ေနာင္ေတာင္းေက်ာင္းသည္ ယခုု အခါ ကုုိယ္ပုုိင္ ဝက္ဆုုိက္တည္ေထာင္ထားၿပီး ျဖစ္သည့္အတြက္ ဒီဘေလာ့ကုုိ မၾကာမွီ ဖ်က္သိမ္းပါေတာ့မည္။ ေန့စဥ္ သတင္း မတင္ဆက္နုုိင္သည့္အတြက္ လာလည္သူမိတ္ေဆြအေပါင္းတုုိ႔အား ေတာင္းပန္ပါသည္။ လာလည္သည့္အတြက္ ေက်းဇူးအမ်ားၾကီးတင္ပါသည္။

ongoing project

Naung Taung Monastic Education School is currently running classes from kindergarten to Grade Eight. Most of the students are Koyins (young novices) as we see in the pictures. Ordinary boys and girls are also attending the school. Almost all Koyins are from the other villages of different parts, whereas boys and girls are from the village itself and the nearby villages. All koyins reside in the school, and go to the nearby villages for food every morning. To provide them accommodation, and water supply, two hostels have been constructed. Water also has been made available in the school. Up to now, two buildings are used for classroom, library, and computer center. The main Temple is still under construction.

(photo) Koyin doing homework

(photo) In this hostel they stay and study

(photo) List of Donars

(photo) Building used for classrooms

(photo) Building used as hostel

(photo) Main Temple under construction

Sayadaw U Rajinda, the founder

When we were having lunch, he explained his future plan on the school he has founded though not in full-measure. Before talking about his idea, let me share something about his personal biography.

(photo) Sayadaw U Rajinda, the Founder
His name is U Rajinda. He is a holder of Dhammacariya Degree of the government. We have known him sine we were in Mandalay for our Buddhist study. He has been a very active monk in uniting monks and lay people together. And he was a president of Paoh Sotujana Organization and Paoh National Day Committee in Mandalay. He passed Dhammacariya exam one year ahead of me. Then he went back to his native place and set up a Monastic Education Primary School. It is located on a hill of Naung Taung village northeastern to Hopone town. This school has an interesting story. Before it was in the village. Later it moved to a new place after an old one was burnt down by a fire. The whole school was gone with the fire. Nothing left. At that time U Razinda was in Mandalay with some reasons. When he came back, he had to start from the beginning. With his great effort, he has set up a primary school for Koyins (samane) and boys and girls alike. At the time we went there, there were around 200 Koyins and 20 boys and girls. This is just an estimated number, may be more than that.

(photo) Resident Koyins taking lunch

future..??? and home for them

local kids in kindergarten

kindergarten for local kids

Entrance Gate

To Naung Taung, Hopone,

In Feb 18th, I flied back to Myanmar. On 21st, I took a bus to Taunggyi from Yangon. My friend and I already made appointment to meet in TGI. He left Mandalay by bus on the same day. When I got TGI, he was already there waiting for me at the bus-gate to Hopone. Our plan is to go to Hopone from where to proceed to Naung Taung Monastic Education School. Finally we arrived there by a three-wheelers just before lunch time. Our aim of coming here is to see what our senior Sayadaw U Rajinda is doing in his birthplace to help promote the education of the local. To share some of his effort in preparing the ground for future education center I upload some photos.

info

this blog is still under construction, will be dedicated to share info of cultural activities in general, educational activities in particular, of our beloved Paoh Land.