We have just added some interesting and useful new fundraising items to our Online Shop. Please take a look at our new calendars, Peace Bags, and book!
The coming of every
new year is accompanied by idioms and sayings about new beginnings,
positive change, and starting over with a fresh face. And in a new
project, The Best Friend hopes to inspire a reminder of these promises
and hopes – both in individual’s lives and in Burma.
The Best Friend is now selling its own 2012 fundraising desktop calendar,
featuring a collection of portraits that capture the diversity and
reflect the optimism and resilience of the people of Burma.
The calendar features beautiful photography from
seven photographers, ranging from professionals to ‘lucky beginners’.
The photographs come from four areas of Thailand and three areas of
Burma, while the people in the images are primarily migrants and
refugees from Burma and the Shan, Karen, and Mon States.
The collected 18 photographs, carefully selected
from hundreds taken and contributed over the course of 2011, depict an
initially unintentional theme. While sorting through the photos, Best
Friend staff noticed a pattern emerging with the photographs they found
most poignant and powerful: they were all portraits. The assembled
images depict primarily close-up shots of individuals and their
expressive faces: young cheeks smeared with thanaka powder, eyes
wrinkled with wisdom, smiles curved into sincere and serene smiles.
One featured photographer, Martin Sercombe,
was eager to share his work with The Best Friend, contributing many of
the photos seen in the calendar. Sercombe is the founding director of
Media Projects East (www.mediaprojectseast.co.uk), a UK-based production company that initiates educational and community projects in Asia on a wide range of social issues.
Peace Bag
The bags are also available at The Best Friend Library in Chiang Mai.
Finally, we are very happy to be able to add one of the library’s perennially popular books to our Online Shop: Restless Souls: Rebels, Refugees, Medics and Misfits on the Thai-Burma Border by Phil Thornton!The quintessential book on Mae Sot and the Thai-Burma border, Restless Souls features the captivating true stories of ordinary people caught in the crossfire.
“The Karen of Burma have been locked in a titanic, sixty-year struggle for survival against the Burmese military regime, their story ignored by the rest of the world. Journalist Phil Thornton spent five years on the Thai-Burma border, crossing illegally into Karen State scores of times to find the families, freedom fighters, teachers, and medics resisting the regime.”
Because of the generosity of the author, we are able to offer this book through our Online Shop and our library in Chiang Mai for a small discount from the cover price, and still donate all of the proceeds to The Best Friend.
Thank you for considering supporting The Best Friend! Check out a few more preview photos from the 2012 calendar below…
Browse The Best Friend’s Online Shop
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