UMD students react to Myanmar earthquake
By: Abigail Roedersheimer
The United Nations has called for support for Myanmar after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake rocked the region in late March.
At the University of Maryland, students with ties to the nation felt an urge to help. Isabella Nyan-Win, the president of the Myanmar Cultural Association at UMD said she hopes a GoFundMe shared to the club’s Instagram page will raise awareness.
“I feel like a lot of people don’t know what's happening in Myanmar,” she said.
The GoFundMe, which is organized by the Burmese Student Associations Alliance, which consists of 10 student chapters at colleges across the nation, has raised over $13,000.
La-Min Lin, a UMD graduate student member of the association, feels the 2021 coup in Myanmar, which led to an ongoing civil war, means the country’s government won’t be of much assistance.
“It’s like a shift away from democracy, like overall in Southeast Asia, and being perpetrated by a lack of infrastructure that allows democratic Western countries to help out,” Lin said.
The U.S. Embassy in Myanmar announced $2 million in aid two days after the earthquake, with staff from the U.S. Agency for International Development to be deployed.
However, ex-officials from USAID, which lost 80% of its staff earlier this year, told the BBC that those cuts sidelined support from the U.S.
Since the earthquake, Myanmar has been struck by nearly 300 aftershocks, with some reaching neighboring Thailand and causing a building to collapse in Bangkok, where Lin has family.
Nyan-Win, who immigrated from Myanmar when she was three, says she found out about the earthquake through a text from her sister updating her on her family there.
“She told me that they were safe, and I was just relieved, and then I looked more into it and I just felt very devastated,” she said.
Nyan-Win says the association hopes to have a fundraiser on campus soon.