Nancy works for a large international corporation that manage a chain
of department stores and shopping centers in several Asian cities.
She works for corporate relation department. Before
moving to take up the current responsibilities she has been with marketing
for several years. As she is currently heading the top management team of
corporate responsibility and public relation, she is constantly
looking for ways to improve the global image of her organization.
In the last two months she has been traveling around the world visiting
and checking out department stores and shopping centers. Wherever she went
she felt something wrong. The heat! Yes, the weather has been hotter
and warmer in the places previously known to have fair climate in the same
period. She has not enjoyed much of some outdoor activities lately due
mainly to the climate change - the global warming.
Well, what can she do. She ponders. She remembers what she did
when a large scale ocean Tsunami hit south asian countries in Indian ocean
in December 2004. Her corporation sent donations to build fishing boats for
some of those fishermen who lost their boats in the great waves.
She visited the site where the boats were being built to make sure
her organization name and logo were clearly painted on both sides of each and
every boat. She also successfully persuaded a welknown local English
language newspaper to give her a generous space in the paper.
When the tourist boat from Mandalay she is taking arrives Nyaung U jetty near
Bagan she notices children crowding the boat landing place.
They must be wanting for something. She believes.
She does not like it and immediately lose her appetite for the ancient
archaeological monuments temporarily at least.
But then she comes here to take a lot of photos. She knows photos are useful
now or in the future in one way or another. There is yet one more important
thing.
Once in her hotel room with the Ayeyarwaddy river view,
she opens her suite case to take out 24 different containers
of cosmetic sprays, lotion and the sorts she uses to keep her corporate
looks & scents at the most tip-top impression.
Suddenly she gets the idea on how to
use the buzz words like green, environment, global warming.
Her department stores have been using plastic shopping bags for so long.
She remembers yearly use of these environmentally un-degradable plastic bags
is more than 200 millions. That is enormous. Think about the damage it has been
causing to the world and eco-system.
She opens her note book and starts scribbling:
to change to use bio-degradable shopping bags, publicise this as our action for corporate responsiblity
to set up a show to promote eco-friendly products. contact producers of these products and sell them shopping places
make a calender of such shows (depending on the success of the first) to continue the activity
order advertising director and art director to add the words: green, environmentally friendly, etc. into our public ads and websites
think about edutainment programs we can set up in which we sell areas to participators
find out what tax deduction we could enjoy out of these activities
publicity is important - it is number one!!
Next day evening Nancy comes back to her hotel room after taking lot of
sunset photos. She is going to have a dinner at 8 p.m. with a group of business
people from Yangon, Mandalay and Bangkok. Her office has arranged
the meeting for corporate networking. She will get to know
new information and opportunities for new businesses.
She is always hoping to start a small scale shopping center in Yangon.
Laws and regulations here in Burma are scanty, not adequate, and
government offices are full of corruption.
And now in addition to gain
region-wide presence and profit, she must find places to where they can
send (dump) all those already ordered plastic bags - these are hundreds
of millions in number! Not just bags, all those environmentally un-friendly things.
Yes, all of them from their locations where they must promote "green-ness".
So it is very important she needs to materialise a joint venture
or a kind of partnership soon in Burma.
In fact, they have tons and tons of things from the shops in their
stores that need to be sent 'away'. These include second-hand electronic items,
Factory products rejected by quality control, such as digital cameras and so many.
These come all the time and damping has been a great problem for the shops,
and her corporation is helping them.
Si Thu has been wondering when his younger brother, Thaw Dar, would stop crying.
He knows Thaw Dar is hungry. Their father is working in
a toddy farm 30 km away and will not come back until well after sunset when he would get
daily wage which is not enough for even a day food, let alone
to pay for clothings and to send the children to school.
Their mother works in a small hotel. She cleans the rooms and changes
the sheets. He does not know how much his mother receive. It is a tiny amount,
he understands.
In the past he used to study in a monastery where the monks
taught the children literature and the subjects on sociology and math.
He had to do cleaning of the monastery compound, and help monks
take care of and manage everything. In the early morning he had to walk
with the monks to collect alms in the village.
In return he obtained primary level education
as well as free breakfast and lunch.
Some years ago his friends started telling him about western tourists
who arrived Bagan. They said they could get free gifts such as
foreign cigarettes, chocolates, toys, sweets, and even money. They just
went to
wait at the jetty when the boat came. At first he did not believe it.
One day he went to see what was going on at the jetty. One foreign
tour group came in the double decker boat. They looked at the children, took
photos, and some of them handed gifts to the children. Si Thu got
a pack of cookies and a plastic toy. The food was very delicious -
the kind he had never known before.
From then on he often went to wait. Besides,
he also went to the temples to offer tourists guide service and
to beg.
These have been going on and he has been losing interest in studying.
If he goes to the monastery he must help do many things.
There are many children literally begging from the tourists. Some of
them offer services and or sell flowers.
However things have been turning again. Nowadays not many tourists are
giving away things to the children. That is good, his father says.
You must work to earn, not beg to get things free. But Si Thu is still
keeping the memory of how he got those delicious cookies, the cigarettes that
he sold to older friends to get money, and is keeping his duty of being
at the jetty at the boat arrival time.
