Today we woke up and had a nice breakfast Payap Univeristy. Then, we traveled to a Christian organization that “works alongside with people living with HIV/AIDS”, called CAM (the CCT AIDS Ministry, and CCT refers to the Church of Christ in Thailand). The organization has seven regular employees and engages in a lot of activities. They provide temporary shelter for people living with HIV/AIDS who need to recoperate or are not accepted by their families, visit patients’ houses to provide home-based care, counsel, train HIV/AIDS program staff, set up prevention programs at schools, and promote peer support groups, etc. The organization was founded in 1991 and is open to people of all faiths.
After sharing with us the objectives and nature of the organization, the organizers introduced several HIV/AIDS patients and/or their family member to tell their stories. Among them were women and men, of different nationalities. One HIV/AIDS positive woman lost both of her children and her hushand to HIV/AIDS. She initially contemplated suicide, but then employees of CAM helped her regain her hope for life. It was very inspiring to hear her story. Some other non-Thai citizens were able to get payments of their treatment from CAM.
After having lunch with some of the employees at CAM, at a Thai buffet (where some of the students performed dances with Karoke singers), we went to hear the story of a buddhist monk about how he helped HIV/AIDS patients and his community. It is rather uncommon for monks to be involved in such secular activites and spread his service to women, thus we were very curious about his achievements. The conversation sparkled discussions among students and faculties.
Next to the temple we visited, there was a workshop where HIV/AIDS positive women hand-sew clothes for a Japanese company. It was a bitter-sweet experience that on one hand we were glad to hear that the women had jobs , but on the other hand, it was questionable whether the company was taking advantage of them by paying rather limited wages.
In the evening, we had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Hope Antone again. She helped us built a better understanding of the spiral of feminist theology by asking us to relate the model to our own experiences.
Link to the blog of CAM: www.cctcam.blogspot.com
-- Rachel and Yujing
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