What’s Your Purpose?
by Aly Lewis
Recently I was posed the question, Why are you here?
Not why-do-people-exist or what-is-the-meaning-of-life, but why am I HERE at this juncture in my life. At this computer at this desk with these coworkers at this job to do these tasks.
One answer is this:
The Jongkham Family: a Story of Hope, Sacrifice, and Love
Mr. La Jongkham is 61 years old and lives with wife and
youngest son in the community of Huai Wai. This village is located in Northern Thailand in a reserve forest and the government recently communicated to the community that they would have to move elsewhere. Mr. Jongkham is concerned about finding a new place to live, but his wife’s health is his first priority.
His family is dealing with his wife’s liver disease, and the only way she’ll live is if she gets her daily medicines, which are very expensive. The family’s legal status prevents them from accessing affordable health care, which means Mr. Jongkham and his family have to figure out how to generate additional income.
Plant With Purpose partners with a local nonprofit in Northern Thailand called the Upland Holistic Development Project (UHDP) to find sustainable solutions to chronic poverty and oppression. Mr. Jongkham is thankful for UHDP’s guidance and encouragement. UHDP trained Mr. Jongkham in many capacities:
- UHDP trained Mr. Jongkham to produce his own vegetables. Any money that he does not have to spend is money saved for medicine for his wife. All of the food that is consumed by the family is produced at home.
-UHDP trained Mr. Jongkham to raise pigs. The family now sells 24 piglets in a year, generating a consistent cash flow of $30 per piglet. Mr. Jongkham also learned how to raise catfish and frogs, which are utilized for consumption and to sell.
- The family also set up a small store with a fuel station where he sells about five gallons per week to his neighbors who have scooters.
Mr. Jongkham’s motivation is to see his wife healthy again. He never imagined he would be so entrepreneurial. He’s very proud of his teenage son who also learned to cut hair to help his mom. Currently, Mrs. Jongkham is getting all the medicine she requires.
Happy Women’s Equality Day!
By Annie Fikes
May 19th, 2009 was an election day in California. I use the word “election” loosely; no one was actually elected, but 6 ballot measures were up for the vote. I got my pamphlet weeks in advance. I poured over it, googled propositions, and read pro and con arguments. I was prepared.
The 19th felt like Christmas. I got in my van and drove over to my polling station at Our Mother of Confidence. I was the most excited person there. There wasn’t a lot of competition. The one other voter’s expression clearly indicated that this was not going to be the highlight of her day. The exhausted poll-workers looked at me like a UFO had just dropped me off when I picked up my ballot with a bounce in my step.
And then, I voted.
It was great! I slapped my “I Voted” sticker on my chest with pride and headed out into the world giddy with political efficacy.
August 26th, 1920 was the day that women in the U.S. were granted the right to vote by the 19th Amendment. In 1971, August 26th was declared a national holiday to celebrate the equality that so many women worked so hard to achieve. Since then, this country has made an amazing amount of progress toward gender equality.
The truth is that gender inequality is still part of everyday life for many women in the U.S., and even more so in other places around the world. Part of Plant With Purpose’s goal is to empower women in the countries where we work. Increased involvement in the community, developing capacities, and contributing to their family’s income is the best way to promote women’s equality.
In rural Thailand, women are marginalized because of their gender, and face the danger of being captured by the sex-trafficking industry. Women are often at risk of being forced or lured into human trafficking, and shipped into other countries for sex slavery and forced labor. Poverty is an underlying cause of sex trafficking, and by combating poverty, Plant With Purpose helps people in rural Thailand, and other nations, avoid falling victim to human traffickers.
Plant With Purpose also strives to improve the position of Thai women within their villages. Plant With Purpose uses workshops in microfinance and handicrafts, such as using natural dyes and soap making, to empower women by building skills they can use to help their families and communities. To strengthen the role of women in Thailand, Plant With Purpose recently began women’s health and literacy programs. Instead of battling directly for women’s rights, Plant With Purpose is helping women become more involved in their communities and use their contributions to prove that they deserve equality.
May 19th, 2009 was the first time I ever voted. I missed voting in the 2008 Presidential Election by 17 days. I’m a little bitter. However, I am grateful that I have the right to vote at all, and voting reminds me to be grateful for the equality that women have in this country. Part of Plant With Purpose’s mission is to empower women in rural areas, helping them get the respect from others and from themselves and come closer to achieving equality.
New Thailand Video
We wanted to share with you a recent video that highlights our work in Thailand and our partner company, the Upland Holistic Development Project (UHDP).
Click here to view this inspiring 6 minute video titled “Uncommon Environmentalists”: http://vimeo.com/12994792.
Preserving a Heritage
by James Ellett, Grant writing intern
Village Spotlight: Panasawan, Thailand
Did you know that every reoccurring donation toward one of Plant With Purpose’s programs will be matched? So, if you sponsor a village for $30 per month, that amount is instantly doubled to be $60 per month for an entire year! When you sign up to become a monthly donor, you’ll help Plant With Purpose sustain community‑based efforts that improve the lives of rural farmers.
Transformation in Thailand!
SAWAT DEE! Greetings from Panasawan, Thailand! Plant With Purpose is working in Panasawan to provide the community with relevant and sustainable options that address issues of poverty, lack of citizenship and related rights, and the loss of access to and degradation of forests and fields. Read how Plant With Purpose is transforming lives in the village of Panasawan…
A Taste of Thai: Celebrating Food, Culture, and Communities
by Stephanie Rudeen, Grant Writing Intern
Often when an organization enters an impoverished community, it is easy to put aside the country, the culture, and the people that have existed there before the organization, and will continue to exist after. Even for any person, when he or she presses the donate button on a webpage or places a few wrinkled dollars into a Haiti relief jar, it is easy to focus on the immediate problem, and not think about the rich history and past of that community or group of people as well.
While many things make up the complex and rich culture and history of countries and communities, I can’t help but always be enraptured by a community’s food. For me, food is a complex and vital component of any community, and a looking glass into a community’s very structure and survival. Plant With Purpose sees the complexity of cooking and food to a community, and does its part by offering fuel-efficient stoves to many of the communities it works in. Beyond even the environmental, economic, and health benefits of these stoves, fuel-efficient stoves also help marriages grow since husbands spend more time with their wives in the kitchen because there is less harmful smoke. Recognizing the importance and complexity of cooking and the kitchen is recognizing that the heart of a community lays within what has been there all along – the traditions and culture of that community.
One of my personal favorite foods is Thai, a country that Plant With Purpose has partnered with to bring about lasting change. Although I often go to Thai restaurants, I had never researched the traditional foods of Northern Thailand, the part of Thailand where Plant With Purpose works. According to asiarecipe.com, “the northern breakfast [is] known in the local dialect as khao gnai consisting mainly of steamed glutinous rice. Cooked in the early hours of the day, steamed glutinous rice is packed in a wicker baskets made from bamboo splints or palmyra palm leaves. The farmer takes the packed basket to the working rice field and eats the glutinous rice as lunch, known in the dialect as ‘khaw tom’. Dinner or ‘khaw lang’ is served on [a] raised wooden tray or ‘kan toke.’”
As a child I would often watch my own mother bake pie at home, her specialty, and watch her while she delicately pushed the tissue paper thin crust into the bottom of the pan. Yet, as I grew older, I stopped helping and observing my mother as she cooked and baked, and I began to stop recognizing the art that exists within the kitchen. I believe it is important to recognize and observe the art of cooking, and it is also important to listen to the story and culture that is behind each flaky piecrust and grain of rice.
I feel as if lately, an American food staple has been take out from a local chain restaurant, and my mind cannot help but wander off to thoughts of my own family’s cooking. There is no comparison between a greasy, pre-made hamburger wrapped in yellow wax paper and served in a brown bag, and the complex and intriguing story that emerges from each bite of one of my mother’s pies or a grain of cooked rice in Northern Thailand.
Plant With Purpose strives to help communities grow, while at the same time not interfere with what makes each community unique. So next time you press the donate button, also take some time to get to know a different community, because every aspect of the culture, even just a bite of its local food, represents a community with a complex and fascinating story to tell.
Fast Facts: Thailand
Location: Southeastern Asia, bordering the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand, southeast of Burma
Population: 65,905,410
Total area: 513,120 sq km (more than twice the size of Wyoming)
Population below poverty line: 10%
Forests: Most of the primary forest in Thailand is gone, with secondary forest only covering roughly 20% of the land area. This is compared to over 70% forest cover prior to World War II
Religion: According to the last census 94.7% of the total population are Buddhists of the Theravada
tradition. Muslims are the second largest religious group in Thailand at 4.6%
The hill tribe communities of Northern Thailand face serious challenges to their survival. In recent years, access to fertile farmland has significantly decreased, leaving subsistence farmers degraded hillsides on which to survive and make a living. Forest resources, critical for medicine, food, and construction, are declining in availability as land is taken over for conservation or expanding crop production. Sustainable income opportunities are needed as the population increases. The problem of poverty and lack of quality farmland is compounded by restrictions on citizenship (and therefore land rights) and travel and employment opportunities.
An Interview with our Programs Director
Posted by Doug
The New Year is off to a great start at Plant With Purpose! There is a lot of excitement in our office as our program staff prepares to visit our overseas programs. For the blog today, we thought we’d interview Armando Osorio, our Programs Director, about what he and his program staff are up to.
Armando, Can you tell us a little bit about the importance of this season for Plant With Purpose’s overseas programs?
Actually three of our programs are starting their fiscal year this month - Thailand, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. So in December we spend a lot of time planning for the New Year and finalizing budgets so our programs can start their year.
Q-What are the goals of the trips that you and the other program officers make during this time?
In general, we take trips to continue to build relationships with the local staff and communities, evaluating what took place in the last year. We also work on monitoring procedures, capturing new information and discussing plans for the new year. We visit many of the individual communities, too, to follow up on previous visits and also visit new communities where we are just starting to work.
For yourself, what are you looking forward to?
Well, I’ll be leaving for Thailand next week, which is still a fairly new program; it is new for me- I just started going there one year ago, so it still has a sense of newness. It’s very inspiring to go and visit new tribal villages near the Burmese border, to hear their languages and eat their food for the first time. We also get to hear about their journeys and what they have endured. It’s always encouraging!
How can we pray for you? I would say definitely for traveling mercies, and wisdom in knowing how to move partnerships forward, how to expand the program, building accountability structures, etc.
Anything else we should know? Just more prayer for other opportunities, especially in Burma and Cambodia. Part of our purpose in starting in Thailand is to get ready to expand our work in the region. We’re excited to do that.
Doug Satre
Director of Outreach and Development-As Director of Outreach Development, Doug Satre is responsible for overseeing Plant With Purpose’s fundraising and marketing efforts, working with the Plant With Purpose staff, donors and foundations to build awareness and financial support of Plant With Purpose’s work to transform the lives of the rural poor.
Armando Osorio
Programs Director-As the Plant With Purpose Programs Director, Armando Osorio acts as the liaison between our international field teams and Plant With Purpose USA. He is involved in the planning, monitoring, and evaluation of all Plant With Purpose programs.
