Suzanne and Ruth are joined by Amanda, the executive director of Zee Kwat Academy. When the coup broke out in February 2021, Amanda was a final year university student who was one semester away from graduating. Like so many young people in Myanmar, Amanda’s education had already been disrupted due to Covid-19 but the coup completely robbed her and many other students across Myanmar of their future. In September 2020 Amanda began working at Thate Pan Hub which is a youth-led non-profit social enterprise making computer science education accessible for everyone. So when the military took over the country, Amanda and other students saw no future under a military education and decided to fight back in their own way by setting up an alternative education system. They set up Zee Kwat Academy, (a branch of Thate Pan Hub) which is a non-profit social enterprise, dedicated to providing free formal education using modern methods to children from a diverse array of backgrounds. Now with over 250 students enrolled and 160 working members, Zee Kwat Academy is offering free quality education to students across Myanmar to combat disruption caused by the current crisis. Here Amanda talks about the motivation behind setting up Zee Kwat Academy, the vision and aims of the academy, as well as the challenges they face operating an online school in Myanmar under a military dictatorship.

The ah nah: Conversations with Myanmar podcast was born from a desire to bring into public consciousness the atrocities that are currently being committed in Myanmar (also known as Burma). Our goal is simply to keep the conversation going, and to let the people of Myanmar know that they have not been forgotten. You can continue to support the people of Myanmar by keeping this conversation going. You can subscribe to this podcast on all major podcasting apps, including Apple, Spotify and Acast. You can also follow us on all our social media pages, linked below. If you’d like to reach out, please email us or fill out this form to add your voice to the conversation (https://tinyurl.com/3ee7ssm9).

Credits:

Song: Kabar Makyay Bu (Until the End of the World), was written and recorded by Naing Myanmar, it became the revolutionary anthem of the 1988 pro-democracy movement and could be heard once again all over Myanmar during the 2021 Coup. Naing Myanmar maintains that the song is no longer his, since the '88 uprising “it belongs to everyone”.

Graphics: SelinaXin

Sound Effects: https://mixkit.co

*Special thanks to Amanda and the entire team at Zee Kwat Academy who dedicate their time to help others and continue to be fantastic ambassadors for the empowering force education can be in this world. We are so grateful to Amanda for adding her voice to the conversation. To find out more about Zee Kwat Academy check out the linktree in out biosite: https://bio.site/w3VjcD

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