Legal Aid to Children and Women Project 

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Government of the Union of Myanmar, signing the Basic Cooperation Agreement (B.C.A) on (22-4-1950), have been implementing together the works concerning children. In accord with the said Agreement, UNICEF(Myanmar) and Myanmar Council of Churches (MCC) signed Programme Cooperation Agreement in 2007 and started to implement UNICEF & MCC – Legal Aid Project.

 1. Objective

Rules related to the Child Law – 75 says that “law office shall hire lawyer step by step by the cost of government to serve the poor child who is got prosecuted for death sentence.” Most of the poor children in Myanmar are suffering from many losses as they are unable to hire layers, or because of their ignorance. The purpose of this project is for the lawyers to give services to the children without taking any fees. Especially, it is for the victims under 18 years old who suffer for any cases, for the children who offend any crimes and for all women who get insulted.

 2. Project Area

From 15^th May 2009 to 14^th July 2010, the lawyers of UNICEF & MCC – Legal Aid Project served in mercy without taking any lawyer fees for 830 cases for 192 children (victim) and 744 children (offender); total of 936 children in total of 118 townships.

This program served as the base for facilitating, for sharing resources and giving support to grass-root community. To strengthen the unity and ecumenical spirit among the MCC member churches is the main objective of this program. The following programs were carried out in the year of 2010, in collaboration with churches and community.The program is intended to learn the concepts, principles, approaches, strategies, methods and process of development with target grass-root community member. It is also to help and enhance the community with participation, facilitating skills and formation of self-help group. Development Management training was set up with an objective to provide management skills, respond creatively and actively to various emerging issues, and help them to arrive at their own action perspective through people based activities.

Furthermore, the understanding and skills of Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Management were provided to response to disaster. Not only the existing current situations related to socio-economy but also internal migrant situations were learned and discussed among the Church leaders. The program held 

Human Resources Development Program (HRDP) has been working for the capacity buildings for the 14 MCC member churches and 13 National Ecumenical Organizations since 1989.

Objectives of the program

The main objectives of the program are to send Christian workers abroad for capacity buildings; to provides partial scholarships to local higher theological students and local secular post graduate students; and to conduct appropriate ecumenical leadership trainings/ seminars/ and workshops to enhance the ecumenical spirit among the member Churches.

Activities Done

(1)    No (3) Ecumenical Leadership Development Training:

It was conducted in Myoma Baptist Church of Homalin town incorporation with Homalin Council of Churches from February 22 – 25, 2010. There were 38 participants from different Churches (17 from Baptist, 2 from Anglican, 12 from Methodist, 5 from Assembly of God, 1 from Brethren, and another 1 from Christian Church of Myanmar).                                                                                                                                                             The main objectives of the training were to strengthen the ecumenical spirit and to build up mutual understanding and recognition among the local churches. The subjects on “Ecumenical concept and movement”, and “Learning solidarity through holistic mission” were taught. It was observed that the training achieved its goals by seeing the strong participation of the participants a long with the trainings and raising a lot of
questions, which was shown their interest upon the training. Besides, they requested to conduct this kind of training in the future. Hope it may enforce the local cooperation among the churches. An Ecumenical worship service was held together with closing ceremony in the last day of the training.

In the year of 2010, the following programs are carried out by the Youth Work as directives given by the Youth Work Committee Members, CentralCommittee and the General Secretary of MCC. The main objective of the Youth Work is to promote the ecumenical spirit and youth action.

1. MatuP Regional Council Youth Network Building Seminar
The objective of the seminar is to build regional network for the emergence of new ecumenical agenda at the regional and grass-root levels. Thus, this seminar was specifically chose to held at Matup, Chan State. With the participations of 97 Mara people plut with chins who belong to chin ethnic group, group presentations and competition on songs, dramas, talent shows and games were carried out during the seminar.  

2. National Ecumenical Youth Leadership Training Course (15)
The objective of this course is to study on development and globalization, their effects and impact on young people. It targets to enable ecumenical parternaiship and sharing efforts among the participating students and youth movements in Myanmar. Basing on the theme “Prophetic Role for Ecumenical Solidarity,” the inputs on ecumenical youth leader, current issues, ecumenical movement, capacity building, inter faith dialogue, ecology and laws were offered to (35) Youth from (10) Denomination and (5) Regional Council Youth. At the end of the course, the Myanmar Ecumenical Youth Leaders partook the “Ecumenical Communion” together in unity.