25 February 2006
Panita Kongsook (Pook), GFRS volunteer, Thailand
I currently work as the co-ordinator of YPLE (The Youth Center for the Promotion of Life Service and Environmental Awaness). It is an NGO. I co-ordinate the youth network for leaders of the youth environmental network in Thailand’s seventy-six provinces.
I have been a volunteer with Greenpeace Southeast Asia for about 5 years. I help the actions team with every campaign – GMOs, climate change, toxics and forests. I’ve been involved in the Solar Generation, No War, WTO and other actions we’ve done. For the forest campaign, I joined a demonstration at the CITES meeting in Bangkok.
I have come to the Global Forest Recue Station in the Paradise Forests of Asia Pacific because the Kuni tribe has invited Greenpeace to help them protect and manage the forest on the land they own under customary law. I am concerned that this forest destruction will not only destroy ecosystems and endanger species, it will impact on the air we breath and bring on harmful climate change.
I am helping with mapping and boundary marking. I am very excited to be able to do something personally to help people to choose an ecologically sustainable way to manage their own forest resources, instead of feeling they have no choice but to sell their trees to large logging companies.
I hope I will learn how people in the forests of Papue New Guinea live, and how important the forest is to them. I hope to find out what kind of foods and medicines they harvest from the forest and discover what challenges they face to survive and educate their children. I may learn some survival skills – how to live without eletricity and running water, the kind of comforts we take for granted.
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