Help CFOB to track down which stores are selling "Made in Myanmar" products by helping to monitor the stores in your area. Because access to which companies are selling Burmese products is very difficult to obtain in Canada, people are needed to scout out the fine print on a store by store basis. With CFOB acting as a centralized information gatherer, individuals and groups can report back the names of stores where "Made in Myanmar" labels are found. If it is a garment product, please write down the CA number on the label and send the information to CFOB so that we can keep our lists updated. With the CA number, we are able to track the size of the shipment in which the garment came and from which company in Burma.

You can also help to stop the flow of Burmese imports coming into Canada by putting pressure on the businesses in question.. Write the store a letter or you can buy the product and then return it with a letter of explanation.

 Humanitarian Assistance

Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Canadian NGOs have provided significant support to border-based civil society organizations (CSOs) from Burma since the early 1990s. Several different branches of CIDA have supported CSOs in developing health services, humanitarian assistance programs, human rights projects, and the provision of food aid to refugees.  In 2000, Asia Branch supported the Canadian NGO Inter Pares in implementing a multi-year capacity-building program – the Capacity-Building of Burmese Refugees project (CBBR) – that provided strategic support to a number of CSO initiatives. The CBBR project was positively evaluated by CIDA in early 2004.  The ongoing work aims to consolidate the results of the CBBR project and incorporates recommendations

Three major components:

1. humanitarian assistance to refugees;

   We support the delivery of humanitarian inputs (food, housing materials, cooking fuel etc) and services to displaced people in the Thailand Burma border areas through the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC).

2. the provision of health services to displaced people and migrant workers;

   With the Burma Relief Centre (BRC), we support the Mae Tao Clinic, operated by Dr. Cynthia Maung on the Thai Burma border, its satellite clinics, the Backpack Health Worker Team program and a variety of other health initiatives to improve and expand the delivery of health services to people from Burma in Thailand, India and inside Burma.

3. support to the activities of CSOs related to community issues and actions on critical issues such as violence against women, environmental degradation, forced displacement, access to information, and human rights.

   Either with the BRC or the Canadian NGO Committee, we assist CSOs working in areas such as human rights documentation and protection, training, information collection and dissemination, or policy-related issues such as drugs and environmental concerns, to implement their own programs and represent the interests of their constituencies. We promote enhanced inter-ethnic (eg. Mon, Karen, Shan, Karenni, Burman, etc) and inter-sectoral (eg. women’s groups, media and environmental groups, etc.) collaboration and action on issues of concern to their communities. For example, we support the coalition of inter-sectoral organizations, Karen Rivers Watch, which works on the Salween dam issues. These community activities are conducted in Bangladesh, China, India, Thailand and Burma.