More about the PA-O Village and Behind the Leaf

Behind the Leaf is a fantastic coffee project in Myanmar. Run by three amazing individuals and located outside of a small township called Pinlaung. The founder of the project is an American woman named Melanie Edwards. She's been living in Southeast Asia for over a decade and first moved there with the intention of bringing a sustainable source of clean water to remote areas in Thailand and soon after, Myanmar.

There are two operations that function simultaneously. The first is Behind the Leaf. That's the name of the micro-mill they've built with the intention of organizing nearby villages to produce coffee at a higher tier of quality and to educate them on the potential that this crop can yield. For these nearby villages, many of them are not connected to stable power sources, many don't have roadways and are truly off the grid. On top of that, Myanmar is the second largest producer of opium in the World, and people like Melanie and her team are working to connect with them and to help them develop a more sustainable life. 

One initiative that Behind the Leaf is doing is sustainable water systems. After working with a chemical engineer in Cambodia in the early 2000's Melanie learned how to build clay water filtration systems. That knowledge as well as the Christian church was what originally led her to Myanmar, as she could benefit the people in rural communities by providing clean water. People such as the indigenous group referred to as Pa-o. Here she founded a company with two Myanmar locals and began building and distributing these water filters. They're built with rice husks infused into ceramic, to give it the proper porosity and paired with silver nitrate to act as the filter and strip the toxins. The water that comes out the other side is noticeably clean and very nice to drink.

We visited Behind the Leaf projects in Myanmar in early 2023.