Having been born in Burma (now Myanmar), Master Hsin Tao has long been dedicated to preserving traditional Buddhist culture and providing assistance to orphans and poor children. Established in 2003 by the Global Family for Love and Peace (GFLP), the Yen Orphanage helps children become independent, and also inculcates spiritual values so that they will grow up to become emissaries of peace.
The Yen program includes a scholarship, skills training for family members, and free medical services. Moreover, the program’s teachers are provided with training and salary subsidies. All donations received are used to support orphans, poor children, and novice monks, and are earmarked for a specific purpose.
The scholarships are intended to promote overall social development and have been especially appreciated in remote areas. In June, 2004 the GFLP began to offer scholarships to exceptional students studying at 29 monastic schools in five districts, with the selection and dispersal process being supervised by committees organized by respected members of the local community. Every three months LJM staff visit each school to examine report cards, meet with parents, and receive suggestions from the schools. In its first year the scholarship was awarded to 250 impoverished students, as well as 41 orphans at the Margainda Monastery. Numbers of recipients steadily increased in the following two years, and in 2007 over 700 young students were receiving scholarships.
The scholarship program provides excellent students from impoverished backgrounds with an opportunity to study. Staff members conduct interviews with the students, collect data, and encourage the students to express their appreciation by regularly sending letters to their sponsors. Such gestures of gratitude are greatly appreciated and help to overcome the boundaries between cultures, blur the distinction between giving and receiving, and generate genuine respect and love between people of very different backgrounds.
Over the past three years the GFLP has been supervising and amending the program. In the first and second years all of the scholarships were awarded in Yangon, and a senior government official attended the conferral ceremony, which has helped the program establish cooperative relationships with related government departments. In the third year the conferral ceremonies were held in various towns and villages, showing that the program has moved into remote areas and is living up to its plan to provide educational assistance to talented students throughout Myanmar.
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