Better to give

At the risk of appearing the Grinch this Christmas, here are a few words to contemplate: "Stuff doesn't buy you happiness".

And here are a few more: "It's not that we don't care about the poor; it's that we don't know the poor".

At first glance, the quotes might seem unrelated.

Talk to the man who uttered them, however, and a clearer picture emerges.

Alistair Craig, a 47-year-old father of three is, like thousands of others in this country, a Christian volunteer.

For the Dunedin graphic designer, the spirit of Christmas, of generosity, is not limited to one day a year.

In fact, he has been involved in the (unpaid) business of helping others for a quarter of a century.

Just over a month ago, Mr Craig returned from a four-week stint in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, where he lived in a slum, sharing a small shack with nine others; a grandmother, mum and dad, their two teenage sons and two daughters, including one with a husband and a child.

Still, he's used to roughing it.

At least once every second year he pays his own airfare and heads off to a place where the air is clammy, where food and clean water are as scarce as sanitary sewerage systems.

Tonga, Thailand, Indonesia, China, the Philippines, India (a number of times) Tanzania, Solomon Islands, the rare air of Bolivia ... the list goes on.

"As a younger person, part of it was the adventure," Mr Craig recalls. "I never owned much, was flatting on Castle St, so comfort was never a significant issue.

"I have found the hospitality among those living in poverty is huge, as is the sense of community.

"Because some of these people don't have a lot, they value family and have a strong community. The family unit lives together ... It tends to be something we lack in the West.

"Stuff doesn't buy you happiness."

In Cambodia, Mr Craig worked with Servants to Asia's Urban Poor, a Christian group established 25 years ago to help those suffering from the effects of poverty, injustice and exploitation, a lack of health and education services, prostitution, HIV/Aids and other diseases.

The group now has teams in the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia and India, as well as offices in North America, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.

"A group like Servants is saying, 'look, people have different skills and talents that can be utilised on behalf of people'. I guess the traditional concept of overseas missions has been doctors and nurses. Now it is a lot more full-spectrum - from doctors to graphic designers, like myself," explains Mr Craig, one of four Dunedin people involved in the Phnom Penh visit.

"It sounds a bit colonialist - that we can go and sort their problems out. The experience is a symbiotic relationship. You stay with people in those situations and learn a lot about yourself and your own values. You tend to come back with your eyes a bit wider open, with a broader paradigm of the way the world is."

The slum in which Mr Craig lived backs on to an industrial estate where thousands of Cambodians, many of them girls, produce a range of garments for labels likely to be found in Western shops.

One day he witnessed a large group protesting against conditions and pay.

Some earn NZ40 cents an hour and work more than 60 hours a week, he says.

"We enjoy cheap stuff, but it comes from somewhere. Fair trade is something to consider at Christmas. A lot of rural parents send their kids to the cities to find work, but many of them don't and end up prone to prostitution, gambling and/or drug and alcohol abuse.

"The global recession is having a flow-on effect in these communities. It's not that there is a lack of desire or work ethic."

Each day, Mr Craig would wake at 4.30am-5am, have breakfast then visit a variety of projects run by Cambodians, from drug rehabilitation programmes to HIV/Aids care to orphanages.

"Being stuck in an orphanage doesn't produce the best result for the kids, because they are institutionalised. So we look at funding extended families to feed them," Mr Craig says, recalling an 80-year-old woman who offered to look after two teenage boys whose parents had died from Aids.

"Servants supplied rice and checked to see if the kids were doing OK, were going to school. She lived in a shack, which was by the river and prone to flooding. It flooded every year.

"The previous year she was stuck in her hut for three months because of floodwaters. She is a bit of a character."