Our Mission

We believe every child has a right to a quality education regardless of their circumstances, ethnic origin, language, race, gender, or disability. Every child deserves a safe place to learn, especially children affected by conflict, war, or emergency situations.

But we also believe strongly in our commitment – that a girl’s education is the most powerful tool for building peace and breaking the cycle of war and poverty.

We achieve our mission by recognizing the power of collaboration, and working with local groups to include youth, activists, policy-makers, legislators, businesses, and NGOs to achieve sustainable and scalable change with a focus on strengthening our efforts in support of girl children’s education and gender-based programming.

Our Approach

We begin with a proven development model: gender equality is smart economics. We believe the right approach to reducing poverty and conflict and improving social cohesion in our society begins with a quality gender-focused education.

Underlying structures

A rigorous and robust approach is needed to address both core developmental issues and a change to underlying social structures and relationship patterns.

Local collaborations

We recognize the importance of a local voice in our development effort to facilitate and build a coherent vision for change.

Smart Economics

We need to direct investments, energy, and assets into building women’s indigenous capacity for undertaking economic activity such as reaching development targets for women. We empower local partners who work to remove barriers to social and economic inclusion, justice and gender discrimination through connecting productive assets with the resource user (eg. customary land tenure system ).

Data driven

Research and data identify the gaps, and we’ll provide the tools and resources to create transformative action and new possibilities.

Our Story

Building Assets is a global non-profit volunteer organization that develops viable solutions to reduce and mitigate conflict and the resulting dependencies by working to create self-reliant communities. We believe the evidence is clear that a girl’s education and skills development can help build peace and help break the cycle. We work with our local partners to provide viable solutions with a focus on gender equality, justice and peace.

Conflict continues unabated in many parts of Myanmar, and there is an urgent need to stop the cycle. By improving access to education through building schools, improving the quality of education, and by providing psychosocial support, we can improve student learning outcomes through gender-based programming. By providing access to education for these young girls at an early stage we can lay the foundation for a brighter future for the country of Burma, and prepare these young students to be the country’s future leaders.

Child leaning in school - Myanmar

Our Team

Meet the Building Assets team. Together, we’re helping to make real change for girls in Myanmar by improving equal access to education.

Harika Kasagoni (She/Her)

Director

Harika Kasagoni (She/Her)

Director

Ms. Harika Kasagoni has 13 years of experience in Senior Leadership roles working in Public, Private and Non-profit/Voluntary sectors. She has several years of experience in nonprofit management, social service and community engagement work both locally and internationally.  

Harika is passionate and committed to making a difference in the community.  She has been involved in social service and community engagement work since the age of 10. She has past and current experience serving as a Board of Directors with various organizations. 

Harika holds a MAS (Master of Administrative Science) Degree and BTECH (Bachelor of Technology) Degree. She has expertise in Governance, Strategic, Executive Leadership, Administration, Operations, Finance, Human Resource, Technology, Events (Fundraising, Social), Partnerships, Development, Budgets, Projects, Marketing, Membership, and Public Relations. 

Her professionalism, positive and can-do attitude are key to her success and have been an add value to the organization.  

Alex King

Alex King

As a former intern at the Canadian Embassy in Myanmar, Alex was delighted to join the Board of Building Assets in 2019 to help expand the scope and impact of the organization in that country.

Alex holds a Bachelors of Arts degree from Simon Fraser University in International Studies and Political Science and has spent much of his early career working on public policy at the local level with the Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce in Coquitlam, BC.

In an unusual departure from earlier roles, Alex also sits as an inaugural Board member of the BC Community 3D Association (formerly BC Covid-19 3D Printers), a grassroots non-profit organization that has delivered approximately 130,000 units of personal protective equipment to healthcare and frontline workers around BC since March, 2020.

Professionally, Alex has a particular interest in the economic development and geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region.

Richard Morley

Richard Morley

Richard is currently Vice-President, Operations for the Century Group. Century Group is a real estate development and management group located in Surrey, British Columbia.
Richard currently overseas all property operations and maintenance, property management and energy management, as well as sustainable objectives for Century Group. He is keenly focused on running efficient facilities, and has led teams to win internationally-recognized awards for building management excellence.
Educated at BCIT in Engineering and Power Management, Richard is a fourth Class Power Engineer, with Systems Maintenance Administration designation.
Richard enjoys downhill and cross-country mountain biking, and snowboarding at local mountains.

Camille Karlicki

Treasurer

Camille Karlicki

Treasurer

Ms. Camille Karlicki is currently General Counsel for the Veterinary Society of British Columbia. Camille is a senior counsel with extensive litigation and corporate experience both in public and private sector practice. Previously, she was staff lawyer for the Law Society of BC’s Investigations Monitoring and Enforcements.
She holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Victoria, is a former chartered accountant, and was awarded the Stikeman Elliot/Carswell National Tax Award in 1994.
Camille is also a Board member of the White Rock Amateur Swim Association.
Camille enjoys swimming, hiking, running, and taking her dog ‘ Stormy ‘ for walks along the East Beach in White Rock.

Naung Zaw

Vice-President

Naung Zaw

Vice-President

A former Burmese freedom fighter previously from Nyaung Shwe, Burma and now a current Board member of Building Assets

Dana McCartney

Founder & Chair

Dana McCartney

Founder & Chair

Our founder launched Building Assets in 2019 with the commitment to create an organization for Myanmar’s young children who are without access to a quality education in the underserved regions of the country. After 15 years as a development practitioner, human rights advocate, and former investment banker, he recognized the critical importance of building indigenous capacity and the contribution both education and skill development can make to the country’s economic and political growth. He remains haunted by personal memories of visits to refugee camps, and recognizes the need to advocate for the rights of these young children. As a parent himself, he truly believes these children deserve a basic right to education and safe places to build their lifelong assets.

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