History

         In 2003 October, as a volunteer doctor I came to work with a local NGO, Non-Government Organization, in Chiang Rai, northern part of Thailand. In a few weeks I came across quite a few corruptions in the NGO and in three and a half month time I was convinced that this NGO was nothing but a big money-fishing net that prey on the poor hill-tribes and make a huge amount of money on the volunteers who come to work with them.

         As a volunteer doctor I set up a simple bamboo clinic in each hill-tribe village and gave free medical treatments to the sick hill-tribes. My medical social programme had to go along with the other social programme called Second-hand clothings. We used to go to the hill-tribe villages and set up a simple bamboo clinic and gave free treatments while the other programme sold the second-hand clothes to the poor hill-tribes. After a while I just could not bear any more to see the poor hill-tribes bought those second-hand clothes which were donated by the people for them. I went straight to the man in charge of that programme and fired him and told him to give away those second-clothes for free. The man in charge of this programme was making lots of money by selling those second-clothes which were donated by the civilized people for the poor hill-tribes.

          There are many programmes in the NGO like volunteer, hill-tribe tour, second-hand clothes, child sponsor, national ID and many more. A person in charge of each programme got his or her own bank account set up and save all the donations given by the people in his or her own bank account. In each programme everyone was making money by using hill-tribe people's names. No body knew how much money each person was making in each programme. The director and founder of the organization was always away and was catching only big fish in the country and foreign and making millions of money by showing all those programmes as a whole.

         There were lots of computers donated by the civilized people for the hill-tribe children to learn computers and I was with the organization for three and a half month and I had never seen a hill-tribe child learning computer. Everyday all those computers were occupied by the staffs and members of the organization and all computers were being used for chatting.

          A lots of people donate money to sponsor hill-tribe children and for their educations and one of the child who I know personally was one of them and she got paid only 600 baths twice a year out of more than 1,0000 baths what her sponsor donated. Last year the child's sponsor came to volunteer with us and came to know that corruption of the NGO and she was very furious and went to fire that NGO.

          The NGO collected over a millions baths from the Foundations and Organizations in the West and Europe on my medical social work among these hill-tribe people, but a tiny part of that funds were spent in my medical social work. The rest of the money disappeared magically.

         In January 2004 I split away from the NGO as I could no longer stand on the ground that has lots of corruptions. I gathered all the medicines I had got in the NGO and picked up my bag that contained a few clothes, and then went up to one of the hill-tribe villages in the hills, where I got a house built by the villagers and from here I moved around and gave free medical treatments to the sick hill-tribes. After a few weeks I run out of medicines and there were lots of sick hill-tribes waiting for more medical treatments and here was a doctor without medicines. It broke my heart and I could not sleep for a few days thinking what to do and how to solve this problem. At that time I did not even have a penny in my pocket. After several nights without sleep,one morning from the hill I went down to Chiang Rai to put an idea into practical life. I wrote " trekking with a doctor in the hill-tribes" on quite a few papers and left them in some internet cafe' and guesthouses. I was very excited when I got my first trekking group. I took them to the hills and moved from village to village as I gave free medical treatments to the sick hill-tribes. The trekkers were very impressed to see my selfless service, giving free medical treatments to the poor, sick hill-tribes and they gave me some donations before they left. I used that donations to buy medicines and took another trekking group and did the same thing, taking them to different villages as I gave free medical treatments to the sicks. They also gave donations before they left and I used that donations to buy more medicines and took another trekking group.

          I continued this for months and months until I realized this was not the best way to fund my medical social work among these poor hill-tribe people as there were so many hidden bad things caused by the trekkers like one british guy when we were in one village. He said he wanted to drink bear. I said how could you find bear in the village in the hills, but he did not listen to me and he urged me to somehow get bear for him. I could not stop him for his craving for bear, so I sent one villager to find bear. After four hours in the night the villager came back with three bottles of bear. There were many more similar problems caused by the trekkers. There were also drug tourist who came trekking in search of opium.

         After 8 months I stopped this "trekking with a doctor in the hill-tribes" program and I again came down to Chiang Rai to set up another idea. I bought a domain name and hosting and set up a website called " Where There Is No Doctor", looking for volunteers. After a while my website was set up on Idealist, I started geting volunteers, most of them are medical professionals.