.4km from Pyapon and also in the delta, has been up and running since June despite the fact that its building collapsed.
Currently housed in a local monastery, the school accommodates close to 250 children up to grade five.
"Can you hear me? Read the sentence I have written on the blackboard," Aye Min Latt, a fourth-grade teacher instructs the pupils. "We need to shout very loud for them to hear us. We are tired, but the children are tired as well," the 29-year-old teacher said.
There is no space for tables and chairs for the teachers, forcing them to sit alongside the students on long wooden benches instead. The only table has been put aside for the headmaster.
But while there may not be much space, the school has furniture, blackboards, and textbooks and materials provided by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Gate Way and other private donors.
Hmaw bi primary school is just one of 2,038 schools (1,519 in Ayeyarwady and 519 in Yangon) receiving UNICEF support, comprising roofing sheets, furniture and textbooks.
"UNICEF is only one agency with limited resources and human capacity. Addressing other schools is done by the government and other organisations," UNICEF's Myanmar education chief, Niki Abrishamian, said.
Cyclone trauma continues
Meanwhile, as agencies address the physical needs of the schools, psychological problems also need to be addressed.
Scores of children were badly traumatised by the storm and continue to need psychosocial support.
Nay Lin Tun, a 10-year-old third grader in Hmaw bi, still misses friends who perished in the storm. "I'm not happy in the school like before because I miss my friends," he said.
"Sometimes I call out their names by mistake," Aye Min Latt admits. "I try not to mention their names in the class," she said.
Many of the children in her class have lost interest in their studies.
"I have to repeat things many times to make them understand. Sometimes they just look at me with empty eyes without listening to me," she said.
The teachers are not immune. "When I see windy and rainy weather, I simply stop," Aye Min Latt said.
To cope, UNICEF, with the Ministry of Education, has prepared thousands of handbooks - including tips for teachers to help children better cope with the effects of the cyclone - to be distributed soon.
According to experts, getting children back into the classroom is viewed as critical to the long-term recovery of the cyclone-affected area.
cm/ds/mw
[END]
Posts
