Privatising poverty reduction

It is clear Mechai Viravaidya still doesn't expect much from Thailand's politicians.

In the walkway up to his lush and cosy Birds & Bees resort in Pattaya are sound bites etched in wood that read like grafitti: 'Don't Steal, The Government Doesn't like Competition', 'Forgive the Rabbits for Digging Hole, They Are Digging for Gold, Like Our Politicians'.

Meeting him not long ago at Birds & Bees, I had told Mechai if he thought Thai politicians were corrupt, he should check out Nepali netas. He had replied that the roots of bad governance and graft are the same everywhere. Lack of accountability stemmed from a flawed electoral system in which cheats usually win, and is followed by institutionalised impunity when they get to power.

Mechai's distrust of politicians comes from his stint in government in 1992, when he had to battle the country's image as a sex tourism destination. If it hadn't been for his enormously successful family planning program in the 1980s and the spread of condom use, the AIDS epidemic in Thailand would have been much worse.

'Mechai' therefore became synonymous with 'condom' in Thailand, but today the economist-turned-social entrepreneur is better known for heading the country's largest philanthropic organisation, the Population and Community Development Association (PDA). The non-profit now directly benefits 10 million Thais and received the 2007 Gates Award for Global Health for its AIDS work. PDA has almost completely weaned itself from foreign donors and generates its own revenue through partnerships with the private sector and autonomous businesses like the Birds & Bees resort and a restaurant chain called Cabbages & Condoms.

The money is ploughed into Mechai's work with skills development, women's employment schemes and health. Mechai calls it the "privatisation of poverty reduction", and explains that the growing gap between rich and poor is the biggest threat to Thailand.

Another one of Mechai's favourite signs at Birds & Bees is 'Capitalism is the uneven distribution of wealth, communism is the even distribution of poverty' and it stands just at the point where the path through the forest divides into one that says 'Capitalism' and another that says 'Communism'.

Through another non-profit that he set up, the Thailand Business Initiative in Rural Development, Mechai has convinced 150 of Thailand's biggest companies to help villages with managerial and marketing skills for their products. Dozens of villages, especially in northeastern Thailand, have completely come out of poverty.

"The only way out of poverty is through business and not through prayer or charity," Mechai explains.

Through his decades in development, Mechai has come to the conclusion that the most effective way to redress the income gap is to provide the same opportunity for all Thais and this he says is only possible through free quality education for the poor.

Income from Birds & Bees, for example, all goes to Lampaimart Pattana School in Buri Ram Province, which Mechai is principal of, and gives children hands-on learning and has been graded one of the best schools in Thailand.

A recent evaluation showed Lampaimart Pattana is as good as the many international schools for expats in Thailand, but costs less than a government school. After starting out in family planning and launching a national condom campaign, then branching off into anti-AIDS work, Mechai's mission is now poverty reduction through community empowerment through business and education.

I had once asked Mechai in Pattaya if he knew his surname in Sanskrit meant 'Brave Doctor', he'd said he knew it had something to do with medicine but that he was "neither brave nor a doctor". In an interview during a visit to Nepal back in 2001 for an AIDS conference, Mechai had said about combating HIV: "You have to push, politicians will not do it naturally. And foreigners can't do it, Nepalis will have to do it themselves."

That advice seems more relevant than ever before, and not just for AIDS prevention.