Work

 

Sheila is the director of the Women’s Association for Lisu Baptist Association. She is also leading the micro-credit group of her mother church Peik Swe Lisu Baptist Church. As a member of the Lisu Hill Tribe in Northern Myanmar, Sheila is especially keen to create more self-help groups throughout her region like the Family of Corner Stone group she began in 2007 which focuses on raising pigs. The purpose of these groups is to build solidarity through sharing with others, provide additional means of support for the family’s income, and protect the community against the perils of human trafficking and unemployment. She has also started a Micro Saving Project which has given farmers hope for the future through developing the spirit of saving money collectively. Having grown up in a poor community Sheila relates, “I have a very special zeal for rural work. Our crops were not enough for my family to eat for a year. We faced the evil of famine, erosion and flood. Today the economy is no different, the people suffer and I must help.”

 

Sheila is confident her training at ARI will help her work with the farmers to make the soil and people’s lives healthy again through organic farming and live stock rearing. She also hopes that her leadership development will help her to work more effectively with government and mining concerns that directly affect her community, causing soil erosion through extensive mining and loss of farm land through commercial development.

 

Sending Organization

 

The Lisu Baptist Convention operates in northern Myanmar targeting farmers, some professional technicians, students and young people, community leaders, business people interested in ethical development, Lisu Christian ministers and people of other faiths who are interested in building their villages ecologically. The Lisu Baptist Convention has implemented “eco-village” practices in several communities where the villages are working together towards sustainability in food production, energy systems, collective decision-making processes, holistic health care and more. They work with Heifer International and have provided animals to hundreds of families together with training in livestock rearing.