The Day the Screen Disappeared: A Gen Hope Reflection from the Thai-Burma Border

By Saw Htoo Htoo Bwint

It was a deeply meaningful experience to return to the Thai-Burma border for the 2026 Gen Hope trip. Stepping back onto the school grounds of the Thoo Mweh Khee Learning Centre (TMK) and reuniting with the amazing students I had befriended during my first trip back in 2024 felt like no time had passed at all. The reunited handshakes and excited embraces shared with the familiar faces and voices echoed the heartbeat of Sharing Hope’s mantra: “Never Forgotten.” I felt immensely grateful for these special and loving friendships that transcended the barriers of time and distance, and as this trip unfolded, it was a joy to form even more friendships. But this trip carried a different weight. Our team now included young Karen students from TMK, traveling with our young Aussie team to the edge of their world.

And it was there (on day 8) on the edge of the border – an IDP camp called Htee Baw Kaw, a branch of Htee The Ler village that had been destroyed only a year prior – that everything I had seen and heard over the previous week finally collided. Sitting on the benches beneath the canopy of tall jungle trees with the rushing river as the only distance that stood between us and Karen state, I felt a mixture of feelings from a sharp unease to a sense of fear followed by guilt, but I ultimately felt hopeful leaving.

5 days earlier (day 3), before entering TMK, we visited the Mae Tao Clinic and met journalists Phil and Kanchana. Sitting in the shadows, they projected a short documentary on a screen that contextualised for all of us about the ongoing conflict the people of Myanmar have been enduring under the Military Regime. The footage was shaky, handheld, and raw. Clips desaturated at times to mask the trauma. We watched planes dropping bombs on villages. We witnessed medics performing amputations in makeshift theater rooms. We heard the final words of a soldier in an interview before losing his life days later. It was powerful and moving, and it stripped away the illusion of any distance we had felt back home in Australia.

Two days later (day 5), the team went back to school in the classrooms of TMK watching a student-made short film. It captured the hope surrounding the building of a new school in Htee The Ler village – a colourful scene where students cherished memories and learned together. But like all films, it had a conflict and the scene shifted. It depicted the heartbreaking day the helicopters came and bombed the village, reducing that promise of education to piles of ruins. At the time, I was moved, but I was still an observer watching a screen.

Back to Day 8, sitting by that rushing river, the screen disappeared.

The environmental stimulus of being there replayed scenes of planes flying overhead from the short documentary. Although I knew I was not in danger, my body responded otherwise. A sense of fear and unease surfaced, revealing to me retrospectively how deeply trauma can be triggered by context rather than present threat. I felt a heavy sense of guilt – a burden of being “the one who gets to leave.” I felt conflicted and almost ashamed to feel unsafe in a space that, for the people sitting right next to me, represented a place of survival and refuge.

There, I spent lunch facing the river with Edmund Wah, a former Htee The Ler student now studying at TMK. As we got to know each other, overlooking our Karen state stretched across the opposite bank, I learned that his village’s experience was the very one that inspired him to create the short film we had watched in the classroom; greenlit from a “broken heart”. Hearing the story of my friend and his lived heartbreak transformed the film from a story of loss into a powerful, personal testimony of resilience.

The closing scene of Edmund’s film shows a phone call from Sharing Hope, offering to rebuild the school and, with it, a future for the children.

Although it was a nice, wholesome ending, it captures the very heart of what we do – not only as an organisation, but as a generation committed to hope. Sharing Hope is more than a name; it is a present-tense calling – to actively share hope, to respond, and to stand with communities as they rebuild.
I feel deeply blessed to have had the opportunity to return for a second time, and to play even a small part in keeping hope alive. In witnessing resilience, loss, and restoration so closely intertwined, I was reminded that hope is not abstract — it is shared, lived, and sustained together.