Meet Mway Mway

January 31, 2022

At GCA’s social enterprise Sojourn Studio, we provide dignified work in Thailand for women from Myanmar. Frequently in Thai society, people from Myanmar are viewed as lesser-than and systemic oppression increases their vulnerability ten-fold.

Migrant communities are often targeted by traffickers, loan sharks, and good jobs that pay fair wages are few and far between.

Despite all of the odds against them, it is in these very communities that we have met some of the strongest, most resilient people alive:

Young women like Mway Mway.

Mway Mway grew up in a large family with six siblings and her parents always struggled to provide for their needs. To help pay off her family debt, Mway Mway decided to quit school at age 11 and look for work. The job she found was seven hours away in Thailand’s largest city, working as a maid for a family she had never met. Thankfully, the job was legitimate but it took an entire year and a half of hard work to pay off the debt. Finally Mway Mway was able to return back home to Mae Sot.

That is when the Sojourn Studio team met her. We invited Mway Mway to join our vocational training program for teens. Her natural talent and determination quickly made her one of our best artisans.  Through the community of love and support we’ve cultivated in our studio, we watched Mway Mway’s personality completely transform. The quiet, insecure girl we first met was becoming a confident, strong, young woman, full of laughter and spunk. 

Mway Mway got married at 17 years old and began working full-time soon after. Despite making a living wage, she struggled to save any money because she always helps out family members when they have needs. Because of our amazing buyers, Sojourn Studio has been able to provide consistent work hours and Mway Mway now has a savings fund of her own. She has scholarship funds available to her to make up for the education she never received.

 All of which she has fully earned… not as a beneficiary but as a professional artist.  

When she gave birth to her first child this Fall, like many other women from Myanmar, Mway Mway was treated as a third-class citizen. Under the guise of COVID, the nursing staff sent her home but kept her son at the hospital for the very first two weeks of his life. She was devastated.

During this emotional rollercoaster as new young mom, Mway Mway had the full support of the community of women she has been doing life with, in the studio, for over 4 years! They helped her cope, and our Thai staff used their voice to elevate hers so she could finally bring her son home from the hospital.

For all of you who have purchased jewelry from Sojourn Studio or one of our partners, thank you for providing dignified work AND empowering a beautiful community of sisterhood for women from Myanmar. You truly are transforming lives!