The Dispossessed & Endangered
In the northern hills of Thailand reside a number of tribes. They live a simple life by modern standards, cooking over outdoor fires and sleeping on the floor. These peoples migrated from China and Tibet over the past few centuries, settling in the hills and mountains along the border of Northern Thailand. Even though several generations of these people have been born in Thailand, they are not considered citizens and, as such, do not have the same rights as the rest of the Thai people.
Joy Jones (JD ’00) served a two-year term in the US Peace Corps in Thailand. Her primary responsibility was to coach Thai teachers in how to instruct in a student-centered environment rather than using rote memorization. She also taught creative writing classes and English medical terminology for hospital workers from the small town in which she lived. These responsibilities kept her extremely busy, and were indeed designed to take all of her time.
However, Joy has a particular concern for the rights of indigenous peoples—for international human rights. While fulfilling her occupational responsibilities, she sought out Thai attorneys who were already working with the hill tribes. These Thai Christians cared for the hill tribes, and based on Joy’s experience in Thailand, she credits their compassion to their faith—only because of Christ did they desire or endeavor to do anything for these hill tribes who are considered outsiders in their culture.
In her own words, “I was able to hold classes educating them on current laws governing international human rights that were already in place in Thailand. The attorneys there did not realize that their country had signed and ratified various conventions and declarations that would be of help in serving the hill tribes. They truly are a people with no country, and as such, they have no rights.” Along with this, Joy taught English classes to the legal staff, focusing on terminology that would help in this work.
Joy felt a call to the mission field when she was young; early on she spent time in Guadalajara, Mexico. But life brought her back to the states, and through the years she built a successful residential construction business. Joy was a successful executive, that is, until God intervened in 1986: "Then one day I was clicking along in my high heels and my business suit and feeling totally in charge of what I was doing, and I felt as if the Lord stopped me short and said to me 'you're not doing with your life what you’re supposed to be doing.'"
At that crossroads, Joy could have done what many have done before: held on tight to the blessings she had and refuse to relent to the Lord’s call. But she turned the business over to her partner and divested herself of her properties and other business interests. She sought the advice of her aunt, a missionary in Brazil, who suggested Joy get cross-cultural training before serving for an extended period overseas.
Later that year she began a discipleship training class with YWAM, including three months in the classroom and four months traveling in Asia. Joy then enrolled in a primary health care course—four months in the classroom and about the same working in the Philippines. After this training, she became a medical network administrator with YWAM working closely with the ministries of health in Belize and Honduras for three-and-a half years. The first year-and-a-half was primarily in Belize, and then she pioneered a new work in the La Mosquitia area of Honduras, preparing for and establishing it with a couple who still serve there today.
It was during her time there that she began to understand the plight of indigenous populations that live far from the "civilized" world and the concern of their country's government. "Where I was working, particularly in Honduras, was the jungle, and there were no roads, no water, nothing. You could only get into the area by flying in a small plane which landed in a grass field. The people I was working with there were exceedingly marginalized. People in the capital wouldn’t go there and were always so surprised and shocked that I was living there practically full time. But they thought 'that's the jungle, that's wild!' In the La Mosquitia area the people are Hondurans, but they were not given the same rights; at that time, the government did not choose to do much for them at all. Perhaps things have changed in more recent years."
After five years with YWAM, Joy felt she needed more education in order to deal more effectively with governments in speaking about marginalized people. She returned to the United States to go to law school. According to Joy, "when I came back in the early nineties, I said I was going to go to law school and specialize in international human rights, but most people just looked at me blankly. They were unaware of the problems. But I felt strongly that this was how the Lord was leading me. Of course, today it's more common to hear people speaking about Invisible Children and marginalized people and writing about international human rights, but back then, in the early nineties, that was not the case."
After beginning a law degree elsewhere and finding out the school had no plans to offer international human rights courses, she transferred to Trinity Law School in 1998. The first two years of her degree covered the core classes, but after that she chose all of her electives in her field: children's rights, women's rights, indigenous peoples, etc. In these classes, she "discovered all the ways that the law is really out there to protect the people. But they don’t have any power to use that law unless someone stands up for them and then presents it."
After graduation in 2000, she worked on a special project in India for Samaritan's Purse, primarily using her construction management skills to assist reconstruction after an earthquake. She directed teams of seminary students from all over India who gathered to make the components of the houses and then assembled them on site. After India, she spent two years in Thailand, and upon returning to the states she worked for a church while searching for a job in International Human Rights. From friends working with YWAM in Bangladesh, Joy heard about a woman who was beginning a work in India with the children and mothers in the largest red light district in Asia.
Nasira (not her real name) grew up in one of the largest metropolitan areas of India and spent time in missions elsewhere, but felt a call to come back to minister to her own people. She found a place out of which she could run a night shelter for the children of prostitutes so they would be safe while the mothers were working. Nasira also wanted to minister to the mothers. When they came to pick up the children, she invited them to tea, and they began staying longer and longer. And they began to see that they needed to get their children out of that environment.
When Joy arrived, Nasira had just moved the ministry out of the red light district to a place much safer for the kids, and she had assumed primary responsibility for the children. Some of the mothers had died, while others were still in the trade. Every three months they would have a mother's day function, whether they would take the children to see their mothers or other relatives, or the mothers would come to the children's home.
While there, Joy did much of the legal documentation for licensure of the children's home and the establishment of their work as a society, as a charitable trust, giving them non-profit status. The Indian government limited their children’s home license to ten girls. "The licensing process is very complex—you don’t just walk in and fill out paperwork."
Along with more mundane duties of preparing annual reports and working on their website, Joy mentored the Indian staff and counseled the women. She would take the women to medical appointments; if they were found to be HIV positive, she helped them get the appropriate medicines.
Joy also spent a lot of time with the children. In her words, "the children are coming along wonderfully. They are just precious children who are growing in the Lord and growing up to be lovely young people. They were so little when they came. One of the youngest didn't speak because she'd been so traumatized, and after being in the children's home for about six months, all of a sudden one day she started talking. It is just God's work to see those precious children."
They would like to pull the women out of their occupation, but, "to get the women to actually leave that work is extremely difficult. Not that they like the work, but to get out of the whole culture that surrounds it is hard."
Joy is now back in the United States looking for her next opportunity. But she did not leave India behind. "I stay very involved just to be in the girls’ lives and in the staffs' lives. They email me and I email them back encouragement. On all of the girls' birthdays I send packages and I still feel like I'm there, like I'm part of the work. In my heart I am."