My interest in helping third world children actually began in the early 1970's.  I had joined the U.S. Navy at the end of the Vietnam War and found myself stationed in the Philippines.  This was my first exposure to living conditions in third world countries.  The experience of living in a small village on the coast made a lasting impression upon my young, naive self.  At the time, I was a typical 'sailor' and didn't accomplish anything to be proud of.  I served my country, though, and didn't have to kill anyone to do so -- I was just lucky!  It took another thirteen years before I returned to Asia as a thirty-something year old student.  The wait had been worth it.  I had time to mature emotionally and knew what I wanted to accomplish.  Both my B.A. and M.A. degrees were focused on community health and rural development in third world countries.  By the time I arrived in south India as a student intern with a village development project, I was in 'over my head' and learning to live a new lifestyle.  It is one that I have never abandoned in my heart.

For the next thirteen years, I continued to live in Asia.  My first visit to Thailand was in 1985 and I had wanted to study alternative medicine at a Thai primary health care center near the Cambodian border.  I was frustrated in my search for government approval but began my career as an English teacher then in Bangkok. I had no choice -- I was waiting for a student loan check.  I couldn't just leave Thailand and immediately go elsewhere to study herbal medicine.

The next twelve years were spent in India and Nepal.  I continued my studies until 1991 when I settled down in Kathmandu and basically became an unofficial Peace Corps volunteer.  At least, my lifestyle was the same.  I worked in local boarding schools and eventually added on a year of Ph.D. research into health education.  I had always been frustrated, though, in applying my educational background to worthwhile development projects.  I never wanted to work for an international non-governmental organization because I had lived too much of the poor lifestyle myself to ever understand why so many INGOs' budgets seem geared towards making their employees' lifestyles so luxurious.  I always thought a non-governmental organization was either a true grass-roots development or it hadn't earned its name.

Finally, in 2006, I returned to Thailand as an English teacher.  I joined the Pattaravitaya English Program School's staff as a foreign teacher.  My supervisor was a Philippino young enough to be my daughter -- a return to the Philippines in a sort of round-about way.  Here, I applied my skills as a teacher with less than a hundred students enrolled in the English Program.  I had plenty of time to explore the local environment and community.  For six months, I shared a Thai farm house with another teacher from Myanmar.  He taught Burmese language at Pattaravitaya and opened me up to the culture of Myanmar.  During the hot season just before the monsoon rains began, I would spend many an afternoon cooling off with a swim in the Moei River. Here, I couldn't help but encounter swarms of local Burmese children also swimming in the river.  For many of them, this was the only home they had ever known.  Many of them spent their days collecting enough plastic bottles from local trash bins in and around Mae Sot to earn enough money to pay for a meal each evening.  Others survived by begging from the rich tourists visiting the Burmese market near the Friendship Bridge.  I became friends with many of them and shared my pocket money -- for clothes, sometimes, but mostly to take someone to a local restaurant for a meal.  I was able to talk with many of them through my friend and housemate, the Burmese teacher.  He had lost his own parents during the Democracy Movement in Myanmar.  I had witnessed the same movement succeed in Nepal during the early 1990's.  I couldn't help but feel compassion towards these children's plight.  They had no real champions in the world. These were not Karen children whose parents' villages were ethnically cleansed by the Burmese Army. These were just kids mostly from broken families.  All of their stories were similar in one way or another. One or the other parent had run away, become a drunk, or didn't make enough money to support the children he or she had brought into this world.  These kids would classify as economic refugees -- like the flotsam that the Burmese throw into the river each day.  It was only apt that these children also ended up in the river along with all the other 'trash' thrown away.  But, I couldn't see them as trash.  I had lived too long in Nepal with similar children from impoverished backgrounds not to realize that these kids had long ago lost their support network.  Burmese society was unraveling in front of my eyes.

I had been planning on leaving Thailand after a year and working my way around the world as a volunteer at orphanages and with programs helping street children. Suddenly, I was inspired to finally try my own hand at this 'NGO' game.  Why couldn't I do the same thing?  I was tired of spending my salary -- which I didn't need but ten percent of to survive on in Thailand, anyway.  My friend, the Burmese teacher, and I rounded up about ten kids and found a house to rent.  It was near the Friendship Bridge. We hired the mother of one of the children to be their housekeeper, opened the doors, and handed over a month's food money.  It was our first mistake.  The next morning saw the kids kicked out of the house. An angry landlady showed up at our door, and the housekeeper had run away with our money back to her village. We learned that Achai, her son pictured here, was the youngest of her children.  All the rest had run away from home and many had become thieves.  Old habits are hard to kick.  We were disappointed -- both in our Thai and Burmese neighbors.  We had conveniently forgotten these people had their own history that wouldn't go away just because some white farang came along and tried to 'make their world over'.

We took the next step in our adventure and rented a larger, older farm house in a village further downstream of the Friendship Bridge.  We were lucky when we found a sympathetic Thai landlord who gave us a break on the rent.  From September 2006 to February 2007 we established ourselves in this new home.  The children were happy that they could reach us without walking too far into Thailand.  The police were constantly on the lookout at that time to stop too many children from roaming free.  Our kids could walk downstream in Myanmar and then cross over the Moei River and our house was only 500 meters away.  Life settled down into a routine of teaching the children to be civilized.  They had lived so long outside and run wild and free that actually being in a real house for maybe the first time in their lives was a new habit that had to be 'broken in' like a pair of new hiking shoes.  By Christmas of 2006, we felt we had finally put some roots down.  The rest is history.  We have had our 'ups and downs' but compared to where the children have been and what they have experienced, they've made progress.  I would still do the whole thing over again if given the chance.  I don't imagine it would be any easier but having once gone down that road, at least I now know the road signs to look out for.