Condoms, not chocolates or cookies, that's what you will get with your after-dinner coffee at the restaurants and on your pillow at the hotel resorts of "Mister Condom" in Thailand.
"Mister Condom" is Dr Mechai Viravaidya, the man whose concerted and creative efforts to educate the people of Thailand about birth control and safe sex has dramatically cut Thailand's population growth rate, from 3.2 per cent in 1974 to 0.8 per cent last year and slashed HIV/Aids infection rates in Thailand by 75 per cent between 1990 and 2003.
In Thailand they call the 62-year old physician and former civil servant "Mister Condom". Dr Mechai has set up the Population and Community Development Association (PDA), a Non-Governmental organization in Thailand, that since its start in 1974, has worked very hard to make "The Condom" as ordinary and everyday thing as "Cabbages" in Thailand.
Doctor Meechai and his organization have, for example, organized condom-blowing competitions in factories and small Thai villages and had pretty girls distribute condoms to the Bangkok police in a "Cops and Rubbers" blitz campaign.
All profits from the "Cabbages and Condoms" chain of restaurants and hotel resorts that Dr Meechai owns provide 70 per cent of the funding for the PDA's projects.
It's all about family planning and income generation, Dr Mechai told some 400 bemused participants at a volunteerism seminar where the half-Scottish Thai senator presented a case for NGOs to step up entrepreneurial activity. There is only one way out of poverty, he said, and that is by learning people to do business, he said.
Dr Mechai would like to see a Asian regional NGO with Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore as its patron. Companies could send their staff voluntarily to various Asian countries, teaching the villagers how to do business for three, six months or a year, he added.
A fund with close to $1 million has been set up by the Ministry for Community Development and Sports in Singapore to spur social enterprise efforts by volunteer groups. The National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre (NVPC) estimated recently that volunteerism in Singapore is worth around $1.5 billion.
