http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/nyregion/schools-eliminating-librarians-as-budgets-shrink.html

This article in today’s New York Times gets right to the point. Not only are Myanmar’s libraries in trouble, consider this little essay on the state of Boise High’s library! http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/opinion/05doerr.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

The London International Doc Film Festival will be screening of ‘Nargis – when time stopped breathing’ at 6 p.m. at the Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London, United Kingdom, WC1H 0PD on Saturday 21 May.  http://www.lidf.co.uk/film/nargis/ Synopsis: In May 2008 a cyclone called Nargis raged for hours in Myanmars Ayeyarwaddy Delta, killing 140,000 people. Two Burmese filmmakers couldn’t remain silent and felt compelled to go to the delta and record the devastation. Seven days after the storm, they made their way to scenes [...]

Peace and Hope Begin With Education: One Child At A Time Central Asia Institute is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with the mission to promote and support community-based education, especially for girls, in remote regions of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. CAI ‘s home page begins with this mission statement. Our project got underway in September 2008, eight years after CAI was launched. Some have compared our work, although the CAI has enjoyed enormous financial success thanks to its co-founder, Greg Mortenson. His [...]

With no fanfare our NLR/MBAPF project became the model for Myanmar’s national program to sustain rural libraries. MYANMAR TIMES By Sandar Lwin March 7 – 13,, 2011 NEW LIBRARY CARDS MAKE HAPPY KIDS THE task facing administrators and backers of rural libraries is immense. While lack of funding means many are under-resourced, a greater challenge, experts say, is simply getting people to pick up a book. “Rural society has basically been divorced from reading for a century. We have only [...]

  Report by our ad-hoc committee:  John Badgley, Roger Paget, and Jack Simpson, with appended comment by Dave Richards WE ARE A UNIQUE ORGANIZATION – AN ACCOMPLISHMENT IN ITSELF NLR’s greatest achievement may be simply “opening up” Myanmar to more involvement, showing that even with sanctions and the bad feeling between the US and Myanmar, a small lightly funded organization from the US can make a big difference. Our opinion is supported by these facts: We have developed constructive relationships [...]

Dear Bill, First of all your thoughts are very valuable.  I really want to know how you evaluated Myanmar’s current library development and what suggestions you have for the future.  These are the seeds and the plants can not come out without the seeds.  What follows is information for you as we did not have time for discussion during the trip. Partnership Concerning  our partnership, I would like to describe my role.  UNWG, Vienna, is not a partner with NLR [...]