World Peace Center - WPC Southeast Asia

WPC Southeast Asia

As a matter of course, World Peace Center volunteers travel to Third World countries and assist in farming, building, teaching English and other services that involve the local populations. Many people in these areas are eager to learn English; they see it as an important key to a better future. Working along side other volunteers and charitable organizations throughout the past decade, WPC has focused its international efforts on several different areas of Southeast Asia. Our volunteers have participated in the following endeavors:

Leper Community, Lalang-linggah, Bali

Beginning in 1996, a small delegation of World Peace Center volunteers started traveling back and forth between the USA and Indonesia to offer aid to the Leper Community in Lalang-linggah, Tabanan, Bali. The volunteers bring food, clothing, household goods and classroom materials to the Leper Community residents and assist with ordinary activities of daily living. Some of them also provide massage and healing touch to the residents.

In 1999, one such volunteer, professional muralist and visionary artist Jack Alexander, facilitated a 6-month hands-on-healing project at the Leper Community. During the first 3 months of the project, he also painted the artwork to the left. The painting, entitled "Leper Beauty," depicts the beautiful, unmarred right-hand side of one of the leper girls, whose body was ravaged with leprosy on the left-hand side.

During the last 3 months of the project, following the completion of the artwork, the 23-year old subject of the painting experienced a complete and total reversal of her condition. Much the same way a person who has suffered from acute acne may be left with residual scars, the flesh she had lost from the leprosy left scars on the diseased side of her body; but she no longer suffered the stench or the festering boils that accompany the disease.

Research suggests that certain Caucasians possess a body chemical that can affect and sometimes alter specific forms of leprosy. Although it is most likely that the transference of this chemical contributed to the reversal of the leper girl's disease, the girl herself attributes her healing to two specific features: 1. Her own inner willingness to heal; 2. The transformational effect of seeing herself clean, fresh and beautiful (for the first time in her life) in the painting.

Bali Bombing, Kuta, Indonesia

On the evening of October 12, 2002, the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of Indonesia unraveled the idyllic peace on the island of Bali. The incident, which injured 209 people and killed 202 others, involved the detonation of a car bomb and a backpack-mounted suicide bomb in or near two popular nightclubs in the oceanfront tourist area of Kuta. An estimated 6,000 local residents lost their homes, shops, and livelihoods as a result of the bombing.

World Peace Center volunteers, who were already in Bali working with Balinese charitable organizations in efforts to benefit the Indonesian people, joined forces with other volunteers and philanthropic organizations to assist the bombing victims and their families. The WPC delegation worked tirelessly at hotline and crisis centers, counseling visitors, Bali residents and victims of the bombing. They also assisted local and incoming family members in the arduous procedure of locating their missing loved ones.

Burmese Refugee Camps, Thailand

For more than five decades, the government of Burma (now Myanmar) has been ruled by a series of military regimes that have perpetuated an armed and political conflict against the nation's numerous ethnic minorities. The conflict is infamous for its massive abuses of human rights (e.g., rape, torture, persecution, forced labor and extra-judicial executions).

As a result, more than 500,000 Burmese nationals, mainly people of ethnic minorities, are severely displaced in their own country. An estimated 340,000 live in temporary settlements administered by the ethnic nationals; approximately 92,000 are civilians in hiding from the military government; another 108,000 are villagers who have been forcibly evicted from their homes. and who now live in designated relocation sites; hundreds of thousands of others have been displaced in dysfunctional schemes to resettle the urban poor in large-scale infrastructure projects. In pursuit of asylum, a speculated half billion Burmese nationals have fled to the neighboring countries of India, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Bangladesh. More than 160,000 live in and around 9 different refugee camps in the neighboring border provinces of Northern Thailand.

Burmese refugees are continually denied refugee status by the Thai authorities and are thus forced to survive as illegal migrant workers with no legal protection. Many endure severe hardships and find it difficult to fulfill their own and their families’ basic needs.

World Peace Center volunteers serve among a continuous band of Thai people and Westerners who visit these areas in an attempt to make a difference. They bring warm clothes for the children and reading materials for the schools. They assist with medical services, teach English and help repair and rebuild the camp dwellings.

Asian Tsunami, Southern Thailand

On December 26, 2004, an earthquake of a magnitude between 9.1 and 9.3 on the Richter scale struck off the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Known in Asia and in the international media as the Asian Tsunami, the event triggered a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts of all countries bordering the Indian Ocean. In one of the deadliest catastrophes in modern history, a total of 229,866 people were lost, including 186,983 dead and 42,883 missing.

The plight of the many affected people and countries prompted a widespread humanitarian response. A delegation of World Peace Center volunteers, who were in Thailand about 100 miles away from the site of the disaster when the tsunami struck, made themselves immediately available on the scene to help. They assisted the injured, counseled the distraught and distributed supplies to the destitute, playing an instrumental role in the safe repatriation of European and American citizens who had lost their passports and become disenfranchised during the event.

Volunteers Welcome

If you would like to join our volunteer efforts, or if you want to comment on any of the projects listed above, please feel free to email us at world_peace_center@yahoo.com . Please also feel free also to use the contact form below to share other project ideas you may have or to tell us about yourself. We appreciate your support and interest. Thanks.

World Peace Center
P.O. Box 2-110
Ratchadamnoen Post Office
Bangkok, 10200 Thailand
tel. 66-(0)-694-55569

World Peace Center
Spring Valley / Belshire Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89147
tel. 702-451-1102

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