Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative

The Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative focuses on open society issues throughout the region, particularly in Burma but also in other countries where essential freedoms are threatened or non-existent.

Burma

The primary goal of the Burma Project is to work with the international community and Burmese around the world in an effort to effect democratic change in the country. The Project believes that the basic foundation for building a democratic, open society will depend on the country's human resources. A solid education system based on critical thinking, the right to uncensored information, and the ability to question with impunity are all essential to a democracy—and all are currently lacking in the country.

The Burma Project also supports a range of education and language programs for ethnic refugee youth in Thailand and India. Such programs will be replicated inside Burma as soon as conditions permit.

Indonesia

In response to the massive problem of corruption in Indonesia, OSI funds an indigenous organization, the Tifa Foundation, that aims to attract a variety of other funders to support its work in the long term. Tifa, founded by a dozen Indonesians from the civil society sector who are committed to fostering open society in their country, focuses on capacity building, local government, human rights, media, and legal reform. The foundation works mostly in Java, though it is committed to reaching out to outlying islands and regions in the Indonesian archipelago.

As the government decentralizes, democratic participation at the regional level is essential to ensure that local elites and low-level government officials are not the sole beneficiaries of this new redistribution of power.

Other Southeast Asia Initiatives

In addition to its work in Burma and Indonesia, OSI has made a substantial number of grants to organizations in other Southeast Asian countries, including Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. The Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative currently supports several efforts crucial to maintaining a vibrant civil society and democratic development in Southeast Asia, among them human rights initiatives, the ASEAN People's Assembly, and the Journalism Center in Hong Kong.

The Burma Project/Southeast Asia Initiative maintains its own separate website at www.burmaproject.org.