45 Years Fighting for the World's Most Forgotten People With Steven Muncy

So before we do, what is the mission of Community and Family Services International?

Our mission is to vigorously protect and promote human security, and specifically that means the lives, the well-being, and the dignity of people who are uprooted by armed conflict, persecution, and disasters.

So we're focused on refugees, internally displaced persons, and stateless persons.

I have a lot of questions on that, but before we do, Steve, why you? Why is this something that you've dedicated a long period of your life and current time towards?

Well, I grew up in the U.S. and at the time of the U.S. when there was the Vietnam, the war in Vietnam, the American war in Vietnam, as they said here in Asia, and also the civil rights situation in the U.S. And so I developed at an early age a sense of social justice and an interest in that topic.

And in 1979, I started reading about the Vietnamese who had fled.

I read about the Cambodians across the border who had survived the genocide.

1.8 million out of 5 million people killed or died in that country situation.

And I had never been outside the US.

I didn't speak a foreign language.

I didn't know much about the world.

But something about that situation drew me.

And I applied for a volunteer program to come for two years.

to work with refugees from those countries.

And I chose to come to the Philippines because at that time it was offering asylum for refugees from these countries, but it was also persecuting its own people.

It was creating refugees.

So I found that an interesting place to work and a place to figure out how can you as a country protect and assist people from another country, yet at the same time persecute and push your own people out.