The Mandalay Projects

A chance holiday encounter with a nurse in Mandalay was the initial inspiration for the founder of The Mandalay Projects, Ian Love.

Ian and his family met Nurse Thwe at an aged care home in Mingun (just outside Mandalay), in 2003.  After proudly showing Ian around the home, he promised to send her a photo that was taken of her outside her clinic.  Now of course one normally does not follow through with such promises, but thinking about this later prompted Ian to send the framed photo together with some left over Burmese currency to Nurse Thwe.

Thinking that was the end of the matter, Ian was surprised to receive a wonderful thank you letter from the overjoyed Nurse and Ian began to wonder whether he could provide some assistance to Nurse Thwe and her elderly patients.  So Ian had what he called a “small idea” to raise sufficient funds to fit out the entire home with new bedding materials including sheets, mosquito nets and matrices.

In 2004 he returned to Burma with $7,000 that he had raised with the help of family, friends and colleagues.  The bedding materials he had planned on supplying cost just $5,000.  The remainder was used to establish a medical clinic fund, which was used to construct and stock a new clinic for Nurse Thwe. 

After a moving thank you ceremony Ian thought that was the end of the matter.

The next day Ian and his team of friends visited a boys and a girls’ orphanage in the city of Mandalay – and it was here that the bug started to bite and the ‘small idea’ began to grow eventually becoming The Mandalay Projects: the mission being to prevent the trafficking of children into prostitution, hard labour and armed conflict within the Asia region.

Having lived in Asia for 16 years, Ian is very aware of the vulnerability of unprotected children.  Every year, an esti­mated 1.8 mil­lion chil­dren are traf­ficked into slave labour, armed con­flict, pros­ti­tu­tion and pornography.

The vul­ner­a­bil­ity of such children to such exploita­tion is directly linked to the liv­ing con­di­tions of the chil­dren.   Poverty, mal­nour­ish­ment, poor san­i­ta­tion, ill-health, low edu­ca­tion lev­els, dis­crim­i­na­tion and low self esteem are some of the many factors leading to vulnerability. 

The Mandalay Projects works with poorly-resourced orphan­ages in Asia to improve children’s phys­i­cal security, health, wellbeing and help them acquire skills which helps the chil­dren become inde­pen­dent and able to live normal lives.

Ian advised that “…we work in close coop­er­a­tion with local (in-country) part­ners at each of our cho­sen loca­tions, and ensure that the recip­i­ents of our aid are actively involved in the design and imple­men­ta­tion of the project work.  Day-to-day man­age­ment of our projects is han­dled locally, but the Direc­tors and other mem­bers of The Mandalay Projects visit the project sites peri­od­i­cally (all at their own cost), to ensure that the objec­tives of the project are being achieved. 

The three main cat­e­gories of support they offer are : Tactical Aid and Emergency Relief (food, water, shelter and security); Intermediate Aid Development (health, hygiene and basic literacy); and Strategic Aid Development (higher education and vocational training).

It is a crit­i­cal pre­req­ui­site of every project we under­take that our aid must ulti­mately be self-sustaining.  Our aim is to enable the chil­dren we sup­port to become more inde­pen­dent, and we must ensure that our aid program doesn’t actu­ally increase their depen­dence on out­side assistance. 

Our approach is con­ducive to a very low cost/income ratio, and we are proud of the fact that sub­stan­tially every dol­lar donated by our sup­port­ers goes directly to ben­e­fit the chil­dren in the orphan­ages.”

Since 2003 Co-Founder David Gibson and Board member Robert Nash, together with over 600 friends, family and colleagues have implemented projects that have helped over 2,500 orphans in eight locations in three countries. 

Ian knows he has barely scratched the surface.  When he began his mission Ian wasn’t really sure where to start – so he just started. Now he doesn’t know where to stop – so he just keeps going.

“I don’t know where it will end”, says Ian. “But I do know that we have made a real difference to the lives of thousands of children and along the way made new friends, had great life expe­ri­ences and found great sat­is­fac­tion in help­ing peo­ple less for­tu­nate than our­selves”.