TBMF Newsletter

February 2003

Meet the new volunteers from International Ministries, American Baptist Churches, USA .

Stories of Whitney and Matthew

From Whitney Easton………

Hello, my name is Whitney Easton. I have just arrived in Chiang Mai and am gradually becoming adjusted to the ways of life here in Thailand . I was born in Providence , Rhode Island in the United States , in the northeastern part of the country, where it is cold and not at all like Chiang Mai. I attended college in Boston , Massachusetts at Northeastern University . Majoring in Sociology afforded me the chance to start travelling during two study abroad programs. One in which I studied Spanish in Alicante, Spain for six months and one in which I was able to live in Brussels, Belgium and partake in an internship with the European Union parliament. In the Parliament I worked with a human rights group called human rights without frontiers, that is where I first learned of the practice of kidnapping and trafficking young girls and how serious a problem it had become.

After graduating from university I went into a volunteer program called AmeriCorp, VISTA (Volunteers in service to America ) I was stationed in Sacramento , California . In Sacramento , I worked as Assistant Director in a program called Weed and Seed. This program worked with the police force to Weed out the Bad elements in the project area, drug use, child abuse, prostitution and gun violence, while working with social service agencies and non-profits to seed in new opportunities for the population. This included among many other things, a community center that was full of programs to address the education and general needs of the kids in the area. We were also fortunate enough to purchase a large health van that taught the children without health insurance how to stay proactive in their health needs, as well as offering medicines to those kids who became sick.

After finishing my year of service with AmeriCorps, Matthew Morgan, who I met in Sacramento , and I decided that we would like to pursue our volunteer work abroad, this time in a faith based organization. This would allow us to be surrounded by others who would keep our faith strong and show us how to live a life in service to God and his people all over the world. We spoke with our pastor at the Mathewson Street Methodist Church in Providence , Rhode Island and asked if they could recommend any programs to us. They suggested that we contact the ABC International Ministries organization. Upon contacting Mike Buckles we were sent a list of available opportunities. This program seemed to be doing a lot of work that interested us and in a capacity that we thought might be able to use some extra help. And so we applied, were put in touch with Edythe McCarty, and before we knew it were on a plane to Bangkok ready to start our work. We have been invited to stay until June 20 th .

After this experience I am hoping to go to graduate school and start working on my Masters degree. I am fairly confident that I will use a lot of the experience I gain here on my Masters Degree and possibly study the Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand further to try to gain a better understanding of their cultures. I am very grateful for the opportunity to come here and learn and serve and just hope that my time here will be fruitful and culminate in a better understanding of what it means to live a life geared toward service.

From Matthew Morgan…………

I grew up in Collinsvile , Alabama , the son of a Southern Baptist preacher and a minister of Music. I'm sure you can imagine which was my father and which was my mother. I went to college at the University of Virginia and graduated in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and a minor in Religious Studies. While at UVA I was very active in a non-denominational nemo charismatic ecumenical although often quite fundamentalist (haha) Christian choir called Jubilate and in the sponsoring church, University Baptist (American Baptist). I became an Americorps *VISTA member (Volunteer in Service To America) in the fall of 2001 and moved to Sacramento, California to work with Mercy Housing, an affordable housing organization that provided service-enriched programs to economically poor families. There I worked to develop a savings program called Individual Development Accounts (IDA's) to help families save for first time home ownership, small business development and higher education. I also volunteered at the Sacramento Refugee Ministry and was an Allie to refugee families to help them socially adjust to the US . Whitney Easton and I became active in First Baptist in Sacramento (American Baptist) and felt called to do some kind of service abroad after we finished Americorps *VISTA. While temping in Providence , RI for a while to save money and telling to our pastor John Almond at the Matthewson St. Methodist Church, he recommended we apply with the ABC and International Ministries. We applied in December and here we are!

Work of Lee and Lyn Morris

Baan Handicrafts

Our work is primarily an income generation programme – helping people help themselves – for the marginalised of society, the poor and/or families affected by HIV/AIDS. The focus of our support in the local community has been particularly towards single mothers (mostly families affected by HIV/AIDS) who struggle daily to be financially secure, especially in raising their children, when there is no social security system and often the extended family does not want to take responsibility for them, or are incapable of doing so. WE have a particular vision to empower women and support their needs and the basic human rights of the right to education (handicraft training) and the right to a livelihood (handicraft production). Through this programme, not only are people gaining opportunities to earn an income, but through learning a new skill and gaining a sense of achievement in producing a good quality product, they are gaining self-esteem and a positive outlook for themselves and their families. Helping people help themselves gives them a true sense of human dignity. As well as being a means by which people can find an income for their families we want to see them come to know Jesus' love as they see him through those of us in the programme who know and love him! We want to be Jesus to the people with whom we live and work.

As each producer completes his/her part of the product, he/she, or someone from their family, brings the completed products to Baan Handicrafts centre each week, ready for calculation and payment – on a piece – meal basis, calculated weekly according to how much of the order they have been able to complete. Also in the new year, we are starting a monthly health fund scheme, whereby we pay towards a special fund card they each have, which then gives them access to most of their medication at a reduced rate, rather than being totally out of their reach. We would rather help them all out this way – to be fair to all those in our programme, and this way too, it's not just a hand-out. We want to discourage a “handout mentality” which is not good for anyone. It's hard to work out the best way to do things, but we want to help without being considered merel as a bank with an endless supply of money!! So far in this programme, they each have been able to earn more than enough to afford their much-needed medications.

Since the end of September, our first promoted sale, we have sold over 160,000 baht's worth of products. We are thrilled with this figure, though have a good deal of stock still in hand. We have paid out to producers about double that amount – which is extremely overwhelming. However, considered in the light of how many families that has supported, and meals it has bought for those in need of an income it is just exciting!! Some of our products went to the US as well as to Australia . Export sales need to play an important role, especially in our present situation. We have a few “nibbles' to see the export market expand and need to work on that over the coming months, especially because we expect to be back in Australia for our Home Assignment period of 10 months, from mid-year this year – all a little daunting as there seems to be too many things that are needing to be put in place before we head off. One of these things happens to concern our missionary visa, which does not allow us to be involved in a “business”. Therefore we have needed to be discreet in our sales. Eventually we aim to have “Bann Handicrafts” established as a Thai business. Once this is an established business, we can openly advertise and make more of an open effort to make sales happen “out there”, and can start to see us out of the “red” and hopefully pick up into the black. This is a whole new ball-game for us and has been a steep learning curve as we have experienced trying to help people earn a viable income as a result of newly learned skills , and at the same time developing a business and trying to make it work.

One difficulty in trying to make it work as a “business” is the fact of relying on producers who are all HIV+. The hazards of working with people who are not well and are not expected to get any better, does not make for a good reliable business in supplying a demanding market. To combat this in some way, as we start this new year, we are planning on targeting family members who are not HIV+, but are already, or on the death of a family member who is an AIDS-sufferer, will be the main family's breadwinner. This sounds easy enough, but isn't necessarily and all takes time. Plans are to target the children who may be finished their general schooling, or close to it, and yet have not the prospects of going on to tertiary education or cannot afford to continue their education as they may need to take full-time care of a parent with AIDS. As with the present workers we have, our idea is to try and give them skills that enable them to work at home. Therefore, on the days (or weeks, as has been the case with a couple of them already) when they are not able to put in a full day's work, they can still manage to earn some money rather than missing out altogether as would be the case if they needed to turn up at a centre every day for work. This ways, they have more flexibility in working the hours that are possible for them and are also able to work around medical schedules or caring for family members.

News from the McDaniels

We McDaniels have been back in the States just over six months. We suffered no severe culture shock. Nevertheless, some things here do strike us as odd or excessive. A sampling:

Varieties of bathtub water controls abound. The old fashioned ones with a “hot” knob on one side and a “cold” knob on the other are delightfully straightforward but now rare. Engineers vie with one another to create ever more variations on the theme of “one knob controls all”: push-and-pull, turn-and-tweak, lift-and lean. The arrows, lines, and letters on the knobs are more artistic than helpful. One stands naked before a mystery, anxious as to whether one will be burned or frozen by the first blast.

A great variety of equipment in this country works automatically or by remote control: garage doors, car doors, store doors, TV's, VCR's. Even postage stamps are self-adhering. In airports, taps and things that flush work automatically: They gush forth at more-or-less appropriate times. The timing can startle, amuse, or madden.

Garages are so full of old furniture, power tools, mowers, trimmers, and recreational equipment that there is no room for a car.

Shampoos and conditioners contain such ingredients as vitamins, egg, and papaya. These are items we used to EAT in Thailand.

Cats in the USA are large. So are the people.

February Comings and Goings

TBMF related Board Secretaries and some staff

Helena Facchini and a group from Sweden

Peter Runegrund to Los Angeles , California

Lyn and Daniel Morris to Australia

Ben and Doris Dickerson from the US

Debbie Saunders and friends from the US

Special Meetings

Mini-Consultation February 17-20, 2003

Language and Orientation Committee, February 28, TBMF Office