When a 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit Myanmar March 28, it was just the latest disaster in the Southeast Asian country over the past five years, according to Garrett Kostin, who is helping organize relief efforts.

In 2020, there was COVID, followed by a military coup in 2021 that upended a decade of democratic rule, civil war in 2022, rapid inflation in 2023 and flooding in 2024 after Typhoon Yagi hit the country.

“It’s hard to think of people in any country in the world who’ve had to endure this many natural and man-made tragedies in succession,” said Kostin, while seated at the dining room table of his friends Tom and Beverly Westheimer in Peterborough.

A native of Seattle, Kostin first went to Thailand, the neighboring country to Myanmar, in 2000 because it was a Buddhist country where the people didn’t speak English and it was safe.

“I was 21 years old, and it was the first time I did a trip like that independently,” he said. “I wanted a tourist experience completely different than my experience growing up in the U.S.”

Kostin stayed for three months before returning to the United States, but thought it would be great to live in Thailand for a couple years, so he returned in 2003 after taking courses in teaching English as a Second Language. He started as an English teacher, mostly with Thai students, then changed to offering private English tutoring services. He started hearing about Myanmar – formerly known as Burma – but primarily about how there were a lot of problems and conflicts and it wasn’t safe.

“My first impressions were kind of shallow,” he said.

He started to learn more about the country after meeting immigrants who told him about Myanmar and reading books on the country. During that time, he said he was getting disillusioned teaching youths with the resources to hire an English-language teacher when there was misery right next door.

“I was developing a calling,” he said. “I wanted to spend my time, talents and resources helping underprivileged people,” he said.

Kostin resigned from the school and traveled to the border town of Mae Sot, where he connected with monks who had been politically active in Myanmar. They rented a three-story building where other activists were living, and were trying to organize classes for other migrants.

“I felt their passion and felt I would really like to work with them,” he said.

The monks recommended that he move to Mae Sot to teach English, but after going back to Chiang Mai, he decided it would be more interesting and help more if he tried to replicate what the monks were doing. In 2010, he opened a branch of the Burma Study Center in Chiang Mai in the northern part of the country, near the Myanmar border. The last session of the school had 100 students, with seven English classes and a Thai-language class for new migrants.

“We’ve grown exponentially over the years and become more professionalized,” Kostin said.

Kostin moved back to the United States and worked in Seattle for three years, lessening his involvement with the center. However, when COVID hit, he had to work at home and found himself pondering the question, “After this is all over, where can I be happiest?” He decided it was back in Thailand, so he moved back and now lives in Chiang Mai, where he works as director of the study center and teaches afternoon and evening classes.

After the earthquake

When the earthquake hit, Kostin said most of the early international news reports focused on the damage in Thailand because the military government in Myanmar has the country so closed off that reporters couldn’t get in.

“Their rationale they used was ‘We can’t guarantee safety for foreign reporters,’” he said.

And while the earthquake was felt in Thailand – “The building I live in is a high-rise condo building, and it was evacuated,” Kostin said – the epicenter and much of the damage was in Mandalay, a city in the center of Myanmar. As of April 7, the earthquake had killed 5,330 people, making it the second-deadliest earthquake in the country’s history. There were also 7,140 severe injuries, 210 people missing and 653 people rescued, according to a presentation Kostin prepared for the Grand Monadnock Rotary Club.

Along with a foreign media blackout, which he said was followed by canceling all foreign visas, Kostin said the military government’s response has also included resuming airstrikes on pro-democracy “insurgents” and civilians hours after the earthquake, trying to stop all relief efforts that don’t go through the military and trying to send relief only to areas under its control.

Kostin’s desire to help was sparked by an email he received from Tom Westheimer. He became friends with the Westheimers 10 years ago in Chiang Mai. Tom, a native of Cincinnati, had been in the Peace Corps in Iran from 1970 to 1972, and then ended up in Thailand after six months in India.

“I needed to get a job or go home,” he said.

In Thailand, the Canadian version of the Peace Corps needed a volunteer with the kind of electronics background that Tom had, so he spent three years with them, followed by seven years at the Asian Institute of Technology, where Beverly was working. Both of their daughters were born in Thailand before the family moved back to the United States in 1983, and they still spend a couple months each year in the country.

The Westheimers also support the Kids Ark Foundation, which helps minority students in Thailand living near the border stay in school.

“Their language is so different than Thai, and yet they’re stuck living in Thailand,” said Tom, who is on the Kids Ark advisory board.

Kostin was encouraged to link up with the Burma Students Association at Chiang Mai University for fundraising efforts, and they partnered on an online fundraiser that went live March 31. They passed their original goal of $8,000 in two days, so they increased it to $15,000, and then a jazz club in Chiang Mai donated the proceeds from a concert.

In total, the effort raised over $30,000, more than $20,000 of which has been transferred to relief networks operating independently of the Myanmar government for items such as clean drinking water, food, medical supplies, hygiene items, mosquito nets, tarps and blankets. Kostin said the relief efforts are only the first part of recovery, as the next phase will be fundraising to rebuild people’s lives and homes.

“There’s a vast number of newly homeless people living in the streets,” he said.

One challenge Kostin cited with fundraising is that Americans are hesitant to donate to organizations that are not registered 501(c)(3) charities. Kostin acknowledges the situation.

“It’s not one where we can provide invoices and receipts,” he said. “We try to be transparent in all our accounting.”

However, for people who would rather donated to recognized reputable relief organizations, Kostin recommends Better Burma (betterburma.org), Partners Asia (partnersasia.org) or UNHCR (giving.unhcr.org/en/myanmar).

“It doesn’t bother me that these donations might go to these organizations and not mine,” he said.

Kostin said it has been touching to find compassionate, caring people in Peterborough, and he hopes that people will continue to pay attention and figure out ways to help.

“I can feel their concern and their empathy,” he said.