We all want the same, don’t we?

This week I had the opportunity to facilitate a Youth Exchange workshop at Beam Education Foundation in Chiang Mai. Every three months a group of Burmese refugees - in their early twenties, working at different Community Based Organizations in Chiang Mai - gather to discuss topics of their interest. This time round about thirty students targeted the topic of education in Burma. We discussed all levels from primary school to university, collecting dreams and ideas on how to improve Burmese education. Two NGO-workers, Leena from Finland and Meaghan from the US, added an international perspective by doing presentations and Q&A on school systems in Finland, US and UK. The outcome of the day was very clear. And it surprised me, although I know It shouldn’t.

Ever since the current military regime in Burma staged a coup in 1988, education deteriorated to a point where post-secondary education was almost non-existent. Nearly all of Burma's universities and colleges have been mostly closed since the student-led protests in 1988, in which thousands of non-violent demonstrators were gunned down. Universities in Burma have been open sporadically over the last decade and most academic materials are even more decades out of date. But the greatest barrier to attend primary and secondary school for sure is poverty. Cuts in government spending on education meant an increase in costs to families in the form of a series of taxes and donations, to be paid to the education department, the school, and the teachers. Every little ‘extra’ has to be paid for. Over fifty percent of the children drop out of school before fifth grade. Children in ethnic minority conflict areas are even less likely to have access to school, as struggle for food security takes priority.

So maybe I was expecting the students to be political about their education system. Or maybe I thought they would avoid the personal, focusing on conditions and curricula. And maybe I was also guessing culture would somehow influence the outcome. But the fact of the matter was that most students expressed basic needs. As they got more personal they talked about copy-paste education, lack of room for discussion, power-distant teachers that don’t listen to students, non-existing equality and no personal approach whatsoever. The students long for critical capacity and ways for them to express opinions. They want dedicated and involved teachers, who are consistent and open-minded. Not to mention they’d like some time to daydream, relax and have fun. And that’s when it hit me; these of course are fundamental human needs. It’s all about participation, about understanding, about identity and about freedom. And it doesn’t matter the least bit whether you’re from the Netherlands, Finland, US or Burma. We all want the same, don’t we?

Fundamental human needs are constant through all human cultures and across all time periods (Manfred Max-Neef). What does change over time - and across cultures - is the strategies by which we satisfy these needs. That is a part of what Coach Cultures is about; being able to help people with different backgrounds, without force-feeding different cultural ideas. But when it comes to fundamental needs we are all very similar, so we can forget about our differences. Max-Neef distincts nine fundamental human needs: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom. Each one breaks down into ‘who do you want to be?’, ‘what do you want to have?’, ‘what do you want to do?’ and ‘how do you want to interact?’.

Sometimes we need a lively experience to remember the basics. To me, listening to the students at Youth Exchange made me realize we are similar in so many ways. All too valuable, especially since I have been focusing a lot on differences lately. Yes, sometimes focus dazzles us. Re-realizing we are all very much the same - I am you and you are me - I immediately felt even more involved. So even though the outcome shouldn’t surprise me, I’m only happy it did.