Every Friday in college, you would find me at Coffee Hour. Coffee Hour is a weekly social event where local and international students gather for conversations over coffee. At the time, I was a newsletter intern for the International Student Association (ISA), the organization that hosts the event. I always marveled at how Coffee Hour could bring so many different nations and cultures together in one place – it seemed like the world met over a simple cup of coffee.
The conversations that took place over this “cup of coffee” sparked an idea in me for the ISA Newsletter.
I thought of creating a series called, “A Cup of Coffee With…” which featured a student’s story per issue. During the following week’s Coffee Hour, I met Win Min, an international student from Myanmar. Awestruck, I learned of how he transitioned from growing up in a poor village farm to receiving a full-ride scholarship to attend the university. Immediately after our initial meeting, I knew that his story was the perfect opening for the series.
Till this day, I credit “A Cup of Coffee With Win Min” as the piece that started it all – the one that first infected me with the storytelling bug.
Recently, I met Min again at our old campus. To my-not-so-surprise, he was still the same compassionate soul that I interviewed years before. In that moment, I realized that he may have unlocked the doors to education, achieved great success, and inspired those around him, but he remains grounded in his village roots.
Min describes himself as the villager: Always the villager. Although he ventured far beyond his small village in Myanmar, his humble beginnings never cease to follow him. Now, he simply has the power of education to accompany his journey. I see him as a living example of John Dewey’s philosophy on education: “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” Min pursued an education as a means to escape poverty, but along his journey, he discovered that education was more than this: It was a responsibility to serve more than yourself and to give back to the greater community.
The way Min combines knowledge with compassion will always have an influence over me. With that said, it is my greatest pleasure to share with you his story – the story that became my first step into the storytelling world.
This is a story about how education does not necessarily need to transform you, but how it can amplify the compassion that you already have within yourself.
Win Min: A Villager’s Story of Education
By Dawn L.
Min’s story began in Sintate, a remote village in western Myanmar. Traditional farming is the center of everyone’s lives here. Villagers use cattle to tend the land and grow crops such as rice, peanuts, and chili peppers. The outside world is largely unknown to the villagers, for not many have even traveled to the country’s major cities. Min grew up in a poor farming household, where weather uncertainties and high interest rates of agricultural loans yielded great financial burden for the family. He sold garbanzo beans to pay for tuition at his state-run primary school and took his studies very seriously. If teachers instructed the students to read one book out of eleven choices, he would read all eleven books. Min’s love for learning began early, but the money that he saved from selling garbanzo beans was not enough to pay for secondary school. At 11-years-old, the only option for him was to become the youngest farmer in the village and assist his family with the farm. He accepted his fate, but with great pain. The sight of students in their green and white school uniforms broke his heart. Min would start his farm work early at 5:30am and end late in the night just to avoid the sight of students.
Even so, the child farmer tried his best to keep a positive mindset, turning to his village’s values of community for solace. Min explained:
“We do everything together. We celebrate together and face difficulties together. Most people in my village live their entire lives only knowing farming and living happily with what they have. We didn’t have much, but we didn’t care. Caring for others is more important than caring for yourself. We are taught to feel the way that other people feel. If someone is hungry, we are taught to feel that. Community value is very high in my culture. For example, if someone is hosting an event for Buddhist ceremonies, female youth will host guests inside the building and some older gentleman will cook. Also, if you come to my village, you will be the guest of the whole village – not just mine. They will take care of you, from the first day you arrive to the last day that you leave. So, my passion for helping people is rooted in my heart and soul.”
Min understood these values at a young age. When the slow seasons arrived, and finances became even tighter, the 11-year-old farmer stepped out of his village for the first time to find employment in the big city of Mandalay. A 10-mile walk to the nearest bus station and a few hours later, he arrived in the city. No one would hire an 11-year-old with only a primary school education though. To add more to his disappointment, he saw the same painful sight that reminded him of his unfulfilled dreams at an education: Smiling students in their green and white school uniforms. Mandalay was a vibrant city, but it was a place of disillusionment for Min.
He decided to head back to his village, until he stumbled upon a peculiar scene: A group of students who did not wear those green and white school uniforms. These students were from Phaung Daw Oo Monastic Education High School, a free alternative school for underprivileged children. The school was a small bamboo building on top of a trash site, but despite its disheveled state, he saw the school as a golden opportunity to continue his education. However, the school was too far from his village, and Min’s family needed him to watch over the farm. He told the family that he must pursue an education in order to provide them with a better life. At this point, education was the only ticket out of poverty. After much negotiation, he convinced his family to let him attend school.
Min lived and studied at the school’s monastery. Myanmar’s state-run school taught rote learning, but since Phaung Daw Oo was a free alternative school, it approached education in a different way. The school encouraged students to think critically, ask questions, have an open dialogue with the teachers, and immerse themselves in community work. Knowledge collided with the humanitarian spirit here. He learned that education was not necessarily an escape from his poor village life, but a companion to the values of self-sacrifice and community that he already held dear. Min realized that he would always be the villager throughout his journey of education – a philosophy that he would proudly follow for the rest of his life.
The school drew attention from tourists who visited Mandalay. Since the majority of them spoke English, he wanted to learn as much of the language as he could. He taught himself basic phrases such as, “how are you?” and “how long have you been here?” Eventually, his English language advanced as he conversed with the tourists themselves. Many diplomatic people came to visit the school too, and since Min could speak English, he was their guide. Impressed, a US Embassy official offered him a scholarship to study English at the American Center in Yangon. He accepted and went to Yangon after his high school graduation. Two years later, he received another scholarship to work at the British embassy, where he learned and worked more directly with the country’s issues.
One of the issues included the Burmese military government. In 2007, when Buddhist monks protested in the Saffron Revolution, Min followed the protests with a voice recorder and notebook. The military’s reactions to the peaceful protesters horrified him. He saw them brutally beat monks and women, even shooting at them. Also, Min was just on the opposite street corner when he witnessed the killing of Kenji Nagai, a Japanese photojournalist who was shot by solider near the Sule Pagoda.
This experience exposed him to the darker side of the country. He had always thought that the army were there to protect the nation and its people. Although he heard that the army killed people in areas of ethnic conflict, he could not fathom the fact that they would target monks too, for monks were the moral voices of the country. Min became more cognizant of the fact that he had been living in isolation:
“With schoolbooks and songs, many children aspired to become a solider. We thought that the role of the soldier was to protect the country – that was how a young kid dreamed. If you asked a young kid on those days what they wanted to be, they would answer, ‘I want to be captain.’ We only had those schoolbooks, one government newspaper, and two channels on T.V. Everything that we knew about the nation was how the military government provided stability, how great they were, etc. After all, Aung San, father of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, founded the military to gain independence from the British. Thus, we always saw the good side of the military. There was a hidden conscious, I believe, where I wanted to believe that military was protecting the country and its people.”
What Min witnessed with his own eyes was the starting point of a revelation. Another vivid memory was when he took an English class at the American Center, and his classmates were all political prisoners except for himself. Min learned about their stories, but before he could ask them more questions, he attended class the next day to find an empty classroom – he later heard that his classmates were all arrested the previous night. This prompted Min to take political science and journalism classes to gain a deeper perspective of what was happening in the nation. In the end, he became more knowledgeable about the nation’s issues, such as wide-spread poverty, health, and education. The question was, what could he do about this? Min pondered, “All this got me thinking – where’s today’s youth? What are they doing? Do they know what is going around the country? Then I started reading, gathering information, and brainstorming what needs to be done – how to even start. I learned that connecting people directly to the issues of the community, such as poverty, elderly care, health, etc., was the most effective way to make some changes. We should do things in the community to raise awareness and do some capacity building behind it.”
Instead of feeling disenchanted, Min’s shock at the military government propelled his humanitarian spirit even further. After his time in Yangon, he returned to Mandalay to become an official English language teacher at Phaung Daw Oo, the very same school that bestowed him with an opportunity at education. He discovered that there was actually strong response amongst co-teachers to serve the Burmese people too. They discussed ways to promote community involvement and how to include young people in volunteer work. With some assistance from the British Council, he and fellow teachers formed a youth volunteer network called the Civic Society Initiative. The first step was the elderly care project, where youth volunteers would go from one tent to another to give food and talk to elders who had no one to take care of them. To foster a sense of community in the volunteer work, Min encouraged everyone to address the elders as “grandmother” or “grandfather.”
Min became a community leader, and others looked up to him for guidance.
Although he needed money to send back to his family, he refused to take a salary from any donations. He expressed that the volunteers trusted him, and he wanted them to understand the self-sacrificing spirit of volunteer work. If he took a salary, this action would only contradict his moral principle.
Over time, the organization continued to grow, branching into separate groups for teaching, food delivery, and medical aid. Most of the volunteers were young students from wealthier backgrounds, who had the financial means to study abroad at foreign universities. Min’s hope was that once they returned to Myanmar, they could carry on this type of community work for the Burmese people.
With teaching and running a volunteer organization at the age of 21, Min established himself as a young leader who used knowledge with compassion. He became a respected teacher amongst his colleagues, not only as a natural leader, but also as an effective English language instructor who helped his students pass the IELTS (International English Language Test System) exam. In 2008, he was invited to attend the TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) conference in Thailand. There, he met University of Oregon’s Linguistics Instructor, Cindy Kieffer. Cindy offered him a chance to study at the University of Oregon and told him of the scholarship opportunities available to fund his education abroad. The thought of studying abroad like the wealthy student volunteers of the Civil Society Initiative was surreal. For a poor villager who could not even afford a secondary education, became the youngest farmer in his village, and envied the sights of students in those green and white school uniforms, he could not imagine that such an opportunity would come to him.
Before he could reply back with any sound decisions, Cyclone Nargis devastated Myanmar, taking the lives of nearly 138,000 people. Once again, the values of self-sacrifice were more important than himself. He and his friends returned to Yangon to apply for funding, where they eventually received $5,000 from the British embassy to conduct relief efforts. Min emailed volunteers to join the cause, coordinated teams to pack, arrange, and transport food/clothing donations, fundraised more money, and asked teams of medical students to deliver medicine.
Aid was fruitful, but the Burmese government became a challenge to these relief efforts. During the time, the government already had high international pressure and economic sanctions against them. Therefore, they did not want to release much information about the country’s situation. Min explained:
“On those days, no outside media was allowed to enter the country, and no media was allowed to write things freely. So when the cyclone happened, the military did not want anyone to go to the region because they worried about what people would write about the country – what was happening there. The international groups and NGOs would have to come in to help, and if they came in, they would see the country’s condition during the disaster. Consequently, the government would not be able to control who came in. The writing of a constitutional referendum, which the military would have more power, occurred during that time too. When the cyclone hit, the government was more interested in legalizing this referendum, but the general people wanted to just stop everything at the moment and focus on helping the survivors of the cyclone.”
As a result, providing aid was eventually declared illegal by the military government. Security was tight, and soldiers filled the streets. The military was stationed on every road that led to disaster-hit regions. They prevented groups from entering them, checking every car and person passing by. Min and his team had go undercover to “illegally” deliver aid. They saw dead bodies everywhere, but tried to keep focus on the task at hand. The team had to keep their fears in check too, for the military often questioned them. Min had guns pointed at him many times, as the soldiers threatened him to leave, or they would shoot. During these dangerous encounters, Min and his team had to leave the supplies behind with the soldiers. Min reflected, “If I looked back, it was slightly scary at that time. But during the moment, I was not scared. I was only thinking about the people’s needs.”
Min worked on the cyclone relief efforts for two years. In 2010, he finally found some time to look at Cindy’s surreal offer from two years back: The invitation and scholarship opportunities remained open for him. His friends encouraged him to go, emphasizing that opportunities like this do not come very often, especially to poor villagers. He could learn many valuable lessons abroad and come back to Myanmar to help the country – just like the student volunteers. They believed in him, offering to pay for his visa fee and plane ticket with enthusiasm.
Min followed his friends’ encouragement and decided to seize another golden opportunity at education. Within the first few minutes before he boarded the plane, he paused for a moment to catch a glimpse of his homeland. He would miss the lush green trees, but most importantly, the people who lived amongst them: His immediate family in Sintate, his teachers, students, and co-teachers of Phaung Daw Oo in Mandalay, his diplomatic friends in Yangon, and the student volunteers who followed his lead to serve the Burmese people. Min did not know how this dreamlike opportunity to study abroad fell upon him – perhaps luck, karma, hard work, or the combination of all three. However, he knew that this opportunity at education was another duty, a duty to continue to give back to causes greater than himself.
Min studied Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon, where he continued to work with NGOs and community development projects in Myanmar. The trees of Eugene, Oregon reminded him of his homeland. To bring more of his Burmese roots from half a world away to Eugene, he continued to embrace community values and created a home wherever he went. He treated everyone like family, leaving a lasting impression on fellow students, professors, and local Eugene members. Everyone cited him as a “treasured human being,” “a beacon of hope,” and “someone who will change the world.” Yet, Min always saw himself as a villager – someone who simply built community in any place. He believed in the human family, no matter their religion, race, or background.
Graduation was on Min’s schedule in 2016. The Eugene community recognized the importance of this moment and did not want Min’s family to miss the celebration. Robin Rogers, an instructor from the University of Oregon, coordinated a GoFundMe campaign to bring his entire family to Eugene. The campaign was a success and now, it was his family’s turn to venture outside the small village of Sintate. Min commented, “It was their first time on an airplane, so the whole experience was so big for them.”
For most, graduation was a milestone; for Min though, graduation was a symbol of hope for those who knew his story. After his graduation, he obtained a visa to work for Looking Glass Community Services, an organization that provides assistance related to educational deficits, behavioral health issues, drug addiction, and homelessness. The individuals that he worked with looked up to his story as source of hope. At the same time, they were humbled by his nonjudgmental compassion to assist them with their own struggles as well. Their challenges and background may differ from the individuals in Myanmar, but Min’s spirit in lending a helping hand never changed. He stated:
“My compassion is working for people and helping them build their lives. I don’t care where they’re from or what they did. There are certain circumstances and disadvantaged environments that they have faced, so I don’t have judgement on what mistakes they made. I only focus on how I could help them overcome their struggles in life, what we can do best together, and how we can create a positive future for them. That is my life passion, for I believe in human beings.”
The villager has spread his gift of education in Myanmar and now Eugene. At the end of this month, he will return back to Myanmar to continue this lifelong mission. From time to time, he takes walks on campus and looks at the green trees above. As he does so, he often reflects back on his journey…
He was a villager who grew up in poverty and gave up his dreams of a secondary education, but learned the values of community at 11-years-old. When finances were difficult, the villager looked for work in Mandalay. He did not find employment, but instead, stumbled upon Phaung Daw Oo, a school that made his unfulfilled dreams of an education, fulfilled – no green and white school uniforms needed. From his community work at the school, the leadership role in the Civil Society Initiative, his “illegal” Cyclone Nargis relief efforts, and nonjudgmental work in Eugene, he found multiple ways to unite education with compassion. Min acknowledges that the journey has been difficult, but nevertheless, he is grateful for it. The University of Oregon produced a short video about Min, capturing the moment of his graduation and how his family rejoiced in the accomplishments of their son and brother. In the video, he reflects, “It’s been 19 years since I’ve left my village. Nobody, including myself, would imagine that I would be where I am now… I was a poor boy working on a farm. 19 years later, I’m the first person in the family to get a college degree. My journey has been long, tough… ”
Here is the very video from the University of Oregon that celebrates the journey of Win Min – a villager with a compassionate story of education:
