Parish man helps Burmese refugees
A BATEMAN parishioner and regular Murdoch University Catholic Chaplaincy devotee with a heart for Burmese children living in an unofficial refugee camp is set to host his second “Burmese Refugee Charity Concert” on 13 June at Railway Hotel, North Fremantle.
Perth man Josh Last, 27, is not only about to graduate from his masters in IT from Murdoch University but is also a musician. His music is personal and acoustic – he describes it as “relaxed” and “quite personal”.
At this charity concert he’ll be performing along with musicians from the Catholic and secular music scene including Art in Algebra, Donna Iverson and Lucy Peach.
He is driven with a spirit to help those in Burma because of a series of first hand experiences he’s had in recent years.
After living in Canberra for three years working as a consultant for IBM and Accenture, Josh closed that chapter of his life by making a two-week motorbike trip across the Nullabor plain on his Ducati.
He got a taste for the open road and not long after that in 2007 he visited Thailand, Laos and Cambodia and then began a six-month trip with a friend driving in a Toyota Hilux from India, through Nepal and across the European continent to France, England and Spain.
Toward the end of this trip Josh went to Dubai to visit his parents who introduced him to Maria Conceicao who started the Dhakar Project, a project that helps educate children in the slums of India as well as equip men and women with skills to earn an income.
For this work, Maria Conceicao was later awarded Emirates Woman of the Year in 2009.
But in 2007, when Maria was looking to initiate a new project on the Thai-Burma border she asked Josh then and there for help by doing fieldwork on the border.
So Josh visited Thailand to help Maria; he saw how much help these children needed. Twice in the last two years Josh has visited the Khung Jor Shan Refugee camp, an unofficial refugee camp in the midst of a country in the process of ethnic cleansing where small ethnic minorities in Burma are prevented from learning their own language and are forced to speak Burmese.
Being unofficial has its perks; while it doesn’t receive assistance from the Thai government, the UNHCR or other NGOs there is more communication and access to its occupants is more easily gained by outsiders, Josh said.
After his experiences of travelling the globe, Josh knows that Australians are “the luckiest in the world,” which motivates him all the more to reach out to those who are less fortunate.
“The young generation (there) don’t have the opportunities that we have; they don’t have the chance to build a future for themselves because they can’t work and they can’t really get an education without outside assistance,” he said.
He added that those who come to hear the music at the benefit concert would be helping build a future for children in the Burmese refugee camps.
This concert on Sunday will be the second Josh has run.
He hosted a similar benefit concert last year which raised $2000 that went towards Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) projects, funding fuel costs for the school bus in Burma and medicines.
The funds from this second concert will again go towards JRS projects including the Khung Jor Shan refugee camp.
On his February trip to Burma, Josh met 12 students studying for a business administration scholarship to study at Chang Mai, a course which helps locals develop skills to self-direct projects in their own community.
“The projects up there are about providing education and giving the young people hope and a chance for the future,” he said.
“I just feel a need to contribute because we are so lucky here in Australia. I’ve been to Thailand, India … and they definitely don’t have the opportunities we do. By helping provide an education does give them hope for the future,” he said.
“(We’re) not just providing a future for these kids but for their children’s children as well. And having hope is one of the things we have as Catholics: the Resurrection, life after death; having hope is something that I value as a Christian,” he said.
For more info on the Burmese Refugee Charity Concert head to www.whereongodsgreenearth.com – $10 entry + starts at 4.20pm