Building schools with laughs and pizza
Thanks to The Good Guys fundraiser, laughter and pizza can build refugee schools in Myanmar.
Each year, an all-star line-up of comedians donates a set for the SpinningTop charity event. This year is its 10th anniversary.
Next week’s fundraiser will feature comedians Ben Hurley, Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, Sera Devcich, James Nokise, Wilson Dixon and more.
Manager Annie Fischer says SpinningTop has built schools on the Burma-Thai border with as little as $6000.
‘‘We’ve literally built schools with the money from the comedy shows,’’ she says. ‘‘The New Zealand dollar goes a long way.’’
SpinningTop has sponsor Hell Pizza to provide food for the May 7 event at The Boatshed, on Wellington’s waterfront, as part of the New Zealand International Comedy Festival.
Fischer says its overheads are met by sponsorship, so all proceeds go directly to projects on the Burma-Thai border.
SpinningTop is The Body Shop’s charity of choice, with the British skincare company covering its office and salaries.
Several hundred thousand refugees live on that border, and their quality of life depends on aid for basics such as housing and education.
For Fischer, the goal is sustainability through training and education.
‘‘We focus on things like agriculture projects, and giving people the tools to make themselves self-sufficient to grow their own food, and make money.’’
Volunteer Gabby Bush spent three months teaching in the Burmese border town of Myawaddy, through a project called Stay In School, in an education centre for children who cannot afford regular schooling.
‘‘Teachers get paid nothing,’’ she says. ‘‘What they do is not teach anything during the school day and only teach in paid tuition. If you actually want to learn anything, you have to go to the teacher’s classes after school and pay for it.
‘‘The teachers do it to make a living. It’s a really sad, institutionalised problem.’’
Fischer says education in Myanmar is a national issue, with the system barely recovering since the military junta closed down the country’s universities in 1962.
‘‘The number of people who have had access to education or information has been tiny.’’
Myanmar – formerly known as Burma – has been under limited democratic rule since 2011.
SpinningTop was established in 2005 to support vulnerable children displaced by war and conflict on the border.
It supports projects such as a Thai project called Social Action for Women (Saw), in a border town Mae Sot.
With Saw, SpinningTop helped establish an instituition which educates more than 300 children whose schools had to close because of a lack of funding.