EIGHTEEN year-old Sam Hodge has not let spina bifida slow him down from pursuing a calling to help young refugees in Asia.
Sam, from Milton in Brisbane, has returned from a month-long trip to Thailand and Cambodia visiting orphanages and refugee camps with a Marist Mission group.
He plans to return to Thailand mid-year to help refugees at Maesot on the Thai-Burma border.
Sam, who is confined to a wheelchair, plans to raise funds to help establish disabled access to a camp called Maera Moo.
‘It’s all red dirt, there is no disabled access. While I was there I had to get my friends to carry me where I wanted to go,’ he said.
Sam, who left Australia on December 18, said the trip was part of an Australia Pacific Youth Development Program through Marist Mission.
Sam said it followed a chance meeting with the executive director of the Marist Mission Centre in Australia, Fr Ron Nissen, at a Mass for East Timor at The Gap in Brisbane last August.
‘He asked me what my commitment was to refugees and to the underprivileged of the world and whether I would be committed to leadership and planning for such issues.’
Sam’s commitment led to an invitation to take part in the small group which included young people from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Australia, two Franciscan Brothers, a Marist Father from the Philippines and a Marist Brother from Vanuatu.
He said while he was overseas he undertook a 12-day leadership and planning seminar as well as camp visits.
‘The visits were to experience how the people lived.
‘We just did what they did, we slept on bamboo floors, we toileted in pit toilets, we showered with cold water. I didn’t have a hot shower for a month, and we ate what they ate.’
Sam said the camp he intends to live in later in the year has 65 students.
‘They are being persecuted because the Burmese government wants them to be Buddhist but they want to be Catholic,’ he said.
