As hundred of world leaders made their annual pilgrimage to New York for the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly, TH!NK 3 winners had the exclusive chance to discuss world problems and potential solutions face to face with Mechai Viravaidya, one of the TEDxChange speakers.

Mr. Viravaidya is a worldwide famed leader in the fields of public health, education and community development. Since 1974, he has initiated community-based family planning services, innovative poverty reduction and rural education programs, large-scale rural development and environmental programs, as well as groundbreaking HIV/AIDS prevention activities throughout Southeast Asia.

According to him, those who are at the core of the problem have to be the solution. “Otherwise, it (programmes) will not work. As simple as that”. And from the outset, it was clear that meeting the MDGs by 2015 would be no small challenge.

Based on this key conception, 40 years ago when he came back to Thailand, his country was in a very distressing situation of poverty. The number of children per family in 1974 was of around seven and then he decided to do something about it.

To begin with, he did not start with welfare programmes or poverty reduction programmes, but with a family planning programme following a very successful maternal child health activity. “No one would accept family planning if their children did not survive. So the first step was to get to the children, get to the mothers and then follow up with family planning”, he explained.

(Photo by Emily McManus)

Doctors: who needs them?

To prescribe pills doctors were needed. But there were very few. One doctor per 110,000 people outside municipalities. There were 9 doctors per million people.

“We did not take as an answer. We took it as a question. So we went to nurses and midwives. And they did a fantastic job at explaining how to use the pill”.

But it covered only 20% of the country. So they went to ordinary people. Village shopkeepers were trained to prescribe pills and to provide condoms. “They were well-known in the community, knew the customers and they were terrific. It spread over the country and it was a remarkable success”, he said.

Since then you can find contraceptives all over the place in Thailand, even in the floating market.

Mr. Viravaidya wanted to expand it and went to the religion. In the Philippines the Catholic Church is pretty strong and Thai people are Buddhist. So he asked monks for blessing contraceptives with holy water. “Everybody has to be involved”, he claimed.

So they went to teachers. 320,000 teachers were trained in five years and condom blowing competitions were great eyecatching measures.

"In Thailand condom became girls' best friend", he joked. "Diamonds do not make it".

Micro-credit programme followed up

The first micro-credit programme was introduced in 1975 and the women who organized it said: ‘we will only lend to women who practice family planning. If you are pregnant, take care of your pregnancy. If you are not, you will take a lot more from us”. That was and still is their motto.

It is still going on even after 35 years. It is a fund and part of the Village Development Bank. It had no need to be run by big organizations. The villagers themselves did it.

With all Thailand managed to get 1.5 children per family and population growth went to 0,5%.

"It all came about because everybody joined in. We did not have a strong government, we did not have lots of doctors. But it was everybody’s job to change attitude and behaviour", he affirms.

The bad guy came to Thailand

Then HIV hit Thailand and the governmental reaction was of immediate denial. Mechai and its programmes had thus an extra thing to fight against and that attitude was not the most wise from officials. "So let’s go to the military", he thought at that time. "They have more radio stations than the government, nearly 300".

And the answer was simply encouraging: "Go ahead!".

In 1991 a new Prime-Minister stepped into office and that was new hope to grapple with HIV. Mechai was invited to join the government and declared that everyone had to be involved in AIDS education, even judges.

Media outlets were also trained on this brand new topic. And each station was given half a million extra for advertising campaigns on HIV. Education on this topic was conducted in all education institutions and friends started teaching friends. "The best teachers were the girls. They were known as Mothers Teresa", Mechai told us.

Companies also understand that sick staff can not work and dead customers do not buy. More campaigns were roaring to life such as the Condom Captain and the Miss Condom Pageant.

After all that, from 1991 to 2003, HIV infections declined by 90%. According to the world bank, 7,7 million lives were saved.

Today you can get condoms in every taxi cab; police officers give it to you; it is available in mini bars at hotels and so on, so that condom is a new trend now. It is no more a taboo. In Mechai's words that is the "weapon of mass protection".

That is commitment. It can not be let to doctors and specialists alone.

Today big steps

Now Mechai Viravaidya Foundation is trying to help the poor get out of poverty in cooperation with the business community, as "the poor are business people who lack business skills and access to credit. This endeavor aims at empowering the community and turning the poor into barefoot entrepreneurs", he said.

It has been done through tree planting. Companies contribute with 40 baht per tree planted and villagers contribute with labour. 25,000 trees planted generate 1,000,000 baht for the Village Development Bank, which is responsible for the loans.

They are also teaching people how to invest the money borrowed. It is a golden initiative that does not invalidate the loans, which could be fated to fail.

Now a revolution in education is needed. Mechai wants to transform school into a place where it will be a life-long learning centre for everyone (called School-BIRD), specially the have-nots. It has an economic and social development aim. It will serve communities' needs.

As he said exclusively for us, "there is chicken everywhere but it is cooked differently in each country".

The same problems are also spread and solutions have to be found depending on the culture.

Now Botswana has to learn how to cook its chicken.

Thailand has already learnt.

(All photos by Mechai Viravaidya Foundation, except the three final ones by the author)