MUL Role & Activities in Mon Community
(March 2008)

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1.Facilitating Mon Women’s Seminar

On March 18, Mon Women’s Organization (MWO) held 3rd Anniversary of Mon Women’s Day which is recognizing the birthday of Mon Queen, Her Majesty Mi Jao Puu, who ruled Hongsawatoi Mon Kingdom peacefully and in a prosperous land in 16th Century.  Many participants from District level MWO members, community women leaders and leaders of NMSP also attended to this ceremony.  The ceremony organizers, women leaders also offer recognition prizes to 3 female teachers who are in the service of Mon national education program for 20 years and to 1 woman commander from Mon National Liberation Army (MNLA), who has worked in army service for over 20 years.
 
After the Mon Women’s Day ceremony, MWO continuously held a “Mon Women’s Seminar” and MWO asked the help of MUL to facilitate for the whole range of Seminar.  MUL’s General Secretary along with MWO’s General Secretary have facilitated for the whole Seminar.  On the first half day and second half day, it allowed the invited experts to speak on the following topics and allowed the participants to questions on the role of women.

Topics are:

Although there were no many questions in some topics, women participants have asked much questions on the role of political activities and leadership role in the Mon communities especially in the leadership role of NMSP.  Then, the women groups are still considering to improve the capacities of women in order to involve in the politics.

Then, the facilitators divided into 3 groups and let the participants (men, women and Buddhist monks) discussed on the SWOT analysis on the above mentioned issues and let they suggested how to overcome the problems and difficulties.  Then, let they discussed strategies to implement the necessary programs for the capacity building to women, other education and health programs.    

The Seminar took 2 and a half day, it also concludes to implement 5 programs in Women groups: (1) Political training for female activists; (2) Awareness activities for girl education; (3) Community health workers; (4) Women participation in community development program and (5) Buddhist teaching and peace building.  Then, with the participants, the implementing groups from the above-programs are formed to ensure the programs are implemented under the monitoring of MWO.

Capacity-building for Mon Buddhist monks

Due to the requests from Buddhist monks from monasteries in Bangkok and nearby area, MUL General Secretary and two trainers provided ‘Organizational Management Training’ for 5 days and additional training on drawing of organization’s constitution.  About 12 monks from leadership of various monasteries surrounding Bangkok, Samut Prakan Province and Chon Buri Province attended the training and the location is in a Mon monastery situated in western part of Bangkok.

In the Training, MUL Training Team provided the Buddhist monks in the following topics.

In Bangkok, the Mon Buddhist monks are struggling to form a Mon Monks Association (Thailand), but they have lack of knowledge to form an organization. Therefore, MUL Training team also supports them in developing draft formation and constitution of Mon Monks Association (Thailand) as religious and social organization. 

3. Participation in the first meeting of MAU

Due to the mandate from 4th Mon National Affairs Conference, the Mon Affairs Union was agreed to form with 4 representatives from overseas Mon organizations, 8 representatives from Thailand, 12 representatives from Monland, and 8 representatives from New Mon State Party area.  MUL has to mainly take responsibility to select 8 representatives from Thailand.  MUL approached all its networking organizations and let them select their leaders as representatives. 8 representatives are selected from southern Thailand, Mae Sot District, Bangkok, Samut Prakan area and Kanchanaburi Province. 
The first meeting of MAU was held on March 29 and 30, with selected representatives from all areas. In the first meeting of MAU Central Committees, the following agendas are discussed and elections of leadership were conducted. 

In the elections, MUL General Secretary was re-elected for General Secretary for MAU.  In order to review national strategies and adopted strategies for the Mon people, the following Affairs Committee were formed
with CC Members of MAU.

MAU Executive Committee was formed with 5 Presidiums, 1 General Sectary, 2 Joint Secretaries and 5 In-charges from Affairs Committee.  MAU Executive Committee will have quarterly meeting and CC will have general committee in every six months.