Traveling on a Bus in Thailand
Traveling on a bus in the middle of Thailand switching my gaze from my iPhone to the scenery around me may not be the most undistracted way to write. Of course - LinkedIn may not be the best venue either … but … alas I am still here texting away as my mind if full, I feel the need to opine, and there is a hope for an audience to appear.
Looking at the houses outside my window I am first struck by the basicness. I mean these houses would be condemned in the USA. If you tried to raise children here, you would quickly have a visit from social services. Yet – in Thailand … this is home. They not only survive – they thrive. A universal education system that teaches about germs and health and assures there is access to clean water.
Not every place I have visited is the same. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa lacks a basic understanding of cleanliness standards and no priority is given to clean drinking water. Add the burning of plastics in trash and those two conditions make up a large percentage of health problems in these "non-developed" nations.
The converse to this is seen in the USA and other "developed" nations where the government has tried to regulate everything so much in the stated claim of public safety that they have basically made it impossible to "live poor". The "poor" family in the US receive almost $35,000 in benefits per year placing them in the top percentage of income earners in the world. With the building code requirements for dwellings, taxes on food producers, and the essential tax on living driving up costs of everything we have made living extremely expensive. It has become so expensive to live that we have come to except that $15/hr is a "living wage" even though that worker will make more money than most of the world.
What does it mean to be an American? Personally I ponder my birth right to be a US citizen, my natural intelligence, my gift of a solid upbringing and good education, my physical stature, and the life that I have led giving me a unique perceptive on the world. What am I to do with these gifts?
Since leaving high school I was in the US Navy, then worked for the US Education System, followed by work with various branches of the US Government including US aid organizations. This experience has shown me that good intentions do not always yield good results.
If you follow our government spending and success of government programs you can easily see that there is much misdirection. The US policy for housing and urban development has increased the dependency on the government instead of eliminating the housing crises; the US war on poverty has actually created a larger percentage in poverty; the US Department of Energy was created to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels and we now depend on them more than any other source of energy creation; the list goes on and on.
Such is also the success of US foreign aid initiatives. The farming assistance programs in Africa have forced a large number or rural Africans to move to the cities as US initiatives take their jobs and force them to move to already overcrowded cities. Our USAID policy is supposed to support civilian missions in foreign countries and is not supposed to have a military or political mission yet we continue to support companies with political ties within our own country and/or the host country. This would be excusable if successful but the companies selected do not have the ability to complete the projects that were initially agreed upon or at least not in a manner that helps the people in any substantial way. What our foreign aid initiatives do in droves is bring the best and brightest from each country to the US where they establish ties with American companies and then never go back to their home country. What these programs really do is encourage the export of ingenuity and intelligence from the world's neediest countries.
The most success I have seen in actually helping the target population is through non-governmental organizations (NGO). Most NGOs are nonprofits and most of those are Christian groups. The NGOs that are the most successful are the ones who focus on something specific like: Doctors Without Borders have projects to treat specific ailments or just provide wellness checkups for early detection of certain diseases; Water4Life who drills water wells in African villages to bring clean drinking water close to a village; By4Heart who flies children to Spain for life saving heart surgery; Samaritan's Purse who brings food to children during the year and brings Christmas gifts to needy children on Christmas; and my own NGO Viable Villages which helps the world's historic villages revitalize and become viable options for living and thereby reversing the trend of urbanification.
NGOs do not have the same funding as the government agencies as NGOs rely upon donations where the government just extorts the money they want from their citizens. The American tax payer is less aware of how their billions or aid dollars are spent then those who donate a few thousand to nonprofits.
The weakest link for NGOs is lack of management. The experts who are volunteering their time are experts in a needed field but they do not have an expertise in working in the particular environment where they are needed. The government agencies could show their value in this area but the truth is the US State Department and other government grounds are often the most clueless group of Americans in any country.
If you are looking for those who know how to get things done … you have to look to the corporations. It is the for-profit commercial entities that find the best way to do things, meet the movers and shakers in every location, and have a keen sense of the pulse of a country.
Another blessing for me is that much of my experience around the world has been with commercial enterprises. We may have had government contracts but we had to make our own way. We could not just bully our way through anything. In fact – we often were at a disadvantage because of how horrible the official US envoys were are their job that the locals had a serious chip on their shoulder against Americans.
Break back to the present and why I am here in Thailand. It all comes down to a single word – family, my wife and children are here. My wife is from Thailand and we have chosen to call Thailand home for now. My work has me currently living in Hawaii where I have started a business with my great friend Steve Sorenson. My end goal is to build our company to a point where I can put managers in place and direct a set percentage of our profits to Viable Villages.
The reason that I have brought all of the following to the forefront of this posting is because this is all relevant for the next step in my life. My focus on the future is Viable Villages and actually making a difference in the world. The reason I bring up government sponsored agencies, standard NGOs, and then commercial entities is because I do not want to depend on the government to direct my work and I do not want to make the standard management mistakes inherent with an NGO. It is my goal to run Viable Villages like a business where I have to minimize expenses and maximize my impact as well as run things with a cold heart even though our purpose is anything but. We want to help other NGOs to be able to utilize their resources in an efficient manner to do the greatest amount of good.
Viable Villages is an organization with the stated claim that, “the world's issues today are caused by urbanification causing human concentrations that are not sustainable and deeply problematic” our purpose is to “revitalize the rural villages making them viable options for habitation thereby reversing the trend of urbanification”
Urbanification leads to crime, pollution, corruption, desensitized government or companies to impact on local population, overuse of electricity, human waste disposal issues, garbage remediation concerns, disconnection from food source, and commercialization of relationships amongst many other things.
To reverse urbanification we need to address why people are moving to cities in the first place. When polled migrating people cite jobs as their chief cause with access to Better education and healthcare being the next two. There is also an issue with forced migration in certain areas of the world. All remaining reasons given totaled do not equal the impact of any of the previously stated reasons.
Forced migration is usually accomplished due to war, disaster, genocide, and government programs and are often not influenced by an NGO. In these instances, aid is given and care it taken to ensure the historic villages are maintained in record to aid in the return to those villages at a later date.
The other three areas are where we at Viable Villages tend to focus our attention. We have found that there is no universal answer to reverse urbanification as each situation is different and needs its own solution. There are often many similarities and as we grown and gain experience and understanding from other NGOs we find a few tools that work across the board.
There are several examples of what should not be done in the name of helping a country. One great example of unintended consequences is the Dodd Franks Bill that basically banned any product for use by US companies where they could not prove that the product was sourced without child labor. The intent to this legislation was to stop child slavery in certain countries but what really happened is China started buying all of these resources at a much cheaper price as they did not have to compete with western companies. This led the conditions in these countries to worsen. The mines that did stop using child labor did so only if they were able to get machinery that thereby reduced their labor requirement. Another side effect is that in many of these families the boys were the only income earner for their family as their father’s where not around due to wars and various other reasons. This led the family to starve to death of caused the mother to have to sell some of her children into slavery in neighboring mines or to sell herself to the foreign laborers who came in to run the complicated machinery.
A better solution would be to work with the mining companies to have them develop programs to educate the villagers to be able to use better mining practices and to work directly with the villagers to introduce value added capabilities. Overall this would increase the amount of money available in the community which then leads to more taxes which leads to better education, better facilities, and the addressing of other issues.
Of course not all advances are good. In many rural farming villages, the introduction of chemical fertilizers and synthetic herbicides and pesticides has increased the cost of farming substantially making farmers dependent upon banks to by seeds resistant to the chemicals they put on their crops. With one bad year the small farmers default and the bank takes their land and sells to the large corporate farmers who only raise cash crops for sale in distant markets. This then eliminates base level jobs, drives up the costs of local produce, and forces the poor locals to either move to the city or live more and more on government subsidized processed food that have a long shelf life.
At Viable Villages we try to keep the farm community whole instead of creating a corporate farm environment. We have worked with small villages through the introduction of technology that is focused on small scale farming and often times are methodologies used by their own grandfathers and great grandfathers but has been lost through the pressure of corporate farming as a profit generator. Some examples of what we do is: bring in new plants and fruits that generate more profit in local markets while consuming less resources but maintaining a requirement for labor; updating existing irrigation practices with more conservative practices through implementation of new schedules or introduction of new equipment; showcasing new multitier farming practices that utilize space more efficiently and reduce the need for herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer; and various other practices. Through expanding our network, we have found that we have almost never come up with a new idea ourselves and just serve as emissaries of best practices from each region shared from place to place.
As it is our goal to ensure everything is sustainable we do not try and keep ourselves in the middle of the sharing of ideas so we make it a priority at Viable Villages to introduce our village elders with as many of the contacts we have as possible. Sometimes there is a language barrier but we try to find ways to alleviate that as well.
Where we do work with government agencies is providing micro loans. We wish we had the money to do this ourselves but we do not. So we work with various government entities to help locals qualify for micro loans and help them through the application process and with negotiating with the government during the process to ensure the government program does not hijack the effort and force things on the village that are not conducive to the health of the village.
Where microloans have been successful is where we can use funds to develop businesses that add value to local products. Once success story is in a farming community where their number one product was rice we were able to create a company that would vibrate the rice to separate it from the chaff. A separate business would weigh and pack the rice into sacks of vacuum sealed packages. The greatest success was when we took the broken rice, which is often the least valued item sold, and built a factory that would package the broken rice into a dried pre-packed cup of rice with seasoning to which you only had to add water for breakfast. This company ended up being the most successful company in the village employing several people in various technical jobs as well as basic factory type labor.
All efforts will be for naught if you do not have a basic level of education in a community. Sometimes before a community can be helped commercially they need to have a basic level of education introduced. Some form of basic education for the youth to inculcate them with a basic understanding of reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, and current events plus an indoctrination in civics and health awareness. Without this then there is often very little that can be done to bring a community any level of prosperity and this must be done with the assistance of the national and local governments or it is not sustainable. At Viable Villages we have worked with government to connect their rural communities with their ministry of education and educational systems. Even in Afghanistan the cities had basic education but this was not reflected in rural communities. When the community does not value education and will not send their children to school we first work with the local elders to place a value on education. We talk with them to find our exactly what it is they want their children to learn. We then teach that and introduce more and more into the curriculum. This process takes a very long time.
If there is a value placed on education but the issue is with availability, then this is where we can offer the most assistance. At Viable Villages we work with governments again to purchase school materials like books, paper, pencils, pens, markers, chalk boards, and any number of items to include the introduction of distance learning capabilities by bringing in technology that allows for video conferencing and learning with the computers, cameras, satellite receivers and transceivers all donated and the internet signal donated for a period of time waiting for the village to make enough money to pay for the service themselves.
For those who show an advanced capability and an interest in learning more than a basic education we also introduce methods for education to continue in specialized fields. This various greatly per village and per vocation.
In the spirit of education and sustainability at Viable Villages we also train locals in how to maintain and operate all equipment we install. The same goes for any technology we bring into a community. We train locals in the maintenance and operation while establishing a known market for replacement parts. This ensures that anything we introduce will be sustainable. The focus on education is always to benefit the community and to bring knowledge into the community while exporting experience and intellect electronically but supporting scholastic research within the village and not forcing the best and brightest to leave.
Part of education is health training and education is key to "health" care in that a basic understanding of washing hands, brushing teeth, not smoking, drinking clean water, not pooping where you eat or drink, cooking at proper temperatures, preparing food properly, controlling insect populations, keeping wounds clean, drilling wells deep enough to ensure run off water is filtered through rock and soil prior to being brought back into a potable water system, and a large number of things American's take for granted as basic knowledge but was actually imparted to them thanks to the universal education system.
Medical care is essential to living well. An advanced program for "health" care as well as capabilities to address "sick" care are addressed.
The core of health care is regular checkups and early detection of major issues. This must be done by educated professionals. In the poorest of communities Viable Villages work with a network of volunteer physicians from all over the world to provide these services. We continue to grow this network of amazing professionals who so freely give where they can. We have had some successes with associating a paid physician with several small communities and training a health technician to be situated in each town. This health technician uses donated video conferencing technology to have a capability to diagnose and address issues above their capability.
Sick care in the villages is mostly focused on emergency services and treating basic ailments. The village health technician receives focused emergency medical care training. Each associated physician ensures their village health technicians are receiving continuous education to keep them current and relevant. Much of this is paid for through various NGO activities as most governments put such strenuous requirements that in little or no way help develop a sustainable program and just foster something that is dependent upon extremely expensive continuous aid.
Viable Villages is always working to address the core issues forcing urbanification and to make the world’s villages a viable option of habitation. Right now that is through addressing jobs, access to education, and access to healthcare. It would be great to tackle those issues across the planet and then move onto the next issues but until that time comes this is where we are focused.
Writing this in a continuous fashion has taken me from my spot in the van, to a strawberry farm north of Chiangmai, and then finally to an organic farm in the sleepy little town of Samoeng where we are camping for the night. I sit in a pagoda under an LED light bulb connected to the same outlet charging my iPhone as I pour out my thoughts in digital format. My few moments from family engagements come as my wife and son go to 7-11 and I keep an eye on my daughter sleeping in our tent not more than 10 feet away. I test and hope the sound of New Year’s Day fireworks do not wake her from her peaceful slumber. Heralding their return and my writing time coming to an end is my son's chant of B.R.I.A.N to the song originally known as BINGO wafting across the rice paddies. As I scan what I have written I see it has taken many twists and turns this way and that to and fro weaving in and out of many topics and strains of thought. In that this may be in and of itself confusing I have found it very revealing into my thought process as of late and helps me gauge where I need to go from here.
Anyone want to come along for the ride?