Wednesday, April 24, 2013

See you next year - An ordinary life changing tale as a volunteer (4)

Meeting Joe, 24, English
Execute, plan, Co-ordinate on volunteer and community outreach programs. Provide training for volunteers. He has been working with Starfish for the past 12 – 14 months

He is currently working with the schools on prevention of human trafficking and English camps for local community this school holidays.

In order to make my trip worthwhile, I also requested to talk to the ground staff, understand their background and on the projects they were doing, one staff I met is Joe. He is passionate on welfare and education development. He has a clear vision of how the new dream house will be. It’s not just to provide sanctuary to homeless children but also a learning center, providing skills and knowledge for the children for them to earn a livelihood in the future. It is like; don’t just give a man a fish but teach him how to fish. An all in one center, where everyone feed on each other strength to develop a self-sustain community.  

I realize there are so much Starfish have done but none of these good works is reflected in their website. I wish they could start archiving and hopefully inspire more people to work for the same cause.

I have a wonderful conversation with him. I even share with him that since last year, I’ve a dream to open a guesthouse in Sangklaburi. I realized there are a lot of fancy resorts and hotels but none of them talks about the visible issue of human trafficking in this town.

I wanted to build a guesthouse with the following agendas:

1)      Educating tourist or backpackers on human trafficking with
a.      Photo gallery exhibition (http://www.nowherepeople.org/)
b.      Thematic room with statistic of human trafficking printed on the wall E.g India Room or Africa room  showing the statistic or the common kind of human trafficking issues exists.
c.       Merchandise – Arty stationary with thought provoking slogans related to human trafficking, Fashion accessories like tote bag or necklaces with chain of key that say FREE ME
d.      Tea house/Café – renaming the drinks or food related to human trafficking issue, like Sex slaves could be a curry or Masala Chai, originate in India, employ children at the age of 5 to pick tea leaves 12 hours a day with little food. (Fictional)

2)      It can be also use as an operational/learning platform for locals, whom are interested in Tourism, provide job opportunities.
3)      Revenue can be used to sustain or develop more local community projects

He did talk to me on the difficulties working in a foreign land and things cannot move on as fast as he wants but I guess with his intention, it’s good enough to stay longer and I also promise to guide him on the Thai local temples, unfortunately the next few days, he was having migraine, and perhaps my conversation with him is too intense.

After talking and sharing my “visions” to him, I’m inspired whether to work full time in NGO. Nonetheless, I know the time is not ripe yet…

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