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Family Care Foundation Newsletter: Volume 5 -- No. 3 -- August 2001 Partnering with Northwest Medical Teams By Deborah Ekner, FCF Project Manager in Bangkok, Thailand Central Thailand Mission Project (P20) It was the first time Chartchai was seeing a dentist—also it was the first time he was face to face with a “farang” (a white-skinned foreigner). Abandoned by his parents and now a resident of the Maharaj Boys’ Home Foundation, an orphanage for abandoned children, Chartchai (12) was suffering from a badly infected molar. Along with a number of other children from the orphanage with serious dental needs, Chartchai was about to be treated by a team of American dentists. Drs. Fred Rothman, Warren Schafer, and assistant Cathy Karnosh are part of Northwest Medical Teams International, based in Portland, Oregon. This agency sends volunteer doctors and dentists to poor, disadvantaged situations like this around the world.
Working hand in hand with our team from Central Thailand Mission and a co-ordinator from St. Vincent de Paul Society, this medical team made a difference in the lives of about 150 patients in just eight days! Quite a remarkable feat, considering that they were working in makeshift conditions with a minimum of equipment brought from the US. When a second dental chair was needed, the dentists settled for a reclining sun-deck chair! The team had already completed 25 extractions the first morning. For Chartchai though, it was no mere extraction. He needed a major operation, the extraction of a permanent molar impacted due to extensive infection. The operation seemed to take forever, but now the gnawing pain that he had had for weeks is no more. The dentists were impressed with Chartchai’s stoic nature (or was he just overwhelmed by the whole experience?). He closed his eyes, winced a few times when the anaesthetic injection was given, and again when the tooth was being taken out, yet Chartchai never let out a squeal. Ouch! It was painful enough just to be an onlooker! On this exploratory visit, the dental team attended to children from the MahaMek Foundation, the Good Shepherd Home (a home for unwed mothers), the Maharaj Foundation, and the Foster Parent Plan International. “Now we know the need,” said Dr. Schafer, a founding member of the Northwest team. “We’ll be back and hopefully, with more teams all throughout the next year.”
Reaching out to Mexico City’s Hill People By Carlos Cedillo, FCF Project Manager in Mexico City It’s early Thursday morning and women with children and babes on their backs are quickly making their way up a hill road near Mexico City, hoping to get to the food aid line early—it’s only 6:00 A.M.—but the line is already a block long. Times are hard for the San Mateo families. Food prices keep going up and the minimim salary of three dollars a day is a harsh figure to deal with for a family of five or more. Down below, the valley is quiet, the village is waking up and several are trodding on to work. One can almost hear a hushed echo in the valley, perhaps a prayer for relief from the pain of poverty and darkened lives.
Poverty continues to be one of the biggest social afflictions facing Mexico. A recent analysis by the World Bank indicates that 42.5 percent of Mexicans live on an average daily income of two dollars or less; 17.9 percent on one dollar or less. Such are the economic conditions we found in the San Mateo hills, one hour from Mexico’s downtown area. Here the brown hills are studded with a grey blur of concrete houses appearing as unfinished boxes. On closer approach you’ll find wooden shacks or perhaps just a few boards propped between concrete houses with a tin door leading into someone’s habitation. We enter a compound of small wooden structures with dirt floors housing six families. Old clothes hang here and there, a swarm of flies surround a two hundred pound hog penned in the midst of the compound. This vivienda is better off than others, they have one faucet for water and a single wire brings in electricity from a high post, rigged during the night. Further up, a wooden shanty with a tin roof and curtain door houses a family of six. When the cold night winds threaten to blow off the tin roof, rocks or tires are thrown on to keep it secure. Cardboard boxes are not thrown away, they can be folded down and put on the ceiling to keep out the cold.
Project H.E.L.P. has initiated a five-year food-aid plan to assist a couple dozen of these San Mateo families living at poverty level. Weekly, each family presently receives a 26-pound food bag. Challenges we still face include: 1. Food Bank — Phase II, a food bank will require leasing a facility with adequate space for storage, distribution and office area. Cost of leasing this would be approximately $700 to $1,000 per month. 2. Three ton truck — Required for transporting weekly donated food aid to the storage facility.
3. Quality of Life pilot program — Project H.E.L.P. is presently compiling statistics in order to enroll the most needy families into the Quality of Life program (QLP). The program would provide the designated families with clothes, childcare and educational aids, and building materials for the improvement of their housing facilities. 4. Adopt a school-less child program — Approximately one third of the San Mateo residents are illiterate and many of these can not afford to send their own children to public school. The basic tuition per child is $40 yearly, $35 for school uniforms, and $20 for school supplies, a total of $95 annually. If you would like to sign up to “adopt” a school-less child you would receive a picture of the child and a bi-monthly progress report for your adopted child.
Newsweek: Food for the Starving in North Korea Helping Hands Korea (P01) is a FCF Project in Seoul, South Korea, which began a program “The Ton-a-Month Club” to sponsor desperately needed grains being sent as famine-relief to the North Korean civilian population. Through consultation with the International Red Cross representative in South Korea, Helping Hands/Korea was able to target the four most vulnerable categories: the elderly, the handicapped, orphans, and single mothers, concentrating this help in the western provinces, where the Red Cross monitors have greatest access and monitoring freedom. The following article, reprinted here in part, was published in the February 7th edition of the Korean edition of Newsweek: Helping Starving North Korean Residents By Kang Tae-uk, Newsweek Korea reporter “And if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” (Isaiah 58:10)
Tim Peters, 51, who is currently working as an English speechwriter and an adviser at the Federation of Korean Industries (KFI), takes the above passage from the Old Testament as his guiding star in life. Since June 1996, he has been managing a non-government organization called “Ton a Month Club” (http://ton-a-month.tripod.com) to help the starving North Korean residents. TMC is a kind of a non-profit Christian relief program, which has sent more than 90 tons of food to the North to date. It was in May 1996 when he received a revelation from God to carry out relief activities for North Korea. At the time, he had been listening to a speech by Bernard Krisher, 69, a former Newsweek Tokyo bureau chief, at the Seoul Foreign Press Club. During his press conference, Mr. Krisher urged the world to invest an interest in North Korea’s state of famine, which at the time had not been made public. After the speech, Peters rushed to the Shilla Hotel where Krisher had been staying and sought advice on giving food aid to the North. The TMC that [Peters] founded five years ago collects donations mainly through personal networks and charity concerts. The personal network he refers to is highly simple. “It’s better for one thousand persons to donate one dollar each than for one company to give one thousand dollars,” he said.
Charity concerts also usually involve the voluntary participation of the performers, some of which include the charity solo given by the world-famous pianist Sam Rotman and a Korean soprano Chang Son-kyong at the Munhwa Ilbo Hall on November 18, 1999, and the concert by Jerusalem Philharmonic in the Hyatt Hotel Grand Ball Room. The relief goods TMC sends to North Korea mainly comprise corn and flour, although they also contain clothing and medical supplies. The organization chooses these food items because they have high calories and are less liable than rice to fall into the hands of elite North Koreans, such as party executives and soldiers. Since they are also cheap, TMC can procure them in large quantities. “We can buy one ton of corn in China with 200,000 won ($170),” he explained. Mostly TMC buys the food supplies from the areas bordering North Korea, such as Dalian, which are then offered to North Korean defectors through reliable ethnic Korean-Chinese. Some of the food is also sent directly to North Korea through an ethnic Korean-Chinese who has an access to the North, and the South Korean Red Cross, and Jungto, a Buddhist relief organization for North Korea. Tim and his wife went to a noodle factory in Najin, North Korea, to directly deliver four tons of flour in June 1999, even though tensions between the two Koreas were running high—a naval skirmish between the North and the South had taken place at the West Sea only a few days before. He visited five cities near Yanbian to deliver relief goods last week. When asked about the regulations China may impose on relief activities carried out in the country, he said, “It has not tried to stop humanitarian relief activities.” Nevertheless, it is possible for China to take some measures for his efforts there, once it officially confirms his relief activities. But he did not seem fazed by the possibility. “More than three million North Korean residents have died of starvation during the last five years, and the number of North Korean defectors exceed 100,000. As long as this reality prevails, I will go wherever they are,” he said. Work with Russian Street Kids Featured on CNN Love’s Bridge (E01) is a FCF project in Russia dedicated to bettering the lives of street children. In late 2000, the US Consul General attended the inauguration of a new Love’s Bridge shelter for street kids in Perm, a city in the Ural Mountains region of Russia. More recently, Love’s Bridge was contacted by CNN who wanted to do a story highlighting their work. After this clip aired on CNN International for a few days running, CNN received such an enthusiastic response that they flew our Project Manager to Moscow to do an interview by satellite link-up. Both the interview and the original clip were then aired in North America a number of times during the last week of May. Following is the transcript of the CNN clip, featuring FCF Project Manager Christina Greenberg. [Statements by Christina are indicated by italics.] Western women in the Siberian city of Perm are hunting under buildings, under stairways, under ground as if for lost cats or dogs. “When we first came they had not been inside in so long. They came to us acting like animals.”
They are hunting for children, and in the city’s cracks and corners, children are not hard to find. Children like Kostian who has been stabbed three times on the street; or Jan who has been raped five times. There may be two million homeless children in Russia, the government says, there may be four million. No one knows for sure. In Perm, as in many Russian cities, it is a problem left untouched by the local authorities. “We came to Perm and asked the administration, ‘Is there anyone here helping out?’ They said, ‘No, no one.’ ” Christina Greenberg rented an apartment with her own money, plus a few thousands dollars from corporate sponsors, and opened a shelter. The city offered some help at first by providing transportation. “Of the fourteen children who live here, thirteen tried to commit suicide.” The stories are remarkably similar: “My stepfather beat me. He used to beat me so much.” Seventeen year old Vanya’s story may be even worse. His head shakes and his eyes kind of move back and forth. I asked the other kids why, and they said that his mom committed suicide in front of him when he was one and a half. She hung herself on the curtains and just put him on the bed to watch. “After that I knew I had to help him. He is not just a little demon. There is a reason why he is like this.” There’s a reason why a child prefers a store roof to home. A reason why he sniffs glue, paint thinner or gasoline. A reason why at the market where he begs and steals he is universally despised. “People just hit them. Someone in some stand just hit them because they see they are homeless. One of the first times we were feeding them in the market, about three years ago, the police started yelling and yelling at us. ‘How dare you feed these kids! They’re just rats, they are criminals. Why would anyone want to feed them?!’ ” Why too, would anyone hug them, kiss them, try to make them smile, not for a photo-op, but for five long years. “I felt that God has led me to these kids. But I felt once I started working with them, I couldn’t just leave them on the streets. I knew if we didn’t do something, nobody would. So it was basically a question between life and death. Every kid that moves on, we save a life.” Life-savers, a job that did not exist in Perm before Christina Greenberg, may now be the one hope for some Siberian children to come in from the wild. The actual video clip can be viewed on FCF’s website: www.familycare.org where you can also view the full version of the following abridged article. PERM, Russia (CNN) — There are always some details and impressions that, for a lot of different reasons including limited airtime, don’t make it into a report that goes on the air. In the case of Siberian street children, some of what was left out, for me, might be as important as what went into the report.
If you watch Christina Greenberg, an American, do her work with homeless children from the Russian city of Perm, on six hours of videotape, you will never hear her raise her voice or lose her temper. And despite her small, thin frame, she exercises a remarkable authority over some of the wildest children in the country. Christina says the problem is not that Russians do not care about the homeless children, but that the issue is something new for Russia, that it did not exist under the social safety net in the old Soviet Union. She hopes someday to turn the operation over to a Russian staff. The creation of private charity or social welfare groups is not an easy sell in a nation where such needs were taken care of by the state up until just a decade ago, especially once you get outside the capital Moscow, where Western influence and presence is strongest. It is partly for that reason that Christina says she chose Perm, because it is “the coldest, most forbidding place” that came to mind. |
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