Serving with Step Ahead in Thailand and previously in Northeast India has helped put a face and family to poverty for me. These experiences have also helped me understand that if we provide opportunities, people can go beyond being dependent on aid. Let me share the stories of two women from the community where I work.

Twenty years ago, Feung’s daughter left home. Feung and her husband were left to care for Naen, their granddaughter. However, soon after Feung’s husband died, Feung was left to care for her granddaughter alone. Feung sold her Thai curries and food to order in the markets of the Klong Toey slum community, but due to borrowing from a local moneylender, she faced an interest rate of almost 20% per month. She struggled to make ends meet and faced constant threats if she could not repay the loan on time. A little over a year ago, Naen gave birth to a baby girl, Sofa, making Feung a great-grandmother. Today her story isn’t one of struggle, but  of hope. Feung and her grand-daughter care for baby Sofa together and do not have to face the stresses of borrowing from a moneylender to run her business because Feung is now a Step Ahead member. Step Ahead is proud to stand with such an amazing woman who refuses to relent and looks forward to helping her provide a future for her grand-daughter and great-grand-daughter.

“We should never lose hope in helping the poor overcome poverty, we only need to rethink our ways and recognize they already have the skills.” -Marisa

Khan Keawkam never borrowed from a moneylender nor faced a twenty percent monthly interest rate. However, like many Step Ahead members, each day was still a struggle. As a widow, she was left to provide an income and take care of her son and five grandchildren. Her grim situation changed when Ms. Khan Keawkam became a member of the Step Ahead’s micro-enterprise development program. She took her most recent loan, 3000 Baht ($100), enabling her to continue running her peanuts stall in the market and provide opportunities for her children and grandchildren to study that they would not have otherwise. Just like Khan Keawkam, many members of of Step Ahead’s micro-enterprise development program not only experience a change in their personal lives, but in the lives of their children, grand-children and community!

Step Ahead is busy with a range of programs they’re offering around Thailand. They include teaching Thai/English to children in southern Thailand and Bangkok’s Klong Toey community, and employing women to make leather purses or tote bags in Pattaya and southern Thailand. That’s just a quick glimpse of the endeavors the Step Ahead Foundation focuses on, be sure to visit their website and contact them to get involved.

Blame it on the ubiquity of advertising that has made every inch of public space available for purchase. Blame it on being submerged in a tourism dependent economy, overrun with hedonistic invitations. Blame it on our personal laziness. Regardless of where it feels most comfortable for you to pile up the blame, we need to realize too many of us are over-entertained and under-challenged.

This week as I listened to the founders of Imagine Thailand talk about the conflict in Southern Thailand. I couldn’t help but wonder why the situation had never been explained to me with such depth before. I’ve lived in Bangkok for a total of two years and I’ve been educating myself about everything Thai, including the language, for nearly three years. Yet Cavelle Dove’s description of the conflict blatantly exposed my minuscule knowledge and all the superficial explanations I had ever been given. Am I surrounded by heartless people or are they just as poorly informed? Are they just too distracted to care?

Perhaps poorly informed is less harsh than over entertained and under challenged. However, the latter most accurately explains my experiences. I know how long I desired so strongly to be a part of something meaningful that I was willing to join any number of organizations to feel I was contributing something. That’s because months of doing everything else the city had to offer left me tired, unfulfilled, and dejected. Yup, it’s the same miserable feeling you get after overdoing it at an expensive hotel buffet. That was my experience in Bangkok, and the seeds of how I came to begin my search for sanuk.

Living abroad has given me a more pronounced understanding of the quote, “The opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference.” Especially when a Thai friend remarked, “Well Dwight, I’m really surprised because I grew up here and I’ve never been to a slum before.” Again I asked myself, are we really so out of touch? Is it our environment? How often are we really given opportunities to give back? Do we even know how to help people or how much fun it can be? Are we just avoiding a challenge?

Consider what avenues exist to discuss helping the less fortunate or marginalized in your community. What are they? Are you a part of the discussion? I fear so few of us are not even having these discussions. When they do occur, it happens in niches so isolated that they’re inaccessible to both other groups having similar discussions or people who are not members of these segmented communities.

It’s my passion to change this where I can.

Tonight In Search of Sanuk is hosting a party called LUSH to raise funds for the urban garden project. As I prepare, I wonder whether or not I should really have to get people drunk to convince them to give to a good cause. Whether we’ll ever stand united to battle the forces keeping us complacent. Whether one day we’ll plead with our friends to understand how tightly linked our well being is to those we’re indifferent to.

“Wakeup. Put your hand in. Be thrilling.”

~Dwight