Greetings
again from Thailand. Since my last post the eventful programme has begun and I’m
currently taking five before we go to a welcome party organised by the
University of Chiang Mai.
Day one.
We started
yesterday with a news-type “Morning Show” delivered by World YMCA staff Romulo
and Maricris. These are important yet fun ways to initiate the days learning
and it’s common that they include some form of silly chanting or dance, just to
ensure everyone is awake. They seem to work!
After an
introduction to the programme and an ice-breaker (you do tend to forget the odd
name after 12 months…) we were presented to by a student from the Chiang Mai
University on how to greet and show respect in Thailand. This included some
simple words such as sawasdee (hello) and kab khun krub (thank you). He went on
to explain certain things that we should abide by to be respectful that
included not wearing vests or shorts in temples and slightly bowing your head
to elderly people. It is all a bit strange coming from the UK but everyone was
happy to follow and I’ve finally nailed the pronunciation!
Following
this Andrew Mackenzie from Australia presented findings of the One Million
Voices research campaign. As mentioned in my first post OMV is “a
global research initiative to gather the views and to better understand the
needs of young people. This is something that YMCA’s in Wales contributed to
and is just one example of how the global YMCA reaches out to its 58 million
members and beneficiaries worldwide.” We learnt that 60 countries
participated in the research and although there was no budget or resources,
thanks to the global network of the YMCA we gained information from nearly
18,000 young people. We were able to receive specific country reports and our
Welsh one contained some interesting results:
- Young people using YMCA’s in Wales believe they get more information on employment at the YMCA than anywhere else apart from the internet. More than schools and unsurprisingly the Department of Work and Pensions.
- Young people receive a higher level of personal, social and health education at the YMCA compared to schools.
- Young people in Wales are less likely to be in education and less likely to have any qualifications than the global average.
- Unemployment levels in Wales are higher than the global average, with the main reason being the lack of jobs available.
The two bottom points especially stood out for me. Although the UK and Wales isn’t perfect, I fully
expected us to have higher levels of education and employment… remember this
survey was cast to 60 countries throughout the world, some we would regard a lot 'worse off'. I wonder what British
Prime Minister Theresa May would make of these statistics?
Looking
through this was of real interest. Many of the group looked terrified to see so
much ‘data’ but this sort of thing is similar to my employment role and I’m
fortunate to read the information rather well. I really hope that the YMCA’s in
Wales will be looking through the results of the research to gain a better
understanding of what our young people need to be empowered when they walk
through the door of a YMCA. I will be lobbying for it to be placed on the
agenda at the next Strategic Development meeting that the Welsh YMCA’s hold
every three months.
Moving on –
it’s still only 4pm on the first day by now – we participated in a
workshop led by Change Agents from Denmark and Australia focusing on SDG’s. More
beautiful statistics and numbers to get in to! What is an SDG you ask? Well,
Sustainable Development Goals were created by the United Nations in 1990 and
updated in 2015. There are 17 goals in total containing 169 specific targets to
meet or work towards by 2030. They include some quite incredible aspirations
such as no poverty, zero hunger and gender equality. Since 1990 the amount of people in
poverty has lowered from over 1 BILLION to 700 million. That’s great right? The
one issue I have with this statistic is that the SDG’s class ‘poverty’ as have
less than $1.25 a day income. Realistically how many people can manage off $1.25
per day to feed, dress, shelter, educate… live? I wonder what the total would be if it was $5, and even then is this a realistic amount of money to
break free of poverty?
Staying on
the topic of finances, what we learnt next is something that you should just
think about for a few seconds. On Earth we have rich people and poor people. I
ask you, the poorest 50% of the world’s population have the same amount of
money ($2 trillion) as how many of the richest people?
Sixty-two.
If that wasn’t
quite clear… the SIXTY-TWO richest people on Earth have the same wealth as the
bottom THREE BILLION. The figure in 2010 was 388. Whilst the $1.25 poverty
numbers may be decreasing, the inequality gap is growing wider at pace.
The
close of this presentation led in to another workshop led by Mari Cruz
from the YMCA in Madrid. It focused on the different ways charities can and do fund-raise and resulted in deep discussion as we argued what type of fundraising
is good and reasons against others. For me it was nothing that I didn’t already
know but it was really good to be refreshed and contribute to the discussion.
Mari seemed grateful at the end of the discussion when I thanked her for
running such a thought provoking session.
We have
finally reached dinner time and the food on offer has been superb. Although
rice and noodles are a staple at every mealtime, the Thai green chicken curry
last night was superb and on the whole the selection available has been my
favourite of any YMCA event I’ve attended.
The first
evening concluded with a quiz, where teams were organised by a concoction of
doing the conga, team working to model a car made of bodies and once having thought
of a team name producing a song to go with it. Our team “The Dumbo’s” – perhaps
in reference to Thailand’s love of elephants rather than a summery of our academic qualities
– was well received as was the other four groups. Sadly the questions were not
as appreciative with a selection being:
- Which country produces the most oxygen? (not Brazil)
- What year was the first Olympic Games held? (no idea)
- What country produces this largest amount of false teeth? (we still don’t know this)
- What is the only country where you can marry a dead person (we got this correct!)
Day two.
My inability
to wake up at a reasonable hour meant I skipped breakfast and went straight in
to our conference room where I respected the majority of Change Agents
participating in daily devotions.
Our first
port of call today was to learn what next year’s World Challenge will be. In
2015 the World Challenge set a Guinness world record for the most consecutive football penalty
kicks taken in one day across multiple locations. I’m sure you’ll find out 2017’s
soon enough.
Following that section, the many Change Agents from African countries actively presented one of their
projects named S2C – or subject to citizen and there is more information on
this here http://goo.gl/W7eIRi
After lunch
we listened to guest speaker (and quiz team-mate from the night before) Guro from
YMCA Norway titled “Where the power resides: The vicious circle of poverty”.
The presentation was similar to the SDG information but including some
surprising realities. Using her homeland as an example she shared that Norway
sends hundreds of millions of dollars to protect rain forests every year, but at
the same time invests 20 times as much capital in companies that are tearing
down the forests to manufacture their products. In groups we discussed how we need to look
at problems within our communities and find the reason for the problem before
we can provide a solution.
I brought
up the steelwork industry in the UK and in particular South Wales where
recently thousands of people are in grave danger of losing their jobs. These
jobs are low-skilled and it will be near impossible to place them in similar
roles should the worst case scenario become reality. Alex from Victoria YMCA in
Australia said that in her part of the world, education and degree places are capped
to a certain number to prevent people being overqualified and there being
insufficient roles, whilst her local government advertise to businesses who
offer low-skilled jobs to maintain a healthy variety of employment
opportunities.
And here we
are now! I’m just getting ready for dinner in 45 minutes before the welcoming
party mentioned at the start of the post. It won’t be a late one tonight as
tomorrow be have a reeeeally busy day visiting Sao Hin YMCA to learn about
their work before a visit to an Elephant preservation camp and dinner at one of Thailand’s
top restaurants. I hope it is as good as it sounds!
A final
note on the recent bombings in Thailand – these are not aimed at tourists and
every issue has been experienced in the far south of Thailand some 1,000 kilometres
away from peaceful Chiang Mai. YMCA staff have no issues over our safety (and I’m
not planning on jumping off cliffs again anytime soon!)
Catch up
towards the end of the week.
Chris
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