The Healthy Wa-Lone is a children’s book with two purposes: 1. As an enjoyable book for a young child, and 2. as parent education to teach and promote the holistic and healthy development of a young child.

This is one in a series of books brought to you by UNICEF. These books are used all over Myanmar as a part of parent education using the training design developed by Yinthway.

The Yinthway staff responsible for ECCD training has been accepted to the Aga Khan University, in Karachi, Pakistan, Advance Diploma in Human Development – ‘From Early Child Development to Human Development’ course for the school year 2009-2010. Aga Khan University is a large and well-known university which supports education, not only in Pakistan, but also in other developing countries.

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Moonlight is a family run business. The husband was originally a rickshaw driver, but now makes a living through producing wooden play/learning materials. The quality is not quite as good as the Zion Disabled Group, but the material is also less expensive, so more affordable for the majority of preschools.

March 2 – 7, 2009

Our Annual Conference is 5-days long and is for Early Childhood trainers from every corner of Myanmar. This includes trainers with various levels of experience as well as people from the government, INGOs, local NGOs, and faith-based organizations. We have around one hundred participants every year. Each morning a guest speaker gives a 1-hour presentation on topics which are relevant and important for the participants. The conference is very interactive, reflecting the holistic teaching methods Yinthway Foundation champions.

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Process for Developing the Book

One of the Yinthway Foundation staff made her first trip to the Delta Area affected by Cyclone Nargis two weeks after the cyclone hit. She visited communities, taking pictures, collecting information on the situation in the villages, and listening to the experiences of both the adults and the children. Everyone seemed to need to tell their experiences, so listening to them was an important part of her trip.

Following that initial trip, this staff member made three more trips. On subsequent trips, besides listening to their experiences and the difficulties of their present situation, she focused more on the children – observing them, doing activities with them, generally paying attention to them and giving them her time. This staff member is the focal person for Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) at Yinthway Foundation. She has had more than eleven years of experience in Myanmar in the field of ECCD, first as an ECCD preschool teaching principal and then as a trainer of trainers, teachers, community leaders, and parents, for both community and faith-based ECCD projects.

In the meantime, Yinthway Foundation was loaned the book, The Day the Tsunami Came, by Hijltje Vink. After reading that book, Yinthway Foundation agreed to the request, from World Concern – Myanmar, to develop a similar children’s book for Myanmar. The ECCD staff member then wrote the book, based on seven or eight children’s actual experiences of the cyclone in the Ayerwaddy Delta.

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