Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

job upon being released. The homeless groups objected
to the idea and argued that job training programs could
not solve their problems because many of them had
already been trained but nevertheless could still not find
a job. At the same time, the mass media disseminated
the issue. Public opinion disagreed with the BMA and
criticized the government, saying that it should not be
ashamed of having homeless in Bangkok.
From working with the homeless in Bangkok, I became
interested in studying the background, ways of life and
problems of the homeless in other metropolises, and
decided I would like to search for methods and gain
more experiences in working with the homeless in
other areas. From my own experience, I found that the
homeless differ from other urban poor groups, both
slum dwellers and the dwellers under the bridges, with
whom the Foundation has been working for almost
20 years. I learned that the homeless are the poorest
group in urban society. But only two years of working
with the homeless in Bangkok was still too short a time
to have enough information and experience. When
presented with an opportunity to study this problem in
Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia, I thus decided to
emphasize studying more than research in order to learn
about experiences from other countries, with a view to
being able to come back to support efforts to solve the
problem of homelessness in Thailand.
The first aim of the study was to learn about the
background, way of life and problems of the
homeless. In doing so, it was necessary to keep in
mind that homelessness is a multifaceted problem,
involving economic, political and social dimensions
that relate to an entire range of other issues, such as
unemployment, hunger, health, sanitation, and mental
health. An important point was to find out the cause
of homelessness because in Thailand, some groups of
people argue that people become homeless because
of laziness, alcohol addiction, gambling addiction, or
ignorance. Others think that it is the outcome of a
national development path that emphasizes capitalistic
competition, which makes the defeated lose and become
homeless. The particular point of view regarding the
cause of homelessness is particularly important because
it has an impact on the type and content of policy that
will be adopted to solve the problem.
The second aim was to study experiences and methods
in working with the homeless, including activities and
capacity development for the homeless. The third was
to study the experiences and methods in solving the
immediate and long-term problems of the homeless
by learning from both governmental organizations
THE EMPOWERING THE POOR AND VULNERABLE
309
(GOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
that work with the homeless. Points of study include
the policies and plans, and direct experience from
tackling the problems. Finally, it also aimed to study
the experiences and development of the organizations
and groups that work with the homeless.
The processes of study were interrelated, and involved
directly participating in the activities of organizations
and groups of the homeless (participant observation),
interviewing and talking to development workers
(both GO and NGO), talking with the homeless and
members of the general public, and studying documents
that record the stories of the homeless. Emphasis
was placed on joining the activities run by homeless
organizations and groups, since I believe that learning
from working together deepens the understanding of
the life and problems of the homeless, and that this
deeper understanding in turn becomes the basis for
further work to solve problems and develop the ability
of the homeless in the future. Besides participating
in activities organized by homeless groups, this study
derived much of its data from first-hand interviews
with relevant persons and organizations, including
the homeless themselves. Because statistical data
regarding the homeless is quite unreliable (e.g., in
Tokyo, a government official working on the issue of
homelessness placed the number of homeless in the
city at 6,000, while NGO workers in the city said the
number was more likely between 8,000-10,000; in
Manila, the government official responsible for the issue
of homelessness stated that the number of homeless
in Manila was 4,000, whereas Church organizations
working directly with the homeless insisted that the
actual figure was probably double this number), it was
necessary to speak with as many different sources as
possible in order to gain as accurate a picture of the
scope of the problem as possible. Once I established
the general magnitude of homelessness in each of the
areas I studied, I proceeded to gain a more precise
impression by conducting surveys in each of the field
sites I visited. As such, the numbers of homeless people
in the various sites reported in the paper below are in
fact my best estimates based on all the input I received
from several different sources. The study was conducted
in three countries, with a stay of six months in Japan,
two months in the Philippines, and one month in
Indonesia.
JAPAN
The study of homelessness in Japan can be divided
into two phases: the first phase was from 25 July to 23
October 2004, and involved studying homelessness in
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows