Empowering women through bakery
words by snow
LUSH ရဲ႕ May လအေၾကာင္းအရာကေတာ့ အမ်ိဳးသမီးေတြနဲ႔ပက္သက္တာကိုအဓိကထားထားတဲ့အတြက္ ဒီလ Eat အပိုင္းမွာေတာ့ ျမန္မာ အမ်ဳိးသမီးေတြရဲ႕ ဘ၀ရပ္တည္မွု၊အသက္ေမြး၀မ္းေၾကာင္းဆိုင္ရာ ပညာရပ္ေလးေတြကို သင္ၾကားေထာက္ပံ့ေပးေနတဲ့ Yangon Bakehouse အေၾကာင္းေလးေဖာ္ျပေပးခ်င္ပါတယ္။ ့ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံမွာ ပညာေရးအေနအထားအရေကာ ရိုးရာဓေလ့လႊမ္းမိုးမႈေတြအရပါ အိမ္မက္မ်ားစြာေပ်ာက္ေနတဲ့အမ်ဳိးသမီးေတြ အမ်ားၾကီးရွိေနပါတယ္။ဒီလိုအမ်ဳိးသမီးေတြကို ေျမေတာင္ေျမွာက္ေပးတဲ့ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြနယ္ပယ္အသီးသီးမွာရွိိေနပါတယ္။ F&B industry နယ္ပယ္မွာေတာ့ Yangon Bakehouse သင္တန္းေက်ာင္းတစ္ခုျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဒီသင္တန္းေက်ာင္းကို ၂၀၁၂ ကေနစတင္ျပီး Founder ၄ ဦးျဖစ္တဲ့ ေဒၚျဖဴျဖဴသင္း၊ Ms Kelly Macdonald, Ms Heatherly Bucher နဲ႔ Ms Cavelle Dove တို႔ကအျခား Partners, Non Profit Orgazinations, Sponsors ေတြနဲ႔ အတူပူးေပါင္းျပီး Pearl Condo Training Café အျဖစ္ စတင္ဖြင့္လွစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အမ်ဳိးသမီးမ်ားအတြက္သာ ရည္ရြယ္ဖြင့္လွစ္တဲ့သင္တန္းေက်ာင္းျဖစ္သည့္အျပင္ လူဦးေရနည္းနည္းႏွင့္ ေသေသခ်ာခ်ာတတ္ေျမာက္ေအာင္သင္ၾကားေပးတဲ့ သင္တန္းေက်ာင္းပါ။ သင္တန္းသတ္မွတ္ကာလကေတာ့ ၇ လျဖစ္ျပီး တစ္တန္းကို လူဦးေရ ၆ ေယာက္အထိသာလက္ခံသင္ၾကားခဲ့တာ အခုအခါဆိုရင္ သင္တန္း အၾကိမ္ေရေပါင္း ၁၄ ၾကိမ္ရွိျပီျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ထူးျခားခ်က္တစ္ခုကေတာ့ တက္ေရာက္သည့္သင္တန္းသူတိုင္းကို အခမဲ႔သင္ၾကားေပးျပီး လစဥ္လစာျပန္လည္ေထာက္ပံ့ေပးျခင္းပါပဲ။ ေနရာထိုင္ခင္းအတြက္လည္းစီစဥ္ေပးျပီး က်န္းမာေရးေစာင့္ေရွာက္မႈမ်ားလည္းေပးထားတဲ့အတြက္ ဒီေနရာမွာ သင္တန္းတက္ေရာက္ခ်င္သူေတြလည္းမ်ားစြာရွိလ ွ်က္ပါ။
Yangon Bakehouse သင္တန္းေက်ာင္းရဲ႕သတ္မွတ္ခ်က္ေတြျဖစ္တဲ့ အလုပ္အကိုင္မရွိသူ၊ ၀င္ေငြက်ဘမ္းျဖစ္ၿပီးပညာေရးအားနည္းသူ၊ မိသားစုကိုမွီခိုေနရေသာသူ၊ မုန္႔လုပ္နည္းအတတ္ပညာကို စိတ္၀င္စားၿပီး အသက္ေမြး၀မ္းေက်ာင္း လုပ္ငန္းအျဖစ္ ျပန္လည္ အသံုးခ်ခ်င္သူ စတဲ့ အခ်က္မ်ားနဲ႔ကိုက္ညီတဲ့ အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားေတြကို အဓိကထား ဦးစားေပးေရြးခ်ယ္ပါတယ္။ သင္တန္းျပီးဆံုးတဲ့ အခါမွာလည္း အလုပ္အကိုင္ အခြင့္အလမ္းေတြကို ရွာေဖြေပးတဲ့အတြက္ သင္တန္းသားေတြအတြက္ေတာ့ ဆႏၵျပည့္သလိုပါပဲ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ သင္တန္းသားေတြအတြက္ၾကံဳရတဲ့အခက္အခဲတစ္ခ်ဳိ႕ကေတာ့ သူတို႔ရၾကတဲ့အလုပ္ေနရာအတြက္ ျမိဳ႕တြင္းသြားရလာရမလြယ္ကူျခင္းနဲ႔ အလုပ္ခ်ိန္မကိုက္ညီမႈပါပဲ။
ျမန္မာရဲ႕မုန္႔လုပ္နည္းေတြထဲက တခ်ဳိ႕အပိုင္းေတြမွာ အိမ္နီးခ်င္းနိုင္ငံေတြျဖစ္တဲ့ ထိုင္း၊ အိႏၵိယနဲ႔ တရုတ္ ရိုးရာဓေလ့ေတြ လႊမ္းမိုးေနပါတယ္။ ေျပာင္းလဲတိုးတက္လာတဲ့ လူေနမႈစနစ္ကို ဦးစားေပးတဲ့အတြက္ Yangon Bakehouse မွ Cake ေတြအျပင္ steamed dough, pan fried items, Sweet pastries, toast breads စတဲ့မုန္႔ေတြကိုလည္း ထုတ္လုပ္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ျပီး European baked goods ေတြကိုလည္း မုန္႔ထုတ္တဲ့အခါ အရသာအမ်ဳိးမ်ဳိးပိုမိုေပၚလြင္ေအာင္ ထည့္သံုးျပီး သင္တန္းသားေတြအတြက္လည္း ေရရွည္ လုပ္ကိုင္ႏိုင္မဲ့ အသက္ေမြးဝမ္းေက်ာင္းတစ္ခုျဖစ္တာမို့ သင္တန္းေပးတဲ့ေနရာမွာလည္းအေသးစိတ္ သင္ၾကားေပးပါတယ္။
လက္ရွိဖြင့္ထားတဲ့ Pearl condo Training Café နဲ႔ Junction City Mall Café မွာ ကေတာ့ ေပါ့ေပါ့ပါးပါး European အစားအေသာက္ေတြနဲ႔ Bakery Café ပိုင္းေရာေႏွာထားတဲ့ Menu မ်ားကိုေတြ႔ရျပီး D2D (Door to Door)စနစ္ကိုလည္းသံုးထားပါတယ္။ Customers အမ်ားဆံုးကေတာ့ Non Profit Organizations က Customers ေတြအျပင္ တစ္ျခား Foreign နဲ႔ Local customers မ်ားလည္းလာေရာက္ သံုးေဆာင္ၾကပါတယ္။ လူၾကိဳက္အမ်ားဆံုးျဖစ္တဲ့ homemade artisan breads, cakes, salads, sandwiches နဲ႔ soup ေတြကေတာ့ အေရာင္းရဆံုး items ေတြပါပဲ။ Fresh juices နဲ႔ smoothies ေတြလည္းရနိုင္တာေၾကာင့္ သင္တန္းသူေတြအတြက္ေတာ့ မုန္႔လုပ္နည္းအျပင္ အေဖ်ာ္ပိုင္းကိုပါတတ္ေျမာက္ေစပါတယ္။
သင္တန္းေက်ာင္းတစ္ခုျဖစ္သည့္အေလ်ာက္ စီမံခန္႔ခြဲမႈအပိုင္း၊ သင္ၾကားေရးအပိုင္းနဲ႔ မုန္႔ထုတ္လုပ္မႈအပိုင္းေတြမွာ ေနရာတိုးခ်ဲ႔နိုင္ဖို႔လိုတာကလည္း လိုအပ္ခ်က္တစ္ခုပါလို႔ Yangon Bakehouse Management တာ၀န္ရိွသူမွေျပာၾကားပါတယ္ ။ “ ဒါမွလည္း သင္တန္းသူေတြအတြက္ ပိုမိုေကာင္းမြန္တဲ့ အလုပ္ေနရာနဲ႔ ေလ့က်င့္မႈေတြပိုလုပ္နိုင္မယ္လို႔ ထင္ပါတယ္။ လက္ရွိမွာေတာ့ သင္တန္းေက်ာင္းအေနနဲ႔ သူတို႔တတ္နိုင္တဲ့အပိုင္းကေန သင္တန္းသားေတြအတြက္ training ေပးနိုင္မႈေကာ ေဖာက္သည္ေတြအတြက္ပါလိုအပ္တဲ့ ဝန္ေဆာင္မႈေပးနိုင္မႈကို လုပ္ေပးေနတာေတြေတာ့ျမင္ေတြ႔ေနရပါတယ္။ တက္ေရာက္ေနတဲ့သက္တန္းသူေတြအျပင္ တျခားေသာ အမ်ဳိးသမီးေတြအတြက္ ထပ္မံတိုးခ်ဲ႕လုပ္ေဆာင္သြားခ်င္တဲ့ သင္တန္းေက်ာင္းရဲ႕အနာဂါတ္ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ ေနရာအခ်က္အခ်ာ၊ ကုန္က်စရိတ္နဲ႔ လိုအပ္ေနတဲ႔ ရန္ပံုေငြေတြအတြက္ survey ေတြလည္းလုပ္ေဆာင္ဖို႔လိုအပ္မွာပါ။”
LUSH အေနနဲ႔ကေတာ့ Yangon Bakehouse အေၾကာင္းတေစ့တေစာင္းေလ့လာၾကည့္တဲ့အခါျမင္ရတဲ့ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈနဲ႔ activities ေတြအတြက္ အမွန္တကယ္ အားရေက်နပ္မိပါတယ္။ စနစ္က်တဲ့ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ေတြနဲ႔ ျမန္မာအမ်ဳိးသမီးေတြအိမ္မက္ကို တစ္ဖက္တစ္လွမ္းကေန ပံုေဖာ္ေပးနိုင္တာ လြယ္လြန္းတဲ့ ကိစၥေတာ့မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ဒီလို ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ေကာင္းေတြနဲ့ ရပ္တည္ေနတဲ့အတြက္ Yangon Bakehouse ရဲ့ေနာက္ထပ္ထပ္မံတိုးခ်ဲ႕လုပ္ေဆာင္မႈေတြအတြက္ အကူအညီအေထာက္အပံ့ေပးခ်င္တဲ့ Partners ေတြ အနာဂါတ္မွာပိုမိုရရွိလာလိမ့္မယ္လို႔ ထင္ျမင္မိပါတယ္။
(English Version)
In align with our Women Empowerment theme this month; we are featuring Yangon Bakehouse which is helping to empower the livelihood of Myanmar women through skill trainings. Many women here cannot follow their dreams and ambitions due to Education and the traditional restrictions. However, there are many teams and organizations in various fields which are helping these women. In F&B sector, it is Yangon Bakehouse and its training school.
This training school was started in 2012 as Pearl Condo Training Cafe by four Main Founders; Daw Phyu Phyu Thin, Ms Kelly Macdonald, Ms Heatherly Bucher and Ms Cavelle Dove with cooperation from other partners, non-profit organizations and sponsors. It is mainly targeted for women and only allows a few people for conducive and effective learning. Duration of a class is up to 7 months with no more than 6 students. At present, there have been 14 classes so far. One unique factor is that the class is free and the students are paid monthly salary. The accommodation and healthcare of the students are also taken care of and therefore, many people are keen to join the classes.
Yangon Bakehouse mainly train for women who has no job, weak in education and earning, depends the family for with no career and who really interested in Baking process to apply as a career. Again the school find jobs in represent for the trainers. Some difficulties for the trainers in their new jobs are unsuitable working time and uneasy transportations.
The main criteria to join Yangon Bakehouse’s classes are that they are women who are jobless or low wage worker with low education background, depending on family for livelihood or those who are interested in bakery as career. The school also helps them to find jobs once the trainings are done. However, there are some problems such as the trainees getting the jobs in locations which are far away for them with difficult transportation.
Some receipts for Burmese Snack are heavily influenced by traditions of neighboring countries such as Thailand, India and China. In accordance with the development of social system, Yangon Bakehouse produces cake, steamed dough, pan fried items, sweet pastries and toast breads. European baked goods are also used in receipts to enhance the quality of the taste and also in training as these skills are important for them to start their careers.
Existing Cafes; Pearl condo Training Café and Junction City Mall Café,serve Menu which is a mixture of light European foods and Bakery café .Door to Door system service is also implemented. Most customers are from Non Profit Organizations, foreigners and local people. Most popular food such as homemade artisan breads, cakes, salads, sandwiches and soups are also the best selling items. Since fresh juices and smoothies are included in the menu, the trainees also learn about making drinks on top of baking.
According to the spokesperson for the management team, more places for administration, training and production bakery are needed for getting better trainings and workplaces for trainees.” Recently, we see that the school does as their best for the training and for the customers. For the future intention of extending classes and places for current trainees and other new learners, they might need to do survey for the needs of place hub, costs and funding.
Lush has been very happy to learn about the activities and the success of Yangon Bakehouse in helping Myanmar women to achieve their dreams in such systematic manner. We are absolutely convinced that Yangon Bakehouse will have many more partners to help out in their future expansion plans and we wish them many successes for years to come.
