Humanitarian Relief

Our goal is to ensure communities are resilient to disasters and able to access humanitarian relief 

Following the devastating military coup in Myanmar in February 2021, which has brought untold brutal violence across the country, we had to immediately re-prioritise our work launching our relief work in direct response to the humanitarian crisis. We had to evacuate our teams for security purposes but our humanitarian response in Myanmar continues through a network  of partners in Myanmar.

New Dawn Project

The New Dawn project was established to meet the desperate need of Myanmar nationals fleeing the violence perpetrated by the military. This project not only provides immediate relief but also offers hope for a brighter future, empowering individuals to rebuild their lives and contribute to community resilience.  With continued support and compassion, our teams are striving to make a positive and lasting impact on the lives of those affected by the crisis, bringing forth a new dawn of hope and resilience.

Working across 20 villages, the support provided through New Dawn includes:

  • Shelter and essential household grants including building materials, mosquito nets, bedding and cooking equipment, typically to provide accommodation for a household.
  • Food, health and hygiene grants to support vulnerable and marginalised groups, and to relieve the short-term burden on local communities. The food grants typically provided a food parcel with enough for one month including rice, daal, oil, salt and sugar. 
  • Health and hygiene grants include items such as soap, washing powder, sanitary products, toothbrushes and toothpaste.
  • Medical assistance to those suffering from sickness or injury. This ranges from simple medication for common illnesses and injury through to the treatment of complex conditions requiring referral for hospital admission.
  • Promoting independent living through small livelihood start-up grants. This is a vital part of helping families develop their own income again, increase self-sufficiency and resilience. These grants enable the purchase of small livestock (e.g., chickens and pigs), provision of tools or equipment to help skilled workers (e.g., sewing machines, carpentry tools) or seeds and other items to enable small-scale farming (e.g., ginger or chillies farming).
  • Education support – refugee children have been granted permission to attend local schools, but many have been prevented from accessing this due to a lack of money for uniforms, stationery and books. We identify children unable to access school because of this and are provided with materials to enable them to attend school.

Thanks to generous support from our donors, to date, we have distributed nearly 70,000 grants to refugees caught up in the ongoing conflict following the military coup.

Will you join us and stand together with the people of Myanmar? Your support will have a direct impact on thousands of lives affected by the conflict and give young people a future and a hope.

 

Food Banks

To address the issue of food insecurity, Health & Hope established the Food Banks Project in 2023. The project aims to enhance food access and availability to Myanmar refugees. Now that the crisis in Myanmar is nearly into its fourth year, the project seeks to address the problem of overreliance on dwindling external food aid support by transitioning to a more sustainable food access solution at affordable subsidised rates through food banks serving displaced people. Currently we are operating six food banks. Our aim is to establish 20.

The project will help reduce malnutrition, which is evident in communities without food banks based on surveys (March 2024). Our surveys of children under 5 years of age indicate lower levels of malnutrition in those areas where our food banks are in operation. Maintaining the operation of these food banks is therefore critical for those communities.

The food banks stock food, using revolving funds, that refugee households earning some income from informal agriculture based work and daily labour, can purchase. The food banks also provide food aid/grants to targeted, more vulnerable refugee groups unable to purchase food.

Since we established the food banks, more than 2,000 people have been supported. With your support we can reach more people in desperate need.