Mettadana - Projects

• Education
  • Grants for Educational Studies
    Mettadana helps cover costs for tuition, school uniforms, and supplies in addition to a stipend for the teachers. Grants have been given to about 300 Wachet primary school students annually since 1997. Without this support most children barely finished the third grade of their education. To date we have been supporting all the school children of Wachet through the seventh grade, and just recently helped initiate the application process for obtaining government permission to add two new classrooms for the next grade level (8). Sayadaw U Lakkhana aspires to the dream of eventually purchasing the parcel of land directly behind the existing school property, with the idea of building a high school there.
  • New Wachet Primary School
    The previous school building flooded during the rainy seasons and sometimes could not be used for months. Mettadana helped fund the building of a new school in 2003 that has solid classroom buildings on high ground. It also has a new reservoir to serve the students and neighborhood, as well as a basic athletic field and gardens.
  • Living Supplements for Student Nuns
    Since 1997 MettaDana has provided modest annual living supplements for about 100 nuns ranging in age from 5 or 6 to 90 in support of their Pali studies. These nuns live in three nunneries, Thit Seint, Susitarama, and Shwebo Nunneries, near Kyaswa Monastery and Wachet Village.
  • New Nunnery Primary School Building
    MettaDana provided funds toward the construction of a nunnery-primary school building at Sasana Gon-Yee Nunnery in a northern suburb of Yangon. The area is poor and has very few primary school opportunities for local children.
• Medical Programs
  • Wachet Jivitadana Sangha Hospital
    Mettadana was instrumental in providing funding as well as coordinating expertise in constructing and adding to the hospital. Mettadana continues ot provide staff and training for ongoing services to the communities in the surrounding areas. The hospital itself is a charitable institution: care for monks and nuns is provided freely by volunteer doctors, but staff support, medicines and supplies depend on donations. We provide living supplements to more than 40 staff members at the hospital. We also supported the education of a number of nurse-assistants and now fund the further training of several of them to become registered nurses. Mettadana also has supported technical staff training in radiology and laboratory skills, and clerical staff training in computer, English-language, and accounting skills. We recently arranged for an extensive public health training program dealing with HIV-AIDS, conducted by the Burnet Institute of Australia.
  • Acupuncture Program
    MettaDana volunteers have provided acupuncture training to a group of Myanmar traditional medicine practitioners annually since 1998. Using both hands-on time and lecture the team gives training and acupuncture treatment in Wachet. MettaDana funds are used for transportation and miscellaneous supplies, as well as translation of technical literature to compile a Burmese acupuncture handbook. Many of the orginial students have gone on to have their own growing clinics in other areas and towns. Annually, the acupuncture team treats 2000-3000 patients at the hospital and on outreach excursions.
  • Support Through Partnerships
    A Japanese general surgical team, Japan Heart International, and an Australian opthalmology team volunteer their services at the hospital several times each year. Mettadana arranged for medicines from the Mandalay Anti-TB zone and, as of 2005, from Population Services International. In the past, we conducted training seminars in TB-related public health procedures for hospital staff and initiated more rigorous TB-related treatment and record-keeping. Mettadana also initiated a blood donation program for support of surgical patients. Mettadana's own medical director, an anaesthesiologist, participates in these operations, and Mettadana also provides the anesthetic agents and gases.
• Humanitarian Relief
  • 2004 Tsunami Relief
    MettaDana is still engaged in helping Burmese migrant workers who are living in tsunami-affected areas of southern Thailand. Working with the Foundation for Education and Development we have ongoing contributions to educational centers for children of migrant workers set up in the coastal area of Takua Pa District, Pang Nga Province.
  • 2008 Cyclone Nargis Relief
    Mettadana was able to collectively raise over $20,000 for the survivors living in the flooded Irrawaddy Delta. Resources directly reached displaced children, farmers, and families across the region via support networks run by local nunneries and monasteries. These Sangha groups were able to actively provided food, water, shelter and medicine as well as feeding victims spiritually in the Irrawaddy Delta region where damage from the cyclone was the greatest.