5 January

IN early  December,  Air  Quality  Yangon  (AQY), who are 17 to 23 years old launched a social campaign, the first of its kind, with the help of Dr Air Bear to raise awareness and expose the often-dangerous levels of air pollution in Yangon. Additionally, this youth-led campaign aims  to  encourage  public  action  by  providing  efficient ways to help make Yangon’s air cleaner.

Air Quality Yangon created an environmentally   friend-ly  robot  that  gathered   air   quality   data   around   Yan-gon. The bear is made out of white cotton   and   as   the  days  passed,  dust  from  the  air  has settled on the bear’s  body  turn-ing  it  darker  as  it  moves through traf-fic in Yangon. It is a visual  representa-tion  that  the  air  we  are  breathing in Yangon is dirty. Along with the bear’s massive appeal  to  pedestrians,  AQY  team  engaged  with  the  general  public  by  sharing  their  knowledge  about air pollution. Carrying their science-filled, data-led  signboards,  they  have  been  putting  in  great  efforts  to  make  people  care  about  the  air  we breathe.

AQY’s goal is to inform the public about Yan-gon’s air quality by collecting and presenting re-al-time data, to raise awareness of the dangers of air pollution for Myanmar citizens, and to provide examples of how simple lifestyle changes can help reduce air pollution.

“Our  purpose  with  Dr.  Air  Bear  is  to  make  the invisible threat visible in an engaging way,” said Air Quality Member member Zaw Win Htet. “Air pollution is a serious and growing problem here,  but  many  people  do  not  understand  how  dangerous it is. So, we come up with the idea of Dr. Air Bear who time travelled from the year 2050 when Yangon’s air quality is really bad causing the death of his own mother. He wants to change his future by going back in time to when Yangon’s air pollution starts to reach dangerous levels and stop it. We hope that by getting their attention through Dr. Air Bear, we can motivate them to take action.”

While traveling with Dr.Air Bear, AQY makes an effort to use public transportation, carpool, bike, and walk in order to set an example for pollution reduction.  They  post  photos  and  videos  of  their  excursions  on  their  Facebook  page  along  with  air pollution measurements they have collected.

According to the World Health Organization, air  pollution  causes  22,000  deaths  in  Myanmar  every  year,  in  addition  to  chronic  respiratory  ailments for many more. Yangon’s worsening air quality  is  commonly  attributed  to  the  dramatic  increase in vehicles since imports were liberalized in 2011 and the corresponding removal of trees to make way for traffic and development, but other factors  such  as  factory  emissions,  cooking  with charcoal, and burning trash also play a role.

The Know What You Breathe campaign is the result  of  funding  for  AQY  from  global  nonprofit  Save The Children through its SHIFT platform, in which the AQY team was able to join 3-day work-shop for which they chose the issue closest to their hearts: Air Pollution. During the workshop, AQY received help in writing a statement on strategies to address the issue, which ultimately led them to co-create the Know What You Breathe campaign with the help of their creative partner, Bridge.

Andy Nilsen, Director of Advocacy, Commu-nications, Campaigns and Media at Save the Chil-dren, created SHIFT as a campaign accelerator program to support youth movements for positive change. “This generation in Myanmar has seen the air quality dramatically decrease in ways that could affect them for the rest of their lives,” Nilsen said. “I’m proud to support these young people in their mission to raise awareness and ultimately improve the air quality in Yangon and throughout the country. It is my hope that the people and gov-ernment of Myanmar will pay attention to their findings and make real changes.”

At the end of the campaign, AQY will also urge the people to join them in cleaning up Yangon’s air by launching an online pledge to walk whenever possible,  ride  a  bicycle  or  trishaw  to  places  too  far  to  walk,  and  take  public  transportation  for  long distances.“

Change  requires  public  pressure,  which  requires awareness that there is a problem,” Zaw Win Htet, said. “We believe that when people are aware  of  the  severity  of  Myanmar’s  air  quality  situation,  they  will  change  their  behaviors  and  ask  the  government  to  do  more.  That’s  why  we  continue to focus on expanding monitoring of air quality. From here, it will be up to the people of Myanmar to take action and bring back our clean air.”—GNLM