Matthew Baysden

Affecting the World One Ripple at a Time:

Dr. Matthew Baysden’s Time in Thailand (1993-1995)

 

Dr. Matthew Baysden was always involved in volunteer work.  During his time in college at the University of Central Florida, he spent the better part of his free time educating students on campus health, answering calls on a suicide crisis line, advocating for rape awareness for his fraternity and working part time for the student wellness center.

Baysden’s parents, while supportive, were confused by his priorities.

“Why do you volunteer so much of you time?” they asked him. “You should go make money.”

But Baysden’s ambitions weren’t financial. He wanted to change the world for the better, so when he saw the Peace Corps’ ads for “the toughest job you’ll ever love,” he decided to pursue his dream.

After graduating with a degree in Psychology, Baysden was excited to begin his service. Unfortunately, his father and maternal grandmother passed the fall of his senior year, so Peace Corps encouraged him to delay his departure.

In 1993, he set off for Thailand and worked with the Office of National Primary Education Commission (ONPEC) in a village in Northern Thailand. He was the first Peace Corps volunteer in his village, so he worked hard to build programs from the ground up.

Much of Baysden’s work revolved around health education. He began by teaching English in schools which allowed him to survey students for vitamin deficiencies, goiters and other common health issues.

He also created preventative solutions to illness such as helping a school build a cafeteria, so students had a more sanitary space to eat and creating a chicken raising program to increase the protein in students diets. He also worked on distributing toothpaste donations and taught people how to make their own toothpaste.

Many young girls in Baysden’s village were sold into sex work, so he tried to find ways to give them more options for their future. One opportunity he created was scholarships that helped girls afford schooling past the sixth grade.

“I’m proud of everything we accomplished: the projects, providing opportunities for girls that never would’ve had the opportunity to go on to education,” Baysden said.

At the time of Baysden’s service, UNESCO predicted that Thailand would surpass Africa in HIV/AIDS cases largely because of the high amount of sex trafficking. The HIV/AIDS epidemic was one of the reasons that Baysden had volunteered with student health organizations during his undergraduate degree. He used some of his experience in educating people about the chronic disease on topics such as prevention, safety and misconceptions.

He also worked with non-government organizations such as Red Barna (a Norwegian NGO), UNICEF and a local Monk to create a hospice for people with HIV/AIDS  that were outcast from their community.

“The most rewarding thing was the impact we had on the people I came in contact with and the impact they had on me,” Baysden said.

Toward the end service, the U.S. Congress recognized Baysden and his team’s successful approach to managing the diseases through education, prevention and alternative resources.

While pursuing his many projects, Baysden lived in a dwelling on the edge of the his host village, and mountain biked three kilometers to get to his job everyday. Although he initially valued the privacy, it came with its own set of challenges.

“You’re really out of your safety zone,” Baysden said. “It’s pretty isolating.”

In hindsight, he believes that the experience and isolation forced him to really get comfortable with himself, and that that is part of what makes him such a good psychologist now.

“The first thing [the Thai people] do is comment on who you are as a person, so you can’t really hide,” Baysden recalled, laughing.

On the weekends, Baysden often explored Thailand with nothing but his bike and a backpack filled with water, snacks, and a camera.

Although his time alone was valuable for self-reflection, he did seek out connections with his fellow volunteers and host country nationals through memorable experiences, such as trips to local national parks and karaoke nights.

“I have so many cool memories and most of them revolve around people,” Baysden said.

He played a lot of soccer and basketball, went canoeing with other volunteers, and helped out with English camps in the summer.

“It was really more about connections with people,” Baysden said.

On one occasion, he was invited to help other volunteers and students paint a mural on one of the nearby schools. At the end of the day, they rode in the back of a tuk-tuk together, singing James Taylor songs and enjoying each others’ company,

When he returned to the U.S., Baysden had used his Peace Corps benefits to defer his graduate school acceptance until after his service. He earned his master’s degree and decided to pursue general psychology so that he could reach more people, deviating from his original plan of studying sports psychology.

“[Peace Corps] will provide you an opportunity to be the best version of yourself, but to get there you’re going to need to go through the weeds, parts of yourself you might not like,” Baysden said.

Baysden continues to affect the world by impacting one person at a time, both as a psychologist and as a professor at UNT.

“The effect you may have is tiny, but it is like that ripple, that ripple you never know what’s going to happen,” Baysden said. “I feel I have to create ripples.”

Although Baysden sought out volunteer opportunities before Peace Corps, he says the experience drives much of who he is now and taught him much about himself and the ways that he can truly make a difference in the world.

“What the Peace Corps does is it allows people a chance to find themselves, and express themselves outside of any dogma that may exist,” Baysden said.

Since Baysden was the first volunteer in his village, he received many letters from his successors, asking for his advice and telling him about the work they continued to do.

“We live in a time where everybody wants credit for the work they do and the greatest gift you can have is to affect the world and not take any credit for it,” Baysden said. “Let the people you’re affecting have the credit.”

Baysden doesn’t say he wants to change the world anymore, after everything he learned in the Peace Corps, he’s changed his language.

“I feel like I’ve affected it,” Baysden concluded. “I don’t know if I changed the world, but the world changed me.”

If you would like to learn more about Dr. Baysden's story, you may reach out to him at Matthew.Baysden@unt.edu. 

^{Written and Edited by Eliana Fulton, B.A. Journalism Student at UNT
Interviewed by Zach Yeager, Peace Corps Prep Coordinator}