Mechai Viravaidya is a former politician and multi-awarded activist in Thailand who popularized condoms, family planning and AIDS Awareness in the country since 1970s. Mr. Mechai focused his work on family planning, emphasizing condoms that's why he is often referred as Mr. Condom. From the time he began his work, the number of the average number of children in Thai Families has decreased from 7 to 1.5. When he left government in 1973, he founded a non-profit service organization called the Population and Community Development Association (PDA) which became the biggest non-profit organization in Thailand with 600 employees and 12,000 volunteers.
To continue the work to improve the lives of the rural poor, Kun Mechai launched his third revolution by founding the Mechai Pattana Bamboo School in 2009. Its vision is to re-engineer rural education where pupils are happy and can fulfill their potential, which is adapted to its local environment and current technology. The school develops the complete individual - instilling individual morality, preserving community tradition, and promoting good citizenship. The Mechai Pattana School endeavors to promote the values: environmental protection, education, poverty eradication, philanthropy, integrity, and democracy & gender equality.
In my meeting with Kun Mechai, he emphasized the need to re-engineer rural education to go away from the traditional Thai education wherein they are often taught to follow but not to think critically. One of his ways of developing critical thinking among his students are to highly involve them in school governance, strongly harness their ability to ask good questions and seek answers for themselves. Mechai students are given the responsibility of participating in the teacher selection and evaluation process. They are also given the responsibility in selecting the incoming Grade 7 students, which promotes leadership at an early age. After the afternoon classes, students operate businesses that have a positive impact within their community, with some of the profits going towards primary student scholarships in government schools. Moreover, students also participate in the purchasing committee, which enables them to learn budgeting, planning, transparency, and negotiation skills. Kun Mechai added that if the potentials of the rural students are fully developed, they don't need to leave their own villages to find their luck in highly urbanized cities.
As I joined Kun Mechai in moving around the school, he proudly pointed all the art works of students in coconut trees, array of bamboos, vegetable plots, water catchment tanks, tables and benches. He highlighted the need for school to create opportunities for innovation and outside the box thinking. Mechai students even grow some vegetables in shoes, bamboos, etc. They nuture their trees, paint it and assign them with pet names just like their own puppies at home.
Kun Mechai also noted the disparity in rural education. Many rural schools highly focus on teaching concepts that are not directly applicable and useful to the future of the rural students which he referred as junk. He added that this imbalance will lead to the unsustainable future in the rural communities which I totally agree with. Moreover, he highlighted the need to ensure that the school should also be a life-long learning center for the entire community, where everyone is welcome to use the school to improve their agricultural, business and general vocational skills. The students help their teachers in inculcating these skills among the community members. Accordingly, this activity greatly promotes the sense of sharing among the students and their community.
When I asked him what is his greatest advise for me, he smiled and said, "Focus on software and not on hardware. It's not on how beautiful your building is but it is on the quality of your idea. You'll never go wrong. Oftentimes, once you start something, people will not believe you. They will just believe you once you have proved to them that it can be done. Never take no as an answer but take no as a question. Action and impact should always go together. Develop a long term sustainability plan by engaging in social enterprise. Keep in touch and let me know how can I be of help."
When I heard his lovely words, I was left tongue-tied that I just found myself embracing Kun Mechai tightly. It was a very inspiring moment.