Updates, Research Resources and NGO Reports from the Tea Leaf Center

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Research Tools, Resources, and Reports
The Tea Leaf Center | Issue #18

Happy New Year everyone.

Thank you all for your support, generous donations, and encouragement this past year. We are proud of the work the Tea Leaf Center has accomplished and look forward to another year of collaboration, sharing, and building our community. At the end of last year we posted a year in review blog. Below is a quick summary.

But first, a special thank-you to those who donated to the scholarship fund. The money you donated contributed to over 20 scholarships and course discounts we have been able to give for our trainings.

David Kaiser

Maggi Quadrini

Jennifer Thomson

&
all the anonymous donors

UPDATES

This year is off to a great start. On December 25, 2019 The Tea Leaf Center became a registered Thai Company. This means The TLC will be able to host more events and conduct more activities as a legal entity.

We closed out 2019 with an excellent Writing for Research and Advocacy course. It was held in Mae Sot with 18 participants.Thank you to the Mae Tao Clinic for letting use the space in exchange for course fees. We will post some of the persuasive writing assignments on our blog in the coming week.

We are hosting our first Writing for Research and Advocacy course in Yangon on January 20th - 24th. Greenovator has kindly allowed us to use their conference space in exchange for course fees.

We are also conducting three more bespoke training courses - two in Mae Sot and an additional one in Yangon.

If you have a need for trainings, We are happy to travel anywhere to do a training, please just let us know where you need us. Below is what we can currently offer. But feel free to request special trainings and we can help design and find experts in our network to train in them or refer you to others with similar approaches to ours.

Resources and Tools

Greenovator is an amazing social enterprise from Yangon. Started by two NEED-Myanmar alumni, they created a mobile app called greenway for farmers. This is an inspiring way to integrate technology into community development.

Facebook is the go to for social media, marketing, and communication for a lot of people around the world. Facebook users around the world have raised concerns about privacy, data collection, and security. Here are a few alternatives to Facebook that have gained some ground in 2019.

Looking for inspiring ways to visualize data? The Lowy Institute has a beautiful interactive map that shows diplomatic networks.

Good research requires being able to critically understand your sources and other research that supports or rejects your findings. Dr. Shore and Dr Shanahan remind us that anyone can find research that supports our claims. But, we must take the next steps to critically analyze those claims as well.

You can cherry pick a study that supports what you want the outcome to be, or you can look at all the studies and see how they average out ( you know, the science of reading rather than the faith of reading) https://t.co/rYrPJEDOUe
— Timothy Shanahan (@ReadingShanahan) December 15, 2019

For those who say, 'You can find research to support anything," here's a great reminder from @ReadingShanahan. Critical consumers look at conflicting conclusions and dig into methodology, measurement and meaning to better understand science. @researchED_US #whatworks https://t.co/XWYVd3aSsk
— Dr. Jane R. Shore (@shorejaneshore) December 15, 2019

Civil Society Research Outputs

The Kachin Women's Association Thailand released a briefing paper that documents crimes committed by the Burmese Army between March and August 2019. This is a very good example of documentation and record keeping.