Aye Mya Hlaing grew up in Yangon. Before joining YFS in 2016, she worked as a video journalist for a local online media company where she made 500 reports in the space of 18 months. She says she enrolled at YFS ‘to tell emotional stories that go beyond journalism’. Having directed The Animal Lover about Yangon’s stray dogs in her first year at YFS and The Peacekeeper about an IDP camp in Kachin State in her second year, she then co-created Riding Through the Waves, an animated documentary about the struggle for social harmony between people of different faiths. A passionate advocate of ‘participatory video’, she has also joined YFS Travelling Cinema Crews in Kayah and Kachin states and in Mandalay Division where she co-facilitated participatory video workshops with local communities. In 2020, Aye Mya Hlaing was appointed as YFS Travelling Cinema & Outreach Coordinator and she now oversees the School’s many outreach projects.