Visit to Thailand cements members' commitment

By Mary Stamp

Claudia Hamilton is coordinating the booth for the Prachakittisuk Orphanage at the Jubilee International Fair Trade Marketplace Friday and Saturday, Oct. 24 and 25, at First Presbyterian Church, 318 S. Cedar.

Claudia, who began attending First Presbyterian in 1985, has been involved as a volunteer with Jubilee for many years. She often helped with the Ten Thousand Villages booth, which sold fair-trade products from artisans in various ethnic groups around the world.

Then she joined nine other church members for a visit in March 2010 at the Prachakittisuk Orphanage mission started in 1997 by Sirirat Pusurinkham, a Presbyterian pastor in Chang Rai, Thailand.

Sirirat has run the programs as a way to lead the community into healthful solutions to problems caused by sex tourism, the drug industry, poverty and child prostitution.

As a result, she first founded a Women's Handicraft Project in 1997, a stitching project for women in her village to provide job training. The artisans hand stitch intricate designs on textile bags, vests and runners. She pays them a fair wage for their work and sells the items through outlets like the Jubilee Fair Trade Marketplace.

"Buyers, such as those in Spokane, enjoy one-of-a-kind items showing the creativity and skill of women there," said Claudia. "The income supports the seamstresses so they can keep their children fed and in school. The more years of school they have, the more likely it is for the girls to escape the poverty that leads to prostitution."

When the First Presbyterian group visited in 2010, Sirirat told them that when she was nine, her third and fourth grade friends were sold by their families into child prostitution to help them pay debts. Sirirat asked for help, because she was sad and angry to lose her friends. She vowed to do something to tell the world about the child prostitution problem.

Sirirat, a third-generation Christian and pastor's daughter, completed school at a missionary boarding school in Chang Rai and then went to college. She later went to seminary in San Francisco and wrote a dissertation on "Child Prostitution in Thailand: A Challenge to the World Christian Community."

"When Sirirat returned to her village to be pastor of her home church, many of her friends had returned and were dying of AIDS. She conducted many of their funeral services. They asked her to care for their children after they died," said Claudia.

In 2003, Sirirat, who is in the Taiya indigenous group in China and Thailand, founded My Thai Kids orphanage and added a second building in 2008, so they could serve 26 orphans. Presently, 10 orphans are in her care, along with many others who have grown to adulthood and continue to need assistance for education, food and daily needs.

In 2010 when the First Presbyterian group visited Sirirat, they met the children who were then teenagers.

"We supplied the women artisans with sewing machines, a washing machine and water filter," said Claudia. "When we were there, Sirirat was also receiving children fleeing from Myanmar (Burma) where the government was burning hill villages to drive indigenous people out. The sky was brown from the fires."

The church group learned that of Thailand's 67 million people, 800,000 children under the age of 16 were bought and sold for a profit greater than the drug trade, weapons sales, lotteries or sports gambling.

In a financial crisis, the Thai government had found tourism a quick way to earn foreign dollars, so they promoted the physical and cultural beauty of the country along with sex services of poor girls sold into prostitution by parents duped into believing their children would find jobs and a better life in the city.

Sirirat not only advises parents in her village to stop sending children to the city to be prostitutes but also provides scholarships to keep them in school.

In addition, she has traveled around the world talking about the sex trade, raising funds and promoting the fair-trade project. She has spoken about human trafficking, water justice and racism at conferences of the United Nations, the World Council of Churches, the World Communion of Reformed Churches and more.

Sirirat has said her calling as a pastor is "to bring victims mercy, hope, healing and personal support along with job training."

Her travels have brought her several times to visit Spokane and other churches in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Claudia, who grew up near Syracuse, NY, "fell in love with the Lord" while attending a Presbyterian vacation Bible school in a small-town church. Her studies of nutrition led her to teach nutrition at the University of Missouri and then Utah State University. In 1977, she moved to Spokane where she taught dietetics and retired after 20 years as dietitian at St. Luke's.

At the booth, people can purchase items to support the mission and learn more about Sirirat's work with women who make the items.

Claudia reminded that most of Sirirat's work today is with women of the village, selling their products so their children are not sold into prostitution.

For information, call 747-8147 or email pepsi3415@yahoo.com.

 

Thai Village booth at Jubilee offers different items

First Presbyterian member Lance Potter will present another Jubilee Fair Trade Marketplace booth selling more items from Thailand.

He lived and taught in Thailand from 1999 to 2004 and 2008 to 2012. His parents had been missionaries there and ran a church guest house in Bangkok.

Friends, who are leaders of the ministry Thai Village, Inc., provide Thai handicrafts targeted to Western tastes—like tin Christmas tree ornaments, jewelry, nativity sets and woven purses and scarves—for him to sell.

They train artisans to make products on contract or as employees. They offer Bible classes and support people escaping domestic abuse and sex trafficking. They are building a center for their programs that include adult Bible education, vocational training, financial savings and community seminars. The center also trains church leaders, supports local churches and shares God's love in community.

Lance, a professor of education at Eastern Washington University, has been a member of First Presbyterian since moving to Spokane from Pennsylvania in 2014.

For information, call 230-4449 or email deblanceplus4@gmail.com or visit thaivillage.org.