Inspirational people: Moe Moe

An interview with Moe Moe, SCT Programme Manager

Today, I interviewed one of SCT's vital team members on the ground, Programme Manager, Moe Moe. I felt excited—I’d had the pleasure of meeting Moe Moe at a Safe Child Thailand event a few months ago, and she was both bold and determined, but also one of the kindest souls you could wish to meet. As our meeting started and we exchanged smiles and greetings, I was met with her familiar warmth and openness—always a refreshing quality.

Our first topic of conversation was her impressive story, the powerful memory of which had stayed with me since I'd heard it a few weeks prior. As a child, Moe Moe had lived at a boarding home and then with a foster family. After completing high school, she returned to her hometown in Myanmar. Her purpose in going back was to apply for a passport, which she needed to pursue a university education. She has been awarded a university place in Bangladesh, where she lived for 5 years, before coming to work with Safe Child Thailand. Her motivation for her work comes from her own past, but also from what she saw around her.

Moe Moe graduates from ADAPT's Community Inclusion programme in Mumbai, 2026

After 7 years at Safe Child Thailand, her responsibilities in the field have only grown. When I asked her how she would describe her job, she let out a soft chuckle and said that it wouldn’t be easy, since she does a bit of everything. A typical day in her life consists of working with the multitude of partners we have in Thailand, along with the beneficiaries and monitoring the funding— she follows through with checks on the student homes, as well as liaising with our London office.

She described her days as being a camera for the team in London so they can grasp the ground reality better, and this has helped immensely in designing our programmes and direct implementation. She spoke with a great deal of passion about increasing visibility for the charity in the Mae Sot region (Safe Child Thailand have worked in Thailand for 44 years and in Mae Sot for 18 years).

For years, she has found that visibility still remains an issue. As such, a crucial part of her job, she is often at events and conferences and involved with other large players within the NGO and INGO world. Whilst working in the field, she has encountered her fair share of challenges. In terms of her work, her favourite part of her job is that she gets to help young people—to give them guidance, opportunities, education and support, but she does find that every problem cannot be responded to, as is the case with most organisational work.

Another prevalent challenge she faces is being a Burmese woman, though she has spent, and continues to spend, a considerable amount of her life living in Thailand and speaking Thai fluently. For her, being a young woman in a culture where being both a woman and being young garners stigma and is taxing. She smiled slightly and, with a sigh of disappointment, spoke of the older generations that don’t take her seriously in the field due to her age and gender, and that is, yet another fight she fights and will fight. In addition to this, her being a woman in a position of power and influence is fairly intimidating to the plethora of men she works with, who try to patronise her by calling her “daughter”, as is common in many Asian countries to use endearing terms for younger women.

She recounted fondly a conference to which she was not invited, though all the major NGOs in the region were, so she did what she thought was best and showed up anyway. We chatted more about the various people she had met throughout her career, and she recounted a conference in which Myanmar’s law regarding birth rights was being discussed—a law she disagreed with, as it led to the exclusion of women from becoming president if they were married to a non-Burmese man. Moe Moe asked a poignant question regarding the unfairness of the law. One of the attendees, who was giving this talk on a policy forum, from a large INGO, dismissed her point entirely by saying that it does not matter—portraying how much work was still to be done at the policy level, especially by those who work in these contexts without knowing anything about them. Naturally, we moved on to discussing feminism as a concept within the country and the region. She pointed out that, like most of Asia, it was not a strong topic of discussion as compared to the West, but there were seeds being sown, and that was still progress.

Moe Moe’s favourite part about her job is helping young people, being able to make a difference in their lives, to be there for them, to make them feel understood, to make them understand that there was someone there for them—that someone cared. I asked her how she coped with the emotional burden of her job, and she very conscientiously talked about the different hurdles that the migrant people from Myanmar faced, like language barriers, nationality differences and having a sense of statelessness since the Thai government does not actually recognise them as being refugees.

The way she copes with the emotional burden of her job is to understand that what she does is important and bigger than her. She moves past it by treating everyone she comes across with kindness, as she likened it to a book that she reads, with every individual being an author trying to get across a unique story to her. And she cherishes these stories.

As our conversation came to a close, we discussed some of the things she was looking forward to—the plethora of projects coming up in the region along with a closer working relationship with the London. She joked about COVID-19 and remote working stating that this had always been the norm for her and now everyone had a taste of it. She concluded with the same warm smile with which we began, as she rushed off to her next meeting. And I was sitting there looking over my notes, appreciative of this opportunity to interview someone as wonderful and authentic as Moe Moe had been.

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Author’s bio:

As a masters student nearing the end of my degree, one of the most important and meaningful things I did during my year, was being a part of the English Conversation Mentor Programme. Now working as a Youth Ambassador, I am thrilled to continue my journey with Safe Child Thailand on this project that aims to reflect on the work we do, along with a focus on the ground reality and stories that shed light on the children and staff that are at the centre of this organisation.