Mizzima Weekly Magazine – August 2014

Inside the truck was possibly dirtier than the outside and it was difficult to determine the original colour of the upholstery. Everything from the clutch to the rear view mirror was coated in a layer of dust. Tins of sardines, a thermometer, packets of Vitamin C supplements and bars of soap were strewn about the floor and the dashboard.

While navigating Mae Sot’s side streets, Mr Stockwell, 70, explained how he started his organisation, Eyes to Burma.

Mr Stockwell first visited Mae Sot in 2008 as a photographer. Like many foreign journalists and photographers he was also curious about the hundreds of Myanmar migrants living and working at the rubbish dump a 20-minute drive from Mae Sot.

A dirt road circling the dump separates the migrant families’ homes from mountains of garbage.

Many of those living near the dump sought refuge and economic opportunity in Thailand after conflict erupted between the Tatmadaw and armed ethnic groups in Mon and Kayin states in the 1980s.

Every day they rummage through the rubbish in search of plastic bags, black garbage bags, beer cans and bottles and other materials which can be sold to recycling companies. A woman at the dump said she can earn about 600 baht (about K19,000 or US$19) a week, twice what she could earn in her home village in Mon State.

Mr Stockwell had travelled to the dump for a story but his priority quickly became the residents and their need for more support. He began providing clean water, food, medicine and tools to the villagers. He also founded Eyes to Burma, a non profit community-based organization that supports about 400 people who rely on the dump to make a living.

As Eyes to Burma explains on its website, it responds to basic needs by distributing food and drinking water and providing clothing and shelter “when the incomes of the dump’s residents fall short”.

The organisation has also established a simple clinic where residents receive free treatment for basic ailments. Every day, sometimes in the middle of the night, Mr Stockwell takes residents to medical facilities, including the Mae Tao Clinic founded by the renowned Dr Cynthia Maung, which cares for Myanmar migrants and refugees.

It has taken nearly eight years but Mr Stockwell said he has developed a “system’” to care for the community’s residents. He drives through their village daily, delivering batteries, headlamps, tools – or special orders such as baby formula – from the back of his pick-up. The tools of their trade, such as batteries needed for headlamps that allow the residents to forage at night, are sold are subsidised prices or provided free to those who cannot afford them.

For residents who can afford it, paying for certain items they need gives them a sense of dignity, said Mr Stockwell.

“Those who can afford it, can buy what they need, but no one goes without or gets left out, and they don’t get dependent on free stuff,” he said. “Imagine all your life, all you got was donations – and then you had the chance to choose for yourself what you wanted.”

It’s a long way from Mae Sot to Ashland in the northwestern American state of Oregon but the board of Eyes to Burma is based there because of a trip Mr Stockwell made to the United States in 2010 to raise funds for his cause.

Dr Eileen Chieco had read about Mr Stockwell’s work in an Oregon newspaper in 2010 and went to hear him speak at a fund-raising event in Ashland later that year.

Inspired by what they had heard, Dr Chieco was among a group who took a lead in doing what they could to help and submitted the paperwork needed for Eyes to Burma to qualify for non-profit status.

Dr Chieco, a retired psychologist, is the president of the board and Mr Stockwell, a Briton who has lived abroad most of his life, is its only member in Thailand.

“Eyes to Burma does not have fancy offices, salaries and the other expenses that many NGOs spend money on, so every donation is used for what is needed by those living and working at the dump,” Dr Chieco said in an email to Mizzima Business Weekly.

Mr Stockwell lives “frugally” and funds his own expenses, while the board members and volunteers in Ashland “absorb the various expenses that come up,” she added.

“You can see from what has been accomplished in six years – clean water, assistance with food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and most recently education – that Fred’s work through Eyes to Burma is very effective.”

Mr Stockwell said he is regarded as something of an outsider in Mae Sot, which is about 3.7 miles (six kilometres) from the border with Myanmar and is a hub for NGOs that support refugees and migrants from Myanmar.

“The community [at the dump] is viewed as a problem,” said Mr Stockwell. “There are a lot of groups that want to help but instead I have seen a lot of harm, divisions, exploitations and charity instead of support.”

With a modest, annual donor-funded budget that once reached $50,000 but tends to be about $12,000 and minimal bureaucracy to manage, Mr Stockwell is able to jump in his truck at a moment’s notice and “get things done”.

There are more than 100 families in the village, he said. “Some poor, hard-working, intelligent – that’s what you get in a village. Blanket solutions don’t work.”

We stopped at a rice shop, where the staff prepared Mr Stockwell’s order immediately and heaved two big sacks of the cereal into the back of the pick-up.

“I do this every day,” he told me.

He had organised private weekend classes for about 15 young people from the dump. Before I met him that afternoon, Mr Stockwell had already made two return trips to the dump to collect students for the classes.

We parked outside the nondescript building where they were conducted and climbed a few flights of stairs. The class had just ended and the students, colourfully dressed, laughing and chattering, were heading for the door.

To a judgemental eye, they did not look like they lived at a garbage dump.

“What are they supposed to look like?” Mr Stockwell asked me.