Pre Conference Works

I have already written brief explanation about our conference.

This time I am going to write how’d we manage to celebrate it successfully.

In August 2015, when we handover-ed all the tasks related with youth from secretariat office, the first challenge we encountered was calling scholarships.

Until that time, scholarship applications we received was just two.

We had to offer 25 scholarships from Asia Pacific and 25 from Myanmar.

The deadline was on August 31st.

So, we were sure that we could not get enough scholarship applications in time before August 31st.

We decided to move the deadline one month behind.

During one month period, we hoped to receive more than 100 applications to screen out to 50 total.

And then, we promote scholarship news in every possible ways, by disseminating pamphlets, advertising on facebook, sharing to RH community, NGOs and universities. Our scholarship chair went to British council and American Center to share scholarship news.

He had to explain very hard to make students understand what the conference was about and what kind of scholarship we offered.

But, unfortunately ,non of students from BC and AC applied scholarship.

Anyway, the result was satisfactory.

We could see the progress of applications received day by day. Most of the applications came from oversea. Few applications from Myanmar were still received. So, we targeted to more Myanmar youths by advertising from facebook page .

Many of my friends from school also applied scholarships.

Although deadline we set was on 30th September, we had to extend again with the permission from convener.

Another one week was extended.

We got a lot of applications during extended period.

The total number of applications we received was more than 300 for 50 post .

That was a lot of workload to screen out .

from 2 to over 300 in 5 weeks, that was amazing. We already set marking criteria to screen scholars .

But due to the limitation of human resources to screen every essays, we had to move scholar announced date to one week behind.

We also selected scholars from pacific islands.

Actually, we didn’t consider much for their airfares and visa difficulties.Scholars from more remote islands might encounter more difficulties to reach Myanmar. Later the announcement, we faced so many difficulties to arrange trip for scholars.

Some of the scholars didn’t contact again after they have chosen, some of them could not attend , some of them had financial problem to buy tickets before we reimbursed them later.

One of our members even tried to buy tickets with her own personal credit cards to bring them in here. But, we could not overcome every challenges.

If the scholars could pay for themselves , that was ok to reimburse though we could not arrange from our side.

Another one we got shocked just one day ahead to conference was one of our scholars from pacific was stuck in Singapore airport to come to Myanmar.

He said he didn’t have any visa , coz he have to apply VOA in our airport, and Singapore airline didn’t allow him to be on board. Our organizers had to call for hep from Myanmar embassy in Singapore to meet with him at the airport. Finally, he arrived safely in our Naypyitaw international airport.

We were so happy .

Most of the scholars didn’t have direct flight to Naypyitaw because there were few flights landed and no regular schedule at all.

They had to wait for transit in yangon international airport.

Fortunately , there were liaison officers who could help them as soon as they arrived.

During that days, we youth organizers were also preparing at MMCWA HQ for conference.

They were arriving in Napyitaw one week a head before conference.

Some of us had to find items  around Naypyitaw to use in conference and youth garden . Some of us did logistic works.

Some of us did technical works especially to produce youth recommendation and to run smoothly youth marketplace and plenary session.

We worked together all days long till night .

Some of us got even sick and being hospitalized for having diarrhea.

The most memorable time for me, and i am sure it will also be the same for them.

I have yet to write more , but plz stop me in here.

It’s almost 12 :00 and i need to sleep now.

Thank you for reading my bad english.