Train Leaders in Asia for Peace and Sustainability

Hello Dear Friends and Supporters,

This is a brief update on the current work of the School of English for Engaged Social Service (SENS).

There are a couple of ways we can explain the scope of our work these days. One way is to talk about the different programs we run. First, our primary annual program is the three-month SENS program that goes from January to April, next year January 11 – April 4, 2026. Second, we have a variety of programs for Myanmar people who have been forcibly displaced to the Thai border town of Mae Sot. We just completed a program for young adults there, and will offer further programs in October. Third, we offer one-on-one mentoring for a few of our alumni from various programs who need extra help and support due to life circumstances or due to the important work they are doing. That program is called 3OM. Finally, our Apprentice Leaders in Sustainability Program (ALPS) is a higher-level training in which our outstanding alumni are invited to deepen their learning through further study and by helping design and run our SENS programs.

In terms of the two fundraising projects we run on GlobalGiving, we can divide them into: 1) any program that works with a new group of students, and introduces them to our primary points of emphasis, namely: a) supporting self-discovery and self-awareness; b) developing the skills of a genuine and respectful listener as an important part of building relationships; c) raising awareness of social structures that promote inequality and violence; d) raising awareness of the seriousness of ecological challenges, especially the climate crisis; and e) encouraging students to take stock of their immediate social context as well as the global one, and respond energetically and with confidence by taking action in some form. This work with new students is supported by the project we are reporting on here, namely “Train Leaders in Asia for Peace and Sustainability.” 2) any program that provides ongoing support to students we have already worked with, made possible by our sister project, “Nurturing Learning Communities in a Time of Crisis.” Funds from that project enable the 3OM, ALPS, and Mae Sot follow-up programs.

In general our approach emphasizes the building of long-term relationships of mutual support. As our societies promote isolation in many ways, we find that one-on-one and face-to-face relationships of mutual trust help remind us of the joy of learning and working together, and of making real changes in the world together. This requires that we do our best to follow-up with our participants and provide concrete support in whatever way we can. When things are going well, as they have been recently, it is the participants themselves who take the initiative to maintain and deepen those relationships.

In the last few months, Paung (nickname), one of our ALPS members living in the border town of Mae Sot, began encouraging young people she knew to get together to share experiences, to learn together, and to meet on a regular basis. She invited me, as the director of SENS, to run a two-day workshop on listening practices based in Co-Counseling for this group at the end of August. This workshop, working with new students, was also supported by funds from this GlobalGiving project.

As often happens, participants in the workshop were somewhat hesitant to show deep feelings of loss or frustration with life’s challenges, though having been forcibly displaced from their home country, such feelings of loss and frustration are well known to them. Yet was clear that holding such feelings in or keeping them to themselves impedes their ability to move forward. As they begin to see in the workshop that one can cry, and laugh, and express one’s feelings fully without losing face, it brings great relief. And they often leave such sessions feeling deeper confidence in their own value as human beings, while at the same time the horizon of possibilities opens up.

We also held support groups in which the participants chose themes of shared concern, including in this case: Preparing to Attend University; Language Learning; Creating and Maintaining a Business; How to Attain Legal Documents, and more. The sharing in these support groups was energetic and lively.

I am grateful to the participants for inviting me and for opening up about their lives and experiences with me and with each other.

To you, our kind donors, we want you to know that your donations help us meet the expenses for workshops such as this Introduction to Co-Counseling. Even more importantly, they allow us to offer scholarships for participation in our upcoming SENS 2026 program at a time when funds for philanthropic work, especially from governmental institutions, tends to be shrinking. We would like to say thank you for the help many of you have given over months and years! We are deeply grateful.

We will have a four-day campaign from September 8-12 called Passport to Purpose, where any donation, even as little as $10, will be matched proportional to the funds we raise over the four days. Please stay tuned for information about this campaign, and tell your friends about this opportunity to support our work.

Thank you so much!

Ted Mayer, Designer and Director of the SENS Program

Links:

• INEB Institute Website
• Application Form for SENS 2026

• Our Brochure for the Upcoming SENS 2026 Program (PDF)
  

Dear Kind Donors and Supporters,

We would like to express our deepest gratitude for your generous support of our School of English for Engaged Social Service (SENS) scholarship project during the Little-by-Little campaign in March 2025. Overall, we received $3,366 from 27 donors, with $492 matching funds provided by GlobalGiving. This comes to more than half of one scholarship for one student, covering food, accommodation, travel expenses, and tuition fees. Your contribution allowed us to complete our SENS 2025 season in a more stable financial shape. It also enables us to continue offering scholarships to students who have few financial resources at their disposal. This year Little-by-Little prompted us to have greater faith in the collective power of the crowd. We were moved to see our friends and supporters mobilizing their resources to help the project through small (and some large) donations during the campaign period. And this mobilization of new supporters encouraged us to continue the work. 

On April 5th, we proudly celebrated our Closing Ceremony on Graduation Day for the fourteen students of the SENS 2025 program, along with two tutors who were new to the program, and thus also students in some sense. The three-month journey seemed too short for many of us, as we had come to live and study closely as one big family. In our estimation, levels of trust and mutual caring were higher this year. This is significant because our cohort was so diverse not only ethnically and linguistically, but also in terms of religious belief and socioeconomic class. In what may seem an insignificant gesture, our female students routinely borrowed each other’s national dress; Vietnamese women wore Indian saris or Myanmar longyis, and Myanmar and Indian women wore the long flowing Vietnamese  Ao Dai. Our workshop leaders or field trip hosts could rarely guess where anyone was from. During our graduation ceremony, the men joined in this exchange, and one of our students recited a poem she had dedicated to the many victims of the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck Myanmar last month. These were just small glimpses of what we saw evolving in our group: students have developed a view of the world that is not only broader in scope but also more caring and compassionate. Witnessing their growth gives us much hope for a new generation of open-minded and ethically motivated leaders. 

Over the ten years of SENS, peer listening practice has been the backbone that helps us build a relationship-based network of transformative educators and activists in the region. Having been given a foundation in the theory and practice of effective peer listening, many of our students decided to create a space for each other to listen and be listened to on a weekly or monthly basis, and some have continued to do so in the weeks following the end of the program. Many have found that their understanding of and connection to each other is strengthened after each session together. Our genuine bonds within the SENS alumni network were also proven in a recent moment of tragedy. Learning that one of our Myanmar alumni from Mandalay lost her home in its entirety during the destructive quake on March 28^th, her friends from SENS 2023, as well as those who did not know her personally from SENS 2024 and 2025, quickly gathered about 16,000 THB (~475 USD) to support her to rebuild and get settled in her house

In recent years, our efforts to engage SENS alumni through the higher-level Apprentice Leaders Program in Sustainability (ALPS) have borne fruit. Participants have come back to SENS in the roles of tutors and work team members. And their experience and understanding of SENS have made it far easier for us to run the program harmoniously together. After the closing ceremony, the SENS work team—made up of ALPS members as well as new tutors—held a meeting to evaluate the 2025 program and lay out directions for the coming years. We reflected on our roles in leading the classes, supporting tutoring groups, and also taking care of the students outside of the classroom. On that occasion, we also discussed the necessity of guiding the SENS network towards a larger movement in transformative education, peace, and sustainability. We believe that with ongoing personal support and a network of reliable, resourceful people, we will be able to nurture future generations of compassionate, principled, and clear-minded leaders in the region ever more effectively. 

Thank you for reading this report. And thank you for your companionship in this journey to support young leaders in Asia and beyond. We feel more confident than ever in saying: Never underestimate what your donations can accomplish!

We would be glad if you could share this report and/or talk about our work with your friends and family.

With warm wishes,

Ted Mayer 

Au, SENS Program Assistant