Hugh Dennis visits Myanmar to meet the girl he sponsors

I recently realised with some astonishment that I have sponsored an ActionAid child for nearly 30 years. Not the same child (obviously, no one wants to be treated as a child as they enter their fourth decade), but different children in sequence - first in Kenya, and now in Myanmar.

So landing at Yangon Airport on a short trip to Myanmar, I was very excited, a mood only slightly diminished by the rather frightening border official who handed me back my passport with the words “For you it is all finished.” I wondered how he had seen Outnumbered. 

Five-year-old Lae Yi Soe, the child I sponsor, lives with her parents and two brothers in a small village in the Dry Zone of central Myanmar, two hours north of the ancient temple-strewn city of Bagan.

And in many ways, driving away from the city on increasingly dusty roads to the remote villages where ActionAid works also felt like stepping back in time.

Hugh Dennis admiring the temples of Bagan, on a trip to Myanmar to visit the child he sponsors with ActionAid. Photo: Greg Funnell/ActionAid

In these agricultural communities the heavy moving is still done by bullock cart, and the water for both cattle and humans has to be collected from a pond, a resource entirely dependent on rainfall, of which there is precious little for 10 months of the year.

Hugh riding on the back of a bullock cart on his way to the village of Su Le Pan. Photo: Greg Funnell/ActionAid

Healthcare facilities are poor – a clinic can be up to two hours drive away – and children are under pressure to leave education because they are needed for work elsewhere.  

Hugh inspects the dry earth in the area of Myaing, Dry Zone, Myanmar. Photo: Greg Funnell/ActionAid

What is striking when you visit them though, is how, thanks to their own efforts and ActionAid child sponsorship, these communities are in transformation. And how simple the changes have been that have enabled this.

A mere blue-plastic water pipe from the rainwater pond to each household has freed up those who had to collect it numerous times a day (mostly women), giving them more time to earn the money they need to improve their lives.

Lae Yi Soe washes her hands excitedly in the water system paid for with ActionAid funding. Photo: Greg Funnell/ActionAid

The village has a school which is part-funded by ActionAid child sponsorship, like many others. The further away a school is - the less likely the children are to attend it, so by having one in the village, it is much easier for Lae Yi Soe and her friends to learn. 

Hugh visits Lae Yi Soe's class at her school in the village of Kan Ka Lay, Myanmar. Photo: Greg Funnell/ActionAid

It’s also clear that this is development at the request of the people it benefits. The village itself, galvanized by an “ActionAid Fellow” – usually a female villager nominated by the community – has worked out which changes would help most, and what the priorities should be. It is a highly effective system.

Kyi Mar, 22, is helping her community's development as an ActionAid Fellow for the village of Kan Ka Lay. Photo: Greg Funnell/ActionAid

The Fellows I met were extraordinary; utterly committed, tangibly improving life in their villages, and, as a consequence of that, changing the role of women in the communities in which they live. 

Thanks to ActionAid, the world in which Lae Yi Soe is growing up should be a very positive one, in which she will not be hungry, uneducated or find her progress limited by her gender.  

Lae Yi Soe walking to school, with a promising future ahead of her. Photo: Greg Funnell/ActionAid

Hugh tells an inspirational story of how child sponsorship is achieving real transformation for Lae Yi Soe and her whole community in Myanmar. Now her family, friends and everyone in her village has a brighter and more secure future ahead of them.

Please help us reach more children like Lae Yi Soe and give them a future too