PHYO THURA HTAY
Building resilient communities in Myanmar through education and development
“The country that was hailed as the most generous nation in the world continues to suffer condemnation by the global community as a land of genocide,” says Phyo Thura Htay. “It hurts to see my country being labeled with ethnic cleansing.” He grew up in a restaurant and considers himself Burmese. Only sixteen during the crisis of 2012, Phyo was just entering Yangon Technological University (YTU), pursuing a degree in chemical engineering. All too aware of the atrocities of conflict, he is eager for the world to have a better understanding of his country, in order to help find solutions through international cooperation. He believes “the light at the end of the tunnel is distant, but still visible.”
Since its independence in 1948, he tells us, Myanmar has endured “ongoing civil war that has displaced millions of families, destroyed the dreams of countless children, and ultimately turned the once-richest country in Southeast Asia to a pariah state.” 135 ethnic groups often splinter a population that has reached fifty-two million. In their attempts to deal with the chaos, Phyo says, “successive military regimes tarnished the spirit of a federal union among the minority groups.” The people of Rakhine, especially the Muslims, “have suffered from corruption and misuse of resources by the military juntas, and are deprived of adequate infrastructure, education, and social welfare,” which is especially ironic since the region is rich in natural resources (oil and gas) and has a long coastline.
On his university campus, Phyo has personally experienced the government’s overreach whenever the police followed him on campus. He blames the military junta for “violating human rights in all forms, systematically decomposing the education system, and corrupting the civil services. It ran the entire economy with a handful of elite cronies.” Even the first civilian President has “no control over the Commander-in-Chief of the military, with a parliament where a quarter of the seats are military-reserved.”
Unfortunately, the designation as Rohingya “is still a sensitive term for most people in Myanmar,” Phyo says. He prefers Rakhine Muslims—“as per recommendations of the Rakhine Advisory Commission led by Kofi Annan.” Myanmar today is still in the process of complying with the commission’s recommendations, but official rights under citizenship are slow in coming. Phyo hopes to see “a harmonious society where both Rakhine and Rakhine Muslims prosper.”
Police followed Phyo on campus because of the government ban on clubs or student unions at universities. “The military rules managed to abolish all of them,” Phyo says, but in 2014, he pushed back a little. After negotiating with the university senate and faculty, and recruiting membership, Phyo founded his first group, the YTU English Club, to hold weekly thematic discussions in English. He would go on to win first prize from the Ministry of Education in a national English essay competition.
He also served as chairman of a student election committee, but his major involvement was through an NGO, Youth Social Force (YSF). He volunteered to organize a range of its activities from collecting plastic wastes to charity donations for underprivileged communities.
In October of 2015, Phyo put in forty hours a week as an assistant director for a semester at the Taxila Institute of Youth Leadership and Capacity Development, part of YSF offering programs to over 8,000 university students across the country. Then in January 2016, he became the Chief Executive Director of YSF, in charge of oversight of activities central to its four pillars—youth, health, environment, education—allocating budget items, and engaging with local and international networks of partners and donors. He was particularly involved in leadership trainings in public speaking, effective communication, and organizational management. “The best part of leading YSF comes from interacting with students and youths from all corners of Myanmar, seeing the multiplier effects of our work” through shared knowledge and experience.
“As someone from a technological background with experiences in community engagement,” Phyo says he is “passionate to enhance the digital literacy of his people. I have been exposed to astounding development, and I feel the responsibility to start acting.”
In 2016, he co-founded Scholar Mentors, a mentoring and tutoring academy to help rural Myanmar students with scholarships, familiarize them with English, learning how to conduct systematic research, verifying information online, and preventing the hate speech within their circles. “We managed to reach out to more than 10,000 students across the country,” he says.
During the fall semester of 2016, Phyo attended the Asia Pacific for You (APAC4U) by iM4U in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. After the Telenor Youth Forum Asia had awarded him a first prize for fighting youth joblessness in Asia, Phyo flew to Oslo, Norway to attend the actual forum.
Myanmar has come a long way since it faced international criticism within the ASEAN* association, Phyo says. After Norway, he traveled to Laos to participate in Model ASEAN meetings on “Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers.” Phyo assumed the powerful role of the Minister of Manpower from Singapore, which proposed a strict regulatory process that proved too exacting to pass. The Asia-Europe Foundation organized a Model ASEM meeting in 2017 and Phyo assumed the position of head of the Austrian delegation. He found both experiences exciting, yet “eye-opening” and a little overwhelming. “It was how I learned about the organizational dynamics of ASEAN and other multilateral arenas, and how Myanmar as a developing state could have leverage in the decision-making processes.” He also learned “to cherish the relations with the member states.”
Phyo does a lot of traveling for his various activities. As an intern in his field of engineering, he worked in Thailand at SCG Cement-Building Materials, Chemicals, and Packaging, an industry committed to sustainable development. Another internship was for Grand Nawaplastic as a quality control engineer. At TechCamp Cambodia H2.O, he supported healthy waterways in the Lower Mekong in Phnom Penh. Phyo’s combination of technical education and experience made him a natural choice to serve as Academic Officer at YTU’s reinstated Student Union in charge of academic partnerships, career opportunities, and developments in science technology.
Additional travels returned him to Oslo as a Fellow of Young Sustainable Impact (YSI) for five months over spring and summer, dedicated to innovation and entrepreneurship with youth as a driving force of development in collaboration with appropriate mentors. From there, he jetted to the University of Hong Kong’s Asia Institute of Political Economy, organized by The Fund for American Studies (TFAS) in partnership with George Mason University. The following January saw him in India for the ASEAN-India exchange program, spending two weeks in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Agra, and New Delhi.
Even though educating Myanmar’s youth is Phyo’s overall ambition, he may continue serving in ambassadorial capacities for quite awhile. He’s served for over eighteen months on the U.S. Ambassador’s Youth Council at the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon in ongoing participation. He’s on an advisory board to the U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar regarding the youth sector. He served for a month with KBZ Gender Ambassadors, a group of companies organizing Women’s Week Myanmar’s opening forum on inclusive growth. He has also become a Brand Ambassador through Aseanite for ten months within ASEAN to expand its network and advance its development agenda in Southeast Asia.
Currently, Phyo is a research and publication analyst for ProspectsASEAN, a website resource center on careers, education, and personal development.
*Association of South East Asian Nations
PHYO THURA HTAY
Building resilient communities in Myanmar through education and development
“The country that was hailed as the most generous nation in the world continues to suffer condemnation by the global community as a land of genocide,” says Phyo Thura Htay. “It hurts to see my country being labeled with ethnic cleansing.” He grew up in a restaurant and considers himself Burmese. Only sixteen during the crisis of 2012, Phyo was just entering Yangon Technological University (YTU), pursuing a degree in chemical engineering. All too aware of the atrocities of conflict, he is eager for the world to have a better understanding of his country, in order to help find solutions through international cooperation. He believes “the light at the end of the tunnel is distant, but still visible.”
Since its independence in 1948, he tells us, Myanmar has endured “ongoing civil war that has displaced millions of families, destroyed the dreams of countless children, and ultimately turned the once-richest country in Southeast Asia to a pariah state.” 135 ethnic groups often splinter a population that has reached fifty-two million. In their attempts to deal with the chaos, Phyo says, “successive military regimes tarnished the spirit of a federal union among the minority groups.” The people of Rakhine, especially the Muslims, “have suffered from corruption and misuse of resources by the military juntas, and are deprived of adequate infrastructure, education, and social welfare,” which is especially ironic since the region is rich in natural resources (oil and gas) and has a long coastline.
On his university campus, Phyo has personally experienced the government’s overreach whenever the police followed him on campus. He blames the military junta for “violating human rights in all forms, systematically decomposing the education system, and corrupting the civil services. It ran the entire economy with a handful of elite cronies.” Even the first civilian President has “no control over the Commander-in-Chief of the military, with a parliament where a quarter of the seats are military-reserved.”
Unfortunately, the designation as Rohingya “is still a sensitive term for most people in Myanmar,” Phyo says. He prefers Rakhine Muslims—“as per recommendations of the Rakhine Advisory Commission led by Kofi Annan.” Myanmar today is still in the process of complying with the commission’s recommendations, but official rights under citizenship are slow in coming. Phyo hopes to see “a harmonious society where both Rakhine and Rakhine Muslims prosper.”
Police followed Phyo on campus because of the government ban on clubs or student unions at universities. “The military rules managed to abolish all of them,” Phyo says, but in 2014, he pushed back a little. After negotiating with the university senate and faculty, and recruiting membership, Phyo founded his first group, the YTU English Club, to hold weekly thematic discussions in English. He would go on to win first prize from the Ministry of Education in a national English essay competition.
He also served as chairman of a student election committee, but his major involvement was through an NGO, Youth Social Force (YSF). He volunteered to organize a range of its activities from collecting plastic wastes to charity donations for underprivileged communities.
In October of 2015, Phyo put in forty hours a week as an assistant director for a semester at the Taxila Institute of Youth Leadership and Capacity Development, part of YSF offering programs to over 8,000 university students across the country. Then in January 2016, he became the Chief Executive Director of YSF, in charge of oversight of activities central to its four pillars—youth, health, environment, education—allocating budget items, and engaging with local and international networks of partners and donors. He was particularly involved in leadership trainings in public speaking, effective communication, and organizational management. “The best part of leading YSF comes from interacting with students and youths from all corners of Myanmar, seeing the multiplier effects of our work” through shared knowledge and experience.
“As someone from a technological background with experiences in community engagement,” Phyo says he is “passionate to enhance the digital literacy of his people. I have been exposed to astounding development, and I feel the responsibility to start acting.”
In 2016, he co-founded Scholar Mentors, a mentoring and tutoring academy to help rural Myanmar students with scholarships, familiarize them with English, learning how to conduct systematic research, verifying information online, and preventing the hate speech within their circles. “We managed to reach out to more than 10,000 students across the country,” he says.
During the fall semester of 2016, Phyo attended the Asia Pacific for You (APAC4U) by iM4U in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. After the Telenor Youth Forum Asia had awarded him a first prize for fighting youth joblessness in Asia, Phyo flew to Oslo, Norway to attend the actual forum.
Myanmar has come a long way since it faced international criticism within the ASEAN* association, Phyo says. After Norway, he traveled to Laos to participate in Model ASEAN meetings on “Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers.” Phyo assumed the powerful role of the Minister of Manpower from Singapore, which proposed a strict regulatory process that proved too exacting to pass. The Asia-Europe Foundation organized a Model ASEM meeting in 2017 and Phyo assumed the position of head of the Austrian delegation. He found both experiences exciting, yet “eye-opening” and a little overwhelming. “It was how I learned about the organizational dynamics of ASEAN and other multilateral arenas, and how Myanmar as a developing state could have leverage in the decision-making processes.” He also learned “to cherish the relations with the member states.”
Phyo does a lot of traveling for his various activities. As an intern in his field of engineering, he worked in Thailand at SCG Cement-Building Materials, Chemicals, and Packaging, an industry committed to sustainable development. Another internship was for Grand Nawaplastic as a quality control engineer. At TechCamp Cambodia H2.O, he supported healthy waterways in the Lower Mekong in Phnom Penh. Phyo’s combination of technical education and experience made him a natural choice to serve as Academic Officer at YTU’s reinstated Student Union in charge of academic partnerships, career opportunities, and developments in science technology.
Additional travels returned him to Oslo as a Fellow of Young Sustainable Impact (YSI) for five months over spring and summer, dedicated to innovation and entrepreneurship with youth as a driving force of development in collaboration with appropriate mentors. From there, he jetted to the University of Hong Kong’s Asia Institute of Political Economy, organized by The Fund for American Studies (TFAS) in partnership with George Mason University. The following January saw him in India for the ASEAN-India exchange program, spending two weeks in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Agra, and New Delhi.
Even though educating Myanmar’s youth is Phyo’s overall ambition, he may continue serving in ambassadorial capacities for quite awhile. He’s served for over eighteen months on the U.S. Ambassador’s Youth Council at the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon in ongoing participation. He’s on an advisory board to the U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar regarding the youth sector. He served for a month with KBZ Gender Ambassadors, a group of companies organizing Women’s Week Myanmar’s opening forum on inclusive growth. He has also become a Brand Ambassador through Aseanite for ten months within ASEAN to expand its network and advance its development agenda in Southeast Asia.
Currently, Phyo is a research and publication analyst for ProspectsASEAN, a website resource center on careers, education, and personal development.
*Association of South East Asian Nations