in Thailand

TRANSCRIPT:

My name is Somthong Srisudhivong, representing the Norwegian Church Aid. We have developed 60 “Caring, Sharing and Healing Centers” for people living with AIDS in communities, including 30 centers for Buddhist temples, 14 centers under Muslim mosques, 10 centers under Catholics and 6 centers for Protestants; so we call ourselves the interfaith network on HIV/AIDS in Thailand.

How many people living with AIDS are you caring for so far?

Right now we have reached over 2500, and our home visit teams consists of trained religious leaders and volunteers who include people living with AIDS. The story that touched me very much is that the help that Global Fund gives reaches the remote areas and very hard to reach populations- it is otherwise difficult to provide ARVs to children and poor people in remote areas. Most of the children on ARVS stay with their grandparents. I met one eight years old boy whose grandparents were too old to care for him as he followed up his treatment, so they sent him to Phra Kittichai, a monk in Kuamtak temple who took care of him for six months as he was taking his treatment according to the doctors’ orders. After this the boy went back to his grandparents.

When you speak to people receiving assistance, what do they say? How have their lives improved?

Right now that they have access to ARVs they are healthy, but they ask the same question: “Now that I am healthy and happy, what next? How can I have income? “ In our activities for the first year, we provide small income generation opportunities for people living with AIDS. Right now I have the idea of a business society for people living with AIDS. The idea is to develop, with the existing Global Fund budget, centres in two temples in Chiang Mai, to train people in product development and marketing- mainly for their income generation. Right now they produce handicrafts but have problems marketing. They will now know: ‘This is the product that can make it in the market.’ After that we make only the products that can be sold. The training course is going to start next month and will cover all religions. There is a Muslim group in the south which wants to learn sewing. They will stay in Hualin temple in Chiang Mai in the North, where they are good at sewing and marketing. This is also a form of an interfaith and north – south collaboration. They are also going to learn how the different communities live. We believe that as faith-based organizations we already have a lot of resources in the communities.

The money that the Global Fund gives is added value to what we already have in the community, coming in to strengthen the capacity of organizations in the community. With this money we can organize and have better management and capacity building for faith-based organizations. This is the added value to the Global Fund and to our faith-based organizations in Thailand.