Why Myanmar Needs More Podcasts

The People of Myanmar need access to educational content on multiple platforms more than ever especially after 2021 Coup d’état. Find out why in this podcast introduction.

Hello everyone!

This is your host Sayar Henry and thank you for paying attention to the first episode of my podcast.

Because this is just a short episode to introduce this podcast, I’m not going to teach you anything in particular as it was promised in that awesome intro you just heard.

Instead, I’ll just briefly explain who I am and why this podcast came into existence.

For those of you who have never heard of me and my language courses, please check out my Facebook Page and YouTube Channel.

You can simply type “Sayar Henry” in the search box of either Facebook or YouTube and the right links should appear.

I will also put relevant links in the description for the sake of your convenience.

Well, to start off, I’m a language teacher from Myanmar who lives and teaches mostly in Yangon.

I love language learning, reading, catching up with science & technology, and of course teaching and creating content for my students.

Prior to publishing this podcast, I have spent nearly a decade of my life developing and delivering English learning courses specifically designed for Myanmar students.

But this year, in the morning of February 1, the fate of my country fell into the wrong hand.

It was the day the military overthrew the elected and legitimate government by force based on unverified and unjust accusations.

Starting from that day, everyone’s life in Myanmar turned upside down all of a sudden.

Even at the time I am recording this episode, it has been more than 4 months that my fellow citizens of Myanmar are going through a tough time fighting for democracy in each and every state and region across the country.

So far, hundreds of civilians including women and children had been killed just because they protested peacefully and stood for what they believed in.

And on top of experiencing countless arbitrary arrests, brutal crackdowns and human rights violations, the people of Myanmar have also lost the right to express freely and the right to access internet without restrictions.

To people like me who value education, philosophy and creativity, and to teachers who embrace the impact of technology on learning process, losing freedom of speech and having only limited access to information is unacceptable.

In our modern world, being exposed to educational and inspirational content on the internet is a crucial part of learning and growth not only for students but also for teachers and parents.

The younger population known as Generation Z would be the perfect example of a generation that is effectively enhanced in the right direction by having full access to the internet for several years before the coup.

With their minds sharpened and their perspectives broadened with modern knowledge of humanity, these young people are now the ones leading the revolution to fight against the military that simply does not care about democracy and human rights.

Knowing this, the military junta will no doubt use everything in their power to keep the ordinary people in the dark for as long as possible.

It means content creators and educators cannot simply rely on social media giants such as Facebook and YouTube anymore as these sites and services – among many others — are already blacklisted by the junta.

Without strategic and collective resistance, it’s only a matter of time the country will become dark like North Korea.

In times like this, everyone is more or less depressed with broken dreams and stolen future.

So, until we win back our democracy, if we want to keep our people educated and motivated, we need to create new streams of educational content on different channels and platforms outside of popular social media sites.

And that is exactly why I decided to publish this podcast.

Because once a podcast is created and published, it can be accessed from more than one platform making it less prone to limitations and internet restrictions.

It also means that downloading and sharing the files would be much faster, either online or offline.

Besides, the advantage of audio files over video files is that these can be shared to less fortunate people with no internet access. 

All you need is a voice recorder app and any phone that has a speaker. 

The audio quality will drop, of course, but hey, it helps to reach out to as many students across the country as possible.

I really hope that listening to this podcast will help you to practice listening skill and pronunciation, and to grow your vocabulary along with spoken and written grammar.

And of course, I will also try my best to cover much more than just language learning but that …. is a thing for another episode in future.

Thank you for listening and I hope you come back for more.

Stay safe and have a great day ahead.

Justice will prevail.