KEM's History & Background

 The Kachins, American Baptist Missions, Mission Schools & Kachin Regions Kingdom Education Ministry is considered to be one of the offsprings of the holistic mission heritage of the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC). Technically, Kingdom Education Mission operates its mission activities which are directly associated with Kachin Baptist Churches of KBC since the very beginning. Kachin Baptist Convention has been its main backbone in terms of the denominational institution as KEM shares its baptist norms, practices, and principles. From the point of the mission, the word "Kachin" had been coined around A.D 1837 upon the finding of the American Missionary Eugenio Kincaid who projected that "the Kachins" are the landlords of Northern Burma, the Kachinland. Followed by American Baptist Missionaries led by Albert J. Lyon, Williams H. Roberts, Ola Hanson ... after about four decades, the "Kachins" had been made known to "A God's Nation." The Kachin is comprised of seven major groups, namely Jinghpaw, Azi, Marn, Lashi, Lisu, Nung, and Rawang. It has observed that the American Baptists' mission activities among the Kachins had been successful shortly. One of the reasons for the success of the early mission was due to the implementation of the educational approach. It is noteworthy to describe that there were three known mission high schools, namely KBMS (Kachin Baptist Mission School) Myitkyina, Sinlum Mission School, Sinlum, Manmaw, NCS (National Christian School) Kutkai. Those three mission centers also had turned to mission centers where new Christians got trained the norm of Christian principles and respectful manner. Traditionally, the missionaries put their maximum input in training new Kachin converts for the service and leadership of church and community.Meantime, those m1ss10n schools were outlawed to run anymore and almost all their compounds and mission centers were nationalized simultaneously under the coup-Newin's regime in 1962 across Burma. The Baptist seems to be the major target of the operation. From that day onwards, Christians and citizens of Burma have been victimized under the military yoke, except being entertained by the Burmese-socialist-education system till today. Meanwhile, those plots of victimizations overall ethnic peoples, especially, Christians, have been doubled under the form of military dictatorship and then, followed by a chronic civil war in ethnic states particularly Shan, Kachin,   Kayah once the Burman military regime took up its power in 1962. The fact is that the Burman group's denial in the formation of federalism that had led the Union under the plot of Newin's coup. That had resulted in to opt armed solutions for Ethnic groups in their state respectively. It is to procure a federal democratic system that would guarantee the implementation of equality and equal power-sharing between the Burman groups and Ethnic groups. In reality, ethnic nationals are co-founders the Union according to the Panglong agreement. However, the resuming civil war in Ethnic states since 2011, especially in the Kachin State and certain regions of Northern Shan state, has proved of the Burman military campaign that dismantles the system of a federal democratic union. Having the ongoing civil war escalated, it has left more than 1.5 lacs Internally Displaced Persons in the Kachin army-controlled areas and the Burmese controlled areas since June 2011. Consequently, all sorts of violation of rights have been continued in all frontal lines wherever the Burmese troops have encroached in Kachin land such as killings, rape, torture, sexual assaults, forced labors, threats, stealing, robbing and so on. The most significant is that more than 300 villages have been destroyed and desolate since the rescuing war broke up in Kachin regions. Of which hundreds of Kachin Baptist Churches have been deliberately targeted to have demolished by the Burmese troop in war.Thus, Kachin Christianity has been spiritually and emotionally traumatized and despaired to carry out further missions such as church planting, and leadership promoting ministries at this juncture. Indeed, the most painful thing for church and society is due to the loss of basic education for about 40000 students sheltering in those temporary camps some of which station along the Sinno Burma border in the Kachin controlled areas and the rest in the government administrative areas in the Kachin state. It has been more than six decades that the citizens of Burma have been constructed under the system of Burmese education. It completely abandoned the English language and British education system followed by the prescription of ethnic textbooks by one's language in each State. Burmese education might be good for their Burman people since all the academic design and curricula had been designed in such a way to meet the agenda of Burman homogenization. Whereas, for non Buddhists, the existing education system is considered to be a local-colonial agendum in our own country. In this crucial and critical condition, Kingdom Education Mission has taken its risk to have inclusively launched it in Burma for three practical reasons. 1) It is to keep the value and the spirit of the Panglong promise that the founding fathers agreed to erect the banner of the Union of Burma as per the value/political principle of federal democracy in 1948. 2) It is to revitalize and re-maintain the Christian education standard grounded first and foremost upon the education foundation by Judson's college. The college was founded by the effort and the name of Adoniram Judson, the first American Baptist Missionary to Burma. And, 3) KEM is to get along with the service and contribution as per democratic value/norms. Since Burma is being transformed toward its full stature in a democratic culture, KEM has cooperatively taken this initiative into this education partnership mission without discrimination any student based on one's racial and religious differences. In response to this urgent need in this situation,  KEM has been humbly launched for the students of war-torn zones within and without the Kachin State in 2010. Admittedly, the inspiration of KEM founders and partners alike have been driven to this call by the heritage of Baptist missionaries namely, William Carey and Adoniram Judson who had founded Christian schools and transformed millions and millions of lives both Christians and non-Christians. Of course, their education contribution got inaugurated Asia into the age of renaissance.