Project Neptune: HIV Women "Assist Those Less Fortunate Than Themselves"

The Life Home Project helps women like Nok (not her real name) and her children who've contacted HIV.

Tolerance is big in Buddhist-infused Thailand. I've seen "lady boys" (as transvestites here are called) whip out a mirror at the restaurant table to apply their midnight blue eyeshadow mingling with the hijab covered Muslim housecleaners at resorts, AIDS carries the murky stigma of prostitution. In a country where the sex trade is rampant that's always a possibility, but Nok contracted HIV from her husband.

Soon not even the shopkeepers wanted to serve her. She packed her meager possessions and ran away with her children to a cave to live with other HIV-positive outcasts.

Fast forward to the present, and it's hard to believe that this 35-year-old who paints magnificent mandalas - and looks so well and confident - has been through such hell. - "From the Shadows Into the Light", Phuket Magazine, May/June 2005 (story not online)

The story goes on to outline their art therapy program. Because HIV positive women are perceived to be "unemployable" there is a microloan fund for the "artists" and those that are interested in other entrepreneurial pursuits (a baker was mentioned). In addition, many of the women participate in a handicrafts business women (selling their own handpainted cards, clothing, silk notebook covers, bags, wall hangings, tablecloths, table napkins, and other housewares). 

But what really fascinated me was that after the tsunami, the women at Life Home Project wanted to "assist those less fortunate than themselves." They established Project Neptune and worked on a variety of grassroots relief work. For instance this is just one project:

Beginning at Baan Tha Chatchai, a small fishing village just north of Sarasin Bridge, which connects Phuket with the mainland, the women sat with 57 children aged 7-12 years among the rubble and debris of the village to help them overcome their residual fear and anxiety. The children, through art skills learned through their new teachers, expressed their feelings about the tsunami first by writing, then by associating each feeling with a colour. The results were displayed in an April exhibition of the children's oil pastel paintings at Dulwich International College.

What struck me about this story is the uplifting 180 degree turnaround.

First the women shyly demure in the beginning of their drawing class: A common refrain is "Tam Mai pen," or, I cannot do.

Next, they are selling their artwork for a profit. And then they are helping others "less fortunate than themselves."

p.s. Life Home Project is currently raising funding for housing for the women and children. And since it's been either a weekend or public holiday - heck, there are tons of public holidays - since I've been in Phuket, I've not talked to anyone at Life Home Project myself yet but the article was well-researched and the quality of Phuket Magazine articles is high. (The April 2005 Tsunami Recovery issue is online and includes a story by the publisher who went to Banda Aceh himself.)

Comments

[william]

So glad I found your site, God is Good!
I love blogging! Unless I have a cause or purpose for blogging like our protest of Elkridge Club in Baltimore,MD which for 127 years hadn't had any African American members until our protest movement: www.powerspeaks.blogspot.com - SPARKED them to accept African Americans. I generally just like to read other people blogs. My favorite and the first blogger I view each morning is Robert Scoble http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ . In today Jan.3rd post Scoble mentions Evelyn Rodriguez site : http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/
as the best blog to come across his aggregator this past weekend.
So I link to Evelyn's site and what to my IMMENSE pleasure do I find but one of my comments which I had posted on Scoble's site some time back when he was in Ireland and had met Charles Handy. Here's my comment to Scoble which Evelyn posted: "In a comment by William on Robert Scoble's blog where Charles Handy, a founder of the London Business School, and his storytelling is praised (btw, Scoble has great links to Ernie the Attorney's posts from his Katrina-ravaged home yesterday plus a nice mention of this tsunamianniversary.com project):Thanks so much for sharing with us the wisdom of Charles Handy, I found this quote of his: “It is a time for new imaginings, of windows opening even if some doors close. We need not stumble backwards into the future, casting longing glances at what used to be; we can turn round and face a new reality. It is after all a safer posture if you want to keep moving”I would like to apply the relevance to this quote to the news today regarding the announcement by Mayor Ray Nagin that New Orleans will have the nations first wireless internet service, Overcoming Hurricane Katrina and opposition from cable television and telephone companies. Kudos to Mayor Nagin and the visionary team for new imaginings and having the guts of “not stumbling backwards into the future, casting longing glances at what use to be; but turning round and facing a new reality”.
In 2006 I am looking to face a NEW REALITY, a reality I have never seen before and one in which the interconnection of blogging enables someone like Evelyn who is in Thailand and Scoble in California and me in Maryland can share with one another, and empower one another with knowledge for the mind as well as the spirit. Blogging is the SPARK to make it happen! The blogfire is burning bright!