Newey's blog: Taking some time out

BANGKOK, Thailand (CNN) -- Newey is the head of Thailand's Youth Venture program, located in Bangkok.

Youth Venture, a global organization and partner of Ashoka, is dedicated to supporting and encouraging Ventures that benefit society, proposed and run by young people across Thailand. The vision behind the program is that everyone can take initiative and address social needs. Young people form the basis for this.

Newey will be continuing her work with the program to further the impact it is having on Bangkok society. Follow her efforts in her blogs and video diaries.

September 27, 2007
Since I got back from the University Student Leader workshop on Tuesday, I have tried to get things done to meet my deadlines.

We launched a Youth Venture campaign last month to reach out to young people around the country. We traveled to meet youth groups and young networks, sent out posters and ran workshops with international schools.

Now that we've got about 20 projects submitted we're kind of feeling great that there are a lot of young people who want to start projects to address community problems. At the same time, we face our own problem of too much work; that's made our team very stressed.

I got feedback from everyone on the team that they were unable to finish the tasks that they planned each week. So, in tomorrow's team meeting I need to walk them through some solutions -- reducing the workload, or capacity building on time management.

Anyway, for me I have 40 things on my to-do list. But I'm too exhausted to even be tense. I can't do more than I'm doing now; otherwise I'd really need the 25th hour. So today I put aside my too long to-do list and head out to meet my friend Eva, who I met 5 years ago in an art class in Florida. Eva is in her mid sixties, but to me she looks forty-something. She is very energetic.

It has been raining all day. My shoes gave up on me and let the rain soak into my feet while I brought Eva and her Chilean friend, Iris, who she met at the hostel, around town.

We went to the Grand Palace, Wat Po (temple with reclining Buddha), flower market and China Town. They constantly said that they love Thailand and of course Thai food. I myself really had a good time showing them the city. I'm so happy to see them appreciate the culture and see the beauty of the Bangkok that I love. Eva even said that "Bangkok is an organized chaos."

At 7pm I met Any for dinner. She's my Indonesian friend who I know from a UNDP training session two years ago. We got along because we were crazy about systems thinking and causal loop diagrams. She recommended another workshop to me about systems thinking in November (one in Bangkok and one in Indonesia). I hope I can make time for it.

I'm glad I made time to meet with friends who shared their stories and positive reception of my company. They made me realize that outside work I still exist. E-mail to a friend