A local Malay friend in South Thailand told me about her social project for the following Saturday. She likes helping people in need, even though she’s also not wealthy. Her plan was to visit 11 needy families in a district about 50 km away from town. She said compared to families in her own community, they are more needy. Then a thought came to my mind. We still had lots of donated second-hand-clothes at the foundation office. We wanted to give out most of them to needy families in a village near the office. But we could also give some of the clothes to these families. So the office staff sorted und packed all the clothes in smaller plastic bags. To make our visit worthwhile, the local Malay friend and I bought basic food items for these families, which we packed into food packages.

On Saturday, 3 SEEDS volunteers drove together with 6 local friends of another group to this village, 50 km away from our town. The lady in the first house had a dessert prepared for us, so we stayed there for a while to chat. Then a local villager took us to a few other houses, where we gave each family a food package and a bag of second-hand-clothes.

Finally, the local villager invited us to go to his house and have a meal there. We couldn’t drive there by car, so we all got on motorbikes and carried the rest of the food packages and clothes’ bags. It was a quite adventurous, narrow path which led us through the forest and rubber plantations.

We all enjoyed a rice meal with fish and other dishes. We had good conversations with the host family and were surprised how quickly time passed. Then on the motorbikes and back through the forest to the car. We were thankful that it only started raining heavily later. It was a good bonding time and meaningful experience to not just go on an outing together, but help needy people and bring them some joy and encouragement.