Thailand, Land of Smiles
Working in a comfortable, airconditioned office in Bangkok, a city crowded with high-rise buildings, modern hospitals and shopping centres with Western luxury items easily available, makes it’s easy to forget that Thailand is still a developing country.
However, Thailand is a land of contrast and paradox. The modern lifestyle and wealth of Bangkok is in vast contrast to rural areas where many people survive on less than $2 per day and many families still practise a subsistence agricultural lifestyle. It was to help these people that I volunteered to work for them through the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA). I’ve now spent more than two years with ADRA in Thailand. I worked out of Bangkok, helping to manage three projects—a sustainable agriculture project and two small enterprise development (SED) projects, which assist women in starting up small businesses to generate extra income.
Working for ADRA is exciting, challenging, and promises a new experience every day. Having hands-on involvement in the projects is part of the job. It allows me to get out of the office at least once a month and visit the real Thailand where tourists don’t usually go.
One of the projects I visit is in Sopmoei. It is a sustainable agriculture project for ethnic minority villagers in the remote and mountainous region of north-west Thailand, close to the Myanmar border. The region is inaccessible for five months of the year, due to the rainy season making the roads impassable.
These villagers rely on slash-and-burn subsistence form of agriculture for their livelihood and sustenance. These are the people left behind by the development of the cities, so they are people in need—people ADRA can help. The project assists families in developing sustainable agricultural systems, such as vegetable gardens, fruit-tree orchards and other cash crops in order to generate a sufficient food supply as well as provide some income.
I’ve found that staying in these villages and building relationships with the people is a most rewarding experience. Talking to the locals about their problems and the things that are important to them, such as being able to grow enough food to survive, having access to clean water, and raising cash to buy medicines, really puts things back into perspective. It makes our Western society’s problems seem pale in comparison.
The people of these communities are very enthusiastic. So helping them to help themselves, and seeing the positive impact and changes that are slowly occurring in their lives, is exciting and rewarding.
It’s what makes working for ADRA a great experience.
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