A heart-breaking as well as a heart-warming talk chronicling efforts to educate child labourers in Myanmar, for whom going to school is an impossible dream. Education holds a special place in the heart of Tim Aye-Hardy, himself a university student in 1988 when he fled the country following a crackdown on students calling for democracy. So when he came back to Myanmar for the first time after 25 years and noticed child laborers everywhere, he set out to establish a charity that would provide these children with basic education as well as essential life skills. He left his cushy job and life in the U.S. behind and embarked on a challenging few years. The project now provides education to 22,000 children.
Tim Aye-Hardy is a Co-Founder and Executive Director of myME: Myanmar Mobile Education Project (www.myMEproject.org), which provides education via mobile classrooms to children in Myanmar (Burma) who've been compelled into indentured servitude at teashop restaurants where they're forced to work long hours every day in order to sustain their families.
He was born and raised in Yangon, Myanmar (Burma). Tim grew up under multiplerepressive regimes and actively participated and spoke out during 1988 student-led protests in Myanmar by giving speeches to thousands of students on human rights and oppressions while he was attending Rangoon Art and Science University (R.A.S.U). Tim left Myanmar to the U.S. in 1989 after another brutal military coup took control of the country. He attended California Polytechnic University, Pomona and San Diego State University, and earned B.S. and M.S in Computer Science in 1998 and 2007 respectively.
