Rob and Cheryl Wood recently spent several weeks in South-East Asia with Action for Life 4. Rob writes:

A feature of Action for Life (AfL) has been the opportunity to meet some of Asia's inspiring changemakers. In Thailand we had an exchange with Sulak Sivalaksa. He recounted that many years ago when he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, a fellow student said to him, “Stop your intellectualising and when you get back to Thailand, do whatever you can to close the gaps in Thai society.”

Over the last 40 years he has been a conscience for his country. He has spoken out for his beliefs on different issues. As a result he has had several periods in detention. Sulak Sivalaksa has championed the cause of democracy. He has established the International Network of Engaged Buddhists which has played an important role in developing a moral and spiritual leadership among the young people of his country. He will be coming to Melbourne as a speaker at the Parliament of the World's Religions. A member of our AfL team – San San from Malaysia – said it was meeting him and others like him in Thailand that made her decide to take her Buddhist religion seriously, as part of her everyday life.

Our outreach program took us to Laos. During the Vietnam war vast numbers of bombs were dropped on Laos and many are still lying unexploded in different parts of the countryside. Against this background it was moving to meet up with a youth group that has a focus on practical peacemaking called Mittapub. They work at a village level and encourage people to deal with their disputes through dialogue.

Mittapub invited us to present a weekend workshop for their group and there was lively participation. It became clear that while they promote peace wherever they can, quite a number had family conflicts which they didn't know how to resolve. The message of “change starts with me” seemed to make sense to many of them. One young woman spoke about the hatred she had for her mother's controlling attitude and her feeling of helplessness about it. However, she decided to apologise for her part in their bitter relationship. On the phone a week later, she said this had transformed their feelings towards each other.
It had been the first IofC event in Laos since 1974.

We returned to Cambodia for the final month of AfL: a time for intensive evaluation and preparation for return to home situations. It was particularly encouraging to see the difference seven months with AfL had made in the lives of participants we had known before. 
Cheryl writes:

In Cambodia I met Kannikun Ouk who had taken a course at Armagh in 1987. Through her Rob and I had got to know the Melbourne Cambodian community.

In 2008 Rachel Peters from Warrnambool who also made friends with Kannikun at that time took her daughter to Cambodia to meet her. On her return, Rachel decided to raise money to help with Kannikun’s health expenses. Rachel set about painting and selling her works. She was able to send $380 to Kannikun who had to spend some days in hospital soon after receiving the money. Her bill came to $370!