The shipment has miraculously arrived at PDO after a long journey. On the left Principal U Nayaka and on the right U Win Aung
On April 21, we received the terse message from Win Aung “Today, We took out the network accessories from the Mandalay DHL office. “Seven boxes packed with IT equipment (mostly access points, switches, routers, firewalls) had arrived. We had little hope that we would ever be able to retrieve the material. This short sentence sounded unbelievably good and was still visually “authenticated” by three photos.
It was the second large donation of IT components that Thomas Stöcklin had procured. It had taken more than a year to complete the transport to the destination PDO . Anyone who believed that once you had successfully mastered a difficult matter the first time, it would go much easier the second time around was taught the hard way this time: there is always room for “improvement downwards”. The first big obstacle: COVID 19, which delayed the procurement of customs documents by many weeks. When we already thought “Now we are through”, it came even worse. We had the news on the eve of February 1 that the goods had arrived in Yangon and would be shipped on to Mandalay. Then the news of the military coup reached us. Nothing worked anymore. It was hopeless to get information about the whereabouts of the shipment, let alone to follow the transport to the destination.
As a support association, we have made the education of young people one of our core principles. This shipment is also part of a long tradition of the Förderverein to support IT education in particular. In 2015, the company KohlPharma donated 54 laptops to us, which we brought to PDO by ship freight
(https://www.help-myanmar.org/wp/?p=1199 und https://www.help-myanmar.org/wp/?p=1706 .
So we do have experience in transporting goods to Myanmar. But this time – as described – everything was different. At the end, everyone could not hide a deep sigh of relief. Wolfgang Müller Wind, President of the Förderverein wrote to those involved:
Today I got the email with the incredible message: Our delivery of donated IT-Components for PDO has finally arrived, notwithstanding the actual difficult situation in all of Myanmar. We are so grateful to all of you at DHL who helped in many different places and positions to make this possible. You can really be proud of yourselves. Five stars for your performance.
Hopefully, the situation in Myanmar will be back to normal soon, our students would like to go to school again and make use of this new equipment.
Now everything went well, we thank those involved:
Thomas Stöcklin: He has already kicked off a first large shipment of 66 laptops. Here’s a quote from the Dec. 19, 2019, news story(https://www.help-myanmar.org/wp/?p=3880)
How it all began:
Thomas Stöcklin undertakes a private trip to Myanmar in 2018. In Mingun, on the south side of the great pagoda truncation, he discovers the sign of the sponsoring association: computer school.
Back home in Switzerland, he has the job as IT responsible for a school to replace the computers with new modern systems. He remembers Mingun.
The continuation follows at the end of 2019: Thomas has organized a donation of valuable IT material ( mostly access points, switches, firewalls, etc. ).
Win Aung from the PDO. As with the first time, he was the one to get the necessary Myanmar transport and customs papers. As always, we want duty exemption on the donation.
DHL Mandalay staff and Win Aung before transferring the cargo to PDO
DHL
The largest and most financially and organizationally costly support comes again this time from DHL.
Not for the first time: already in 2016 https://www.help-myanmar.org/wp/?p=2350 and during the first shipment of Thomas Stöcklin
(https://www.help-myanmar.org/wp/?p=3880 Published on: Dec. 19, 2019), DHL has provided great support as part of its DHL Helping Learners initiative. The transport to Myanmar did not cost the participants a cent. DHL covered 100% of the freight costs.
DHL Helping Learners ( https://www.dhl.com/us-en/home/press/press-archive/2019/dhl-introduces-charitable-program-for-underprivileged-students-in-the-americas.html)
The “Förderverein Myanmar e.V.”
We have learned a lot in this turbulent Corona year 2020. Alone the procurement of customs and transport documents from the German side was a marathon through customs authorities, tax authorities and countless initially incomprehensible terms and forms. Do you know what an EORI number is ?
Now the transport is finished: successfully ! Again a thousand thanks to all. Now the installation of the components follows. When this will happen, we don’t know yet. COVID-19 still makes impossible the travel of specialists who should do the installation together with students from PDO. After this small miracle, we are in good spirits that this step will also succeed
2021-05-04 Karl Bruch
