Open Up to Others

In Thailand, we do not talk about affectivity and relationships between boys and girls. It’s a taboo. In the street or in public, contact is considered very immodest or even shocking. It would be impossible to think of holding hands for example. For me, it’s something cultural: you shouldn’t show your emotions.

However, things are changing. The mentality of young people is changing particularly through contact with globalized popular culture. Movies and songs popularise a Western model which is not that of past generations. Schools are therefore trying to address these issues of relationships between boys and girls, but this is quite new. The real problem is that these changes create fractures in families. Thai culture highly values ​​respect for elders. A young person cannot question what an older person says especially in his own family. When a child disagrees with his parents, it is easier for him to leave than to confront his parents.

I know a young girl who lives in Bangkok. She is a student and lives with her boyfriend in an apartment they rent together. This young woman is of Karen origin, an ethnic group from northern Thailand and Myanmar. In the Karen tradition, boys and girls have very few common activities and do not mix much. This young girl is aware that her choice to live with her boyfriend will not be understood by her parents. They could even suffer and lose face if it were to come to light. So she cuts off relations with her family and no longer dares to return to the village. Unfortunately, this is an increasing common situation in Thailand, in poor areas.

14%

This is the percentage of teenage pregnancies in 2016 in Thailand.

1089 cases of domestic violence

according to the Association for Human Rights and Development in Cambodia in 2012

To carry out these trainings, Children of the Mekong joins forces with a partner: Karol & Setha. “Karol & Setha is first and foremost a great burst of laughter, explains Armelle Lahalle, head of the holistic training of Children of the Mekong and former Bamboo volunteer at the Dr Christophe Mérieux Center.

From the ground floor to the 4th floor of the Center of Phnom Penh, the first games can be heard starting the 5-day training course. During these sessions, priority is given to friendship, a sine qua non condition before pushing the reflection on affectivity and sexuality. Karol & Setha’s approach, combines “critical thinking with a clear understanding of sexuality in the context of relationships”.

These 5 days allow young people to carry out a real personal inner work and also to progress together, in a fundamental respect for the freedom and dignity of each person. The main objective at the end of this educational process is to enable them to communicate their feelings and needs, to understand their feelings but also the needs of others. “These courses are very intense for the students,” observes Armelle. Sometimes young people are invited to share about painful moments in their lives. This often leads to one of the two facilitators accompanying an upset young person out of the room and giving them valuable time to talk one-on-one. These activities touch the heart, young people engage, they dig, and sometimes they have to go out, catch their breath, dry their tears. This is why the input of the Karol & Setha team is valuable. In addition to being of the same nationality and the same culture as our young people, they have an additional talent: individualised support for those who express the need.

Jean-François Frys, whose wife Myriam founded this association, often reminds us that facilitators need a full year of training before they can start leading a group themselves. The heart, body and mind are inseparably linked: affecting one of them affects the other two. It takes no less than a year to learn to identify some of its boundaries. This philosophy of Karol & Setha, based on a holistic approach to the human being, is fully shared by Children of the Mekong.