Summer Issue, 2012

Foreign Languages. Plans are underway to bring faculty and administrators from Myanmar universities to Hong Kong to shadow their counterparts at HKU, as well as to train staff in country to develop curricula and research programmes. The HKU library has launched a book drive, “Books for Myanmar”, in order to begin rebuilding the collections at Yangon University. The library has already identified 6,000 of its own duplicate titles for donation. It is also collecting books on a variety of topics from HKU’s faculty and staff. A key part of HKU’s engagement with Myanmar has been the MOEI programme, which was formed by the Faculty of Social Sciences to provide intensive English- language education for Myanmar migrant children and adults located along the Moei River, which forms the border between Myanmar and Thailand. The organisation also works to boost external engagement with Myanmar and to promote Myanmar advocacy. Every summer since 2008, between 30 and 35 HKU students have participated in the programme, to teach English to thousands of refugees and unofficial migrants in the border area. Participants in the MOEI programme have also been instrumental in promoting awareness of Myanmar culture on campus through such student groups as “Connecting Myanmar”, a non-profit initiative that aims to provide medical, educational and other services to the Myanmar refugees and to nurture HKU students as leaders in solving the problems the country faces during its reconstruction. This year, a new pilot scheme facilitated by U Aung Kyaw Oo, the Consul General of the Union of Myanmar in Hong Kong, sent two HKU undergraduates to teach English at the Yangon University of Foreign Languages. In addition, the Campus YMCA programme will take students from HKU, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Polytechnic University on a trip to Myanmar this summer to help provide medical care and other services. Here in Hong Kong, there has been a student-organised “Burma Week” on campus for the past four years, featuring forums on Myanmar current events, cultural exchanges, and a film festival. In mid-June this year, the sixth annual HKU Myanmar conference, with the theme “Myanmar in Reform 2012”, was held on campus, bringing together prominent Chinese- and English- speaking scholars as well as political leaders from Myanmar. The University of Hong Kong is proud to have stood side by side with the people of Myanmar in the past, and continues to do so at the dawn of this hopeful new era. With Love HKU students have been passionately involved with the people and culture of Myanmar Cover Story 3