Thailand, Land of Smiles

Working in a comfortable airconditioned office in Bangkok—a city crowded with high-rise buildings, modern hospitals, shopping centres and cinemas, with Western luxury items easily available—makes it easy to forget that Thailand is a developing country. However, Thailand is a land of contrasts. The modern lifestyle and wealth of Bangkok is in vast contrast to rural areas where many people survive on less than $US2 per day and many families still practise a subsistence agricultural lifestyle. These people are the reason I work in Thailand.

Previously, I have worked with ADRA in Laos for three years. I have now been working with ADRA–Thailand for two years. I work in administration in Bangkok and also manage three projects: a sustainable agriculture project and two small enterprise development (SED) projects that assist women start up small businesses to generate extra income.

Working for ADRA is exciting, challenging and always promises new experiences every day. Being involved in projects is the part of the job I enjoy the most as 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 my projects, the Sopmoei Sustainable Agriculture Project, works with ethnic minority villages in the remote and mountainous region of north-western Thailand, along the border with Myanmar. Basically inaccessible five months of the year due to the rainy season, making the roads impassable, these villages still rely on “slash and burn” subsistence agriculture for their livelihood. These are the people often left behind by the development process, and are the people ADRA is assisting. The project helps families develop sustainable agricultural systems such as vegetable gardens, fruit-tree orchards and other cash crops in order to generate a sufficient food supply and extra income.

Staying in these villages and building relationships with the people is a rewarding experience. Talking with them about their problems and things that are important to them—being able to grow enough food to survive, having access to clean water, getting enough money to buy medicine—really puts things back into perspective and makes our problems and desires pale in comparison.

The people of these communities are very enthusiastic. Helping them to help themselves and to address their issues and problems, and seeing the positive impact and changes that are slowly occurring in their lives is very exciting and rewarding, and makes working for ADRA such a great experience.