Creating Your Vision

What is your vision for the campus and/or community?

Our project was created to provide insecticide treated nets to locally run health organizations along the Thai-Burma border to prevent the spread of malaria in Eastern Burma. These nets will be distributed to groups of internally displaced people (IDPs) who have fled their homes within Burma and often lack access to proper health care and housing.

Burma has suffered under a brutal military regime for the last 20 years and the region of Eastern Burma has seen the most political conflict and violence. By addressing the issue of malaria, our vision is to strengthen the relationship between peace and health, as health correlates directly with human rights and humane treatment, especially in areas of armed conflict.

This vision attempts to use a grassroots up approach to social change by connecting local health care networks to larger international foundations. We will have two teams working towards our vision. One team, Anna Weaver and Andrew Tyner, will stay in the U.S. and manage non-profit logistics over the year. The second team, Stephanie Willette and Arianna Schindle, will work on the ground on the in Thai-Burma border facilitating the distribution of nets and the documentation process. Our vision is to help organizations like Nothing but Nets and Malaria No More, currently fighting malaria in Africa to realize that malaria in Burma is also an urgent public health crisis that must be addressed. We hope to ultimately convince them to extend their focus to Burma and put our project under their control. Thus, our immediate goals for both teams are to raise the initial funds and evaluation mechanisms needed to launch the project and then upon returning to the U.S. present this information to these organizations.

In order to complete this vision, our United States team hopes to raise enough money in one year to purchase 50,000 nets. The total amount of funds we will need to raise to reach this goal is $250,000. The team on the ground hopes to document the project and ensure its sustainability on the local level. Our emphasis throughout the documentation process will be to use technology such as digital photography and blogging, to help grassroots activists and malaria patients represent themselves on their own terms to larger organizations and the international community.

Assessing Your Campus and Community

What campus/community problem does your blueprint address? What structures, practices and policies institutionalize the problem?

Our project seeks to prevent the widespread contraction of malaria, which is the cause of 45% of all deaths of IDPs in Eastern Burma. This is equal to about 3,000 deaths per year, although these numbers are low estimates. Due to the brutal military regime that controls Burma, IDPs do not have access to health care because they are not considered to be citizens.

As a result of government policies, the majority of international organizations are prevented from entering Burma. The United Nations has been unable to intervene because of Burma’s sovereignty and its close economic ties to China. The necessity for local grassroots NGOs to be the primary means for humanitarian aid was highlighted recently by the Burmese government’s restrictions on international aid organizations following the disastrous effects of Cyclone Nargis.

What communities will you work with?

• Campus community
• Local community
• Statewide community
• Nationwide community

Setting Goals and Deliverables

• Goal 1: United States team fundraises to get $250,000.
• Become a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
• Establish a mechanism for transferring money from the United States to Thailand
• Create fundraising campaign
• Goal 2: Thai-Burma grounds team creates strong grassroots networks and educational materials to distribute 50,000 nets and thoroughly documents this process through personal stories and public health and NGO evaluation mechanisms.
• Develop institutional capacity of local NGOs to distribute nets
• Establish an evaluation mechanism to gauge project impact
• Write and submit final report for YP4 and Davis Peace Project, etc.
• Goal 3: United States team and grounds team consolidate information in the U.S. and meet with established malaria organization (such as Nothing But Nets and Malaria No More) to convince them to merge our project with their organizations.
• Establish early contacts with members of important organizations to inform them of our project vision and goal
• Maintain communication throughout year so they have an understanding of our level of commitment to this vision
• As year ends, approach organization(s) about using our established infrastructure to continue and enlarge project
• Merge with other Burma student groups in the United States to collaborate on the project

What is your primary approach? Network and Alliance Building

Why did you choose this approach?

We chose networking because we’ve established connections with grassroots groups who will administer the nets. Thus, our best role is to create sustainable financial and educational networks to support their efforts.

Did you have secondary approaches? What are they?

Leadership/capacity building is the secondary approach because we are empowering local organizations to create and maintain sustainable solutions.

Our tactics and approaches to these goals focus on mobilizing our administrative team to accomplish goal 1 and for our field teams to accomplish goal 2 by July of 2009. Then begin to transfer the project to Nothing But Nets from July to September 2009. If they are unable to meet this goal, then we will strategize at that point about how to continue to keep BEAT sustainable.

What will your tactics and activities be?

Our key tactics will include:
Communications
Pamphlets
Money delivery system
Website updates
Fundraising e-mails
Newspaper articles
Identify funders and solicit donations
Establish corporate sponsorship/big donors
Apply for grants
Local organizations
Follow up
Regular updates to all donors (1/month)
Thank-yous

Our work on the ground will be determined more clearly once we arrive on July 3. We will be living with the local NGOs and working alongside them through September, at which point we will assess our next steps. We are working with a malaria specialist who will ensure that we are sending back reports on our public health efforts, which he will assess and distribute in the United States.

Connecting Back to Vision

How does your strategy contribute to your vision for your campus and/or your community?

Our strategies of networking and capacity building help us, the "outsiders" to Burma's struggle for democracy, to empower local people to secure their human rights through public health. We are acting mainly as a funding resource and launching the program so that the locals will be able to sustain it after we are gone with the international funding sources and organizations in our network.

Resources and skills you will need

What skills do you need for this approach?

Nonprofit management skills (networking, media/website, fundraising, legal knowledge, etc.); minimal Thai and Burmese language skills; public health knowledge; evaluation knowledge.

Other $
$10,000 from the Davis Peace Projects
Outside funders including churches, businesses, etc.