Tribal Issues : CHAIRMAN'S PROGRAM
Open only to returning students and available by application only, Tribal Issues is a challenging look at the issues facing young men and women in tribal areas in Southeast Asia. Unlike any other Rustic Pathways program, Tribal Issues will take you into remote areas of Thailand, Burma, and Laos and give you first-hand insight into the issues facing your local peers. David Venning, the Chairman and Founder of Rustic Pathways, will lead you on this powerful journey. Through first-hand interviews, you will identify the issues facing these young people, the factors that led to their compromised situations, and the possible solutions that could ameliorate or solve their problems. Suited only for students comfortable with remote travel, deeply interested in learning about and helping improve the lives of others, and able to understand and deal with very adult issues, Tribal Issues is a bold program for young people who are deeply committed to learning about and improving their world.
BACKGROUND
In 2009, Eli Rivkin, an experienced Rustic Pathways traveler deeply committed to community service and moved by his travels in Asia, suggested a program designed to conduct first-hand interviews in the most remote areas of Southeast Asia in an effort to identify what was really happening with people his own age in these largely unvisited tribal areas. Working together, Eli and the Chairman of Rustic Pathways developed a program called Sharing Bowls of Sticky Rice, which was offered to select returning Rustic Pathways students and a few exceptional new students with a specific interest in this subject. The trip that ran was extremely successful and has now been renamed and ran as Tribal Issues.
WHO YOU MEET
During this program you will travel into tribal areas far off the beaten track and talk with your local peers. Over the past few years we’ve held meetings with young people from over a dozen very diverse ethnic groups across three countries. We slept overnight in a refugee camp and spent hours with Karen refugee high school students who were living without adequate clothing or school materials, met with a young Akha man without access to medical care trying to help his dying mother, talked to a Shan prostitute who was working to support an elderly family back home, chatted with a group of orphans struggling to legally establish their identities, interviewed Tai Yai children who had fled violence in their traditional homeland and walked for several months to seek refuge elsewhere, met with a group of Lahu students who hiked five hours to school each week in a village that has no access to clean water, talked with young monks who left home at six years old to join a monastery in hopes of gaining an education and had not seen their parents for more than ten years, met with a young Khamu hunter whose handmade rifle had exploded and killed his friend, and spoke with very young mothers struggling to raise children without any access to medical care or modern technologies. This sampling of past interviews is indicative of what you should expect from your trip.
WHAT YOU DO
This trip is all about meeting and learning from young men and women in the real settings where they live. This means traveling into very rugged and remote areas, moving by four-wheel drive and, in some cases, chartered aircraft, getting dirty and wet, and often bearing the weight of tremendous sadness and seeing real tragedy. With each person we meet, we will try to share a meal or, at the very least, a few cups of tea. Our discussions with local people are usually held in a question-and-answer format where you ask questions and take notes on the answers.
This trip will snake through the heart of tropical Southeast Asia. You’ll fill-in the blanks on maps as you venture into uncharted territories and various vistas where elephants and tigers once domineered the landscape. Mornings will be greeted with sunrays spilling over mountains and striking through jungle canopies; Evenings highlighted with talks as the sun sets over vast plains, secluded hillside hamlets, and submerged, reflective paddy fields that leave you wondering which way is heaven. All of these unique and breathtaking landscapes help define the people and communities you will explore.
WHAT YOU ACHIEVE
During your trip you will not only listen to the issues and problems impacting your tribal peers in these remote areas, but you will also talk about how you can help. Where we can, we will do something to either directly help or try to address the root problems. In the past we gave away blankets, dictionaries, and several thousand dollars worth of food in remote areas. We also met and subsequently sponsored two young Akha orphans and funded their education so they could return to school. Medicine for a number of people who were sick was supplied, palliative care arranged for a dying woman, English tutors arranged for students trying to climb out of poverty and gain an education, and three bicycles bought and delivered so students could access school. We also supplied clothing to very poor students and gave away almost 1,000 bars of soap and an equal number of cans of sardines, toothbrushes, tubes of toothpaste, pens, rulers, erasers, and notebooks. Trips have concluded in spontaneous acts of kindness by our students, as we sponsored a total of nine Hill Tribe orphans to attend school, paying for their food, clothing, school fees, books, and accommodation.
Before you sign up for this trip, please read the program description carefully. Read the comments from the group of students who went before you and consider how rugged this journey is and the seriousness of what you will encounter. If the trip sounds like exactly what you want to do, then e-mail David Venning, the Chairman of Rustic Pathways, at david@rusticpathways.com to set up a time for a phone interview.
Click here to read about the experiences of the students who did this trip in past years.