to ask us to expand the project over the border
into Burmese territory. They came in 2000, and
by 2002, we were in Myanmar to implement a
Sustainable Alternative Livelihood Development
programme at Yong Kha village, Shan
State. In 2006, MFLF received funding from the
Belgian government to implement a livestock
project and community enterprise development
programme in Balkh, Afghanistan. Next, the
Danish government provided funding for MFLF
to continue its project there. The project was
completed in 2012, by which time MFLF had
transferred the project to the local community
and the Afghan government through the
Ministry of Rural Reform and Development
(MRRD). MFLF’s Afghan manager was appointed
as the manager of the Afghan Rural
Enterprise Development Programme under the
MRRD, operating under the MFLF’s guideline
for community enterprise development.
That same year, MFLF was approached
by UNODC and the Indonesian government to
implement Sustainable Alternative Livelihood
Development in Aceh, Indonesia.
“We implemented similar programmes in
Myanmar, Aceh and Afghanistan, transferring
the projects to the local communities to operate,
as a model project that could be adapted in
other communities of the respective countries
as well. When these projects welcomed visitors
on study tours, it also made MFLF more widely
known, because we had succeeded with the
cooperation of the local communities, with minimum
investment.”
Then in 2011, MFLF launched the Yenanchaung
Project in Magway, Myanmar, followed
by projects in Tachileik and Mong Hsat
Township in Myanmar’s Shan State, in 2012.
“What we did was to introduce the Science of
the King and His Majesty’s principles, and adapt
them to each locale. In Myanmar and Afghanistan,
we couldn’t understand a word they said, but we had
no problem communicating. If we wanted a chicken,
we’d draw a chicken. If we wanted a spade, we’d
draw a spade. If we are sincere, they will sense it,
and work with us.”
We went in to change their lifestyle, and
taught them to eat everything they grew, and grow
everything they ate. More importantly, we found
them sources of water, offered them an alternative
livelihood. In Afghanistan, we worked with goats
and sheep, creating goat and sheep banks, similar
to the black pig bank in Doi Tung. That is to say, we
provided them with breeding stock, and when they
gave birth, they had to give back three lambs, which
could then be rotated to others. We didn’t even spend
all the capital; the sheep bank worked by rotation,
with the sheep population increasing all the time.
We even made “bare-foot vets” out of villagers who
could neither read nor write. At first, the death rate
of sheep was 30% per year. We aimed to reduce
that to 3% a year, and we did. The sheep were an
asset that could be exchanged for cash. When they
realized that raising sheep was better than growing
opium, they gave up their opium crops.
“This is how MFLF thinks. Do you think it’s
strange? They couldn’t do agriculture; they didn’t
have a single sheep at first, but they ended up