Starting Strong: Helping Women & Big Bite Bangkok

Mustard being slathered on hot dog made with Northern Thai sausage at Big Bite Bangkok

What a great week!

I hope the rest of the year goes as strongly as 2012 started.

Much of the week was spent planning past Saturday’s Big Bite Bangkok, but I did get to spend time with my mentor Marc Gold from the 100 Friends Project.

Marc is a professional at creating smiles

Marc had just returned from helping some terribly desperate communities in the Philippines and went with me to visit a few families we’re supporting in Bangkok. In particular, I wanted to follow up with the woman who had called me after she ran out of food last week.

Together, we spent a few hours chatting with women in two families about their difficulties in Bangkok, managing money, and caring for sick relatives. When our time was up we quietly left, leaving both women with $100 each.

I was glad to have the opportunity to share my work with Marc and we spent a few hours afterwards discussing how to further encourage the women in the families we visited and ways to collaborate in the future. Hanging out with Marc is always encouraging because he has a great deal of helpful input to share from his experience directly helping people and small charities all over Asia.

Starting the year our supporting women with the help of Marc Gold of 100 Friends

Switching to my fundraising hat, we tapped into the city’s foodie community to raise money to continue helping these families more this year.

Sunday launched Big Bite Bangkok with the help about 200 people attendees and 9 vendors with great food. We raised about $850 for our project, which is a great start to the year. We’ll share more pictures and details on the Eating Thai Food Blog later this week if you want to see more food pictures.

Thanks everyone for following and supporting our strong start to 2012!

-Dwight

 Photo credit for the food photos from volunteer photographer Jennica Botonis.