Hey You What If?

A film-concert dedicated to the formation of the World Odessa Club under the leadership of Mikhail Zhvanetskiy. "Let many be proud of the open spaces and fields," Mikhail Zhvanetskiy himself says of his beloved city, "someone falls into his beloved birch, thinking that it grows only here .. We have the only homeland - Odessa, the only Odessa party. Odessa lies halfway around the world - from America to Australia. Odessa is a phenomenon, Odessa is a character. Odessa was, is and will be one of the most famous cities on this temporary globe. And we, the remaining, and you, who left, to live and live with her - Odessa is worth it to dedicate youth to her and old age, and she, as her native land, will definitely pay back. "

I have currently been 8,000 miles away from my home country of Myanmar for over a year already. While my status of being abroad in the U.S. is keeping me safe and sound, I primarily worry about how the lives of my family and my fellow citizens are at stake. A few weeks ago, my family heard gunshots near our home for the very first time in their lives when the police opened fire on peaceful individuals who were protesting the military coup. Our women are putting themselves on the front lines to protest while facing the risks of sexual assault. Our freedom fighters are getting arrested in the middle of the night by the same forces who were sworn in to protect us. Our civil workers are putting their lives and jobs on the line to protest against countless years of censorship, racial gaslighting, and generational trauma that the Burmese military inflicted upon our people. We are all trying our absolute best to preserve the remaining fragments in our home country. In response to seeing how the military coup in my home country of Myanmar was not acknowledged thoughtfully in the West, I decided to start a mutual aid initiative. Respectfully named after Burmese mohinga noodles, The Mohinga Project is more than just my senior thesis- it is the culmination of years of self-directed learning and resistance to the boundaries of military censorship. So far, I have initiated activities including but not limited to: political actions (starting with an open letter), interviews about how to join in the effort to support Myanmar's democracy, guest speaker appearances, explanation videos with culturally significant recipe sharing, and other fundraiser efforts. Together, all the components of my thesis are cohesively asking Americans to extend beyond their borders for democracy and give what they can offer to provide material support to people in Myanmar