Chairman and Founder of the Population and Community Development Association (PDA), Mechai Foundation, Mechai Pattana Bamboo School
Mr. Mechai Viravaidya is a former politician and activist who promoted family planning and aids awareness in Thailand. He is a Chairman and Founder of Population and Community Development association (PDA) and had a pivotal role in Thailand’s immensely successful family planning program, which saw one of the most rapid fertility declines in the modern era. The rate of annual population growth in Thailand declined from over 3% in 1974 to 0.6% in 2005.
In the late 1980s, similar approaches were used to initiate a major HIV/aids awareness and prevention program in Thailand. According to UNAIDS, this endeavour achieved a 90 percent decline in new infections and, according to the World Bank, an estimated 7.7 million lives were saved during the period between 1991-2012.
While acting as Chairman of PDA, Khun Mechai was made a member of the Senate. He was also appointed to key positions such as Thailand’s Cabinet spokesman, Deputy Minister of Industry, Minister of the Office of the Prime Minister, and Chairman of several of Thailand’s largest government-owned enterprises. In addition to these responsibilities, he also served as a Research Associate at Columbia University, as a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University and as a Council Member at several Thai Universities. In 2014, the National Reform Assembly elected him as a member of the Constitution Drafting Committee.
Following his previous successes, he has aggressively approached the problem of rural poverty by empowering the poor through the Village Development Partnership, to build sustainable entrepreneurial capacity, community empowerment, income generating activities and environmental protection at village level.
In 2008, through the Mechai Viravaidya Foundation, he established the Mechai Bamboo School in Buriram province, Northeast Thailand to re-engineer rural education and to enable the school to be a life-long learning centre as well as a hub for social and economic development. Today, with the help of the private sector, over one hundred small rural schools have begun to adopt this concept and have begun to take on a greater role in their surrounding communities.
For his efforts in various development and educational endeavours, Khun Mechai has been awarded numerous awards, recognition, and honorary doctoral degrees, including those from Melbourne, Monash Universities in Australia and The University of Warwick in England. He was presented with the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service (1994), recognized as one of Asiaweek’s “20 Great Asians” (1995), the United Nations Population Award (1997), one of TIME Magazine’s “Asian Heroes” (2006), the Bill and Melinda Gates Award for Global Health (2007), the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2008). More recently, he was honored with the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health (2009) and was selected as the first recipient of the Geelong Grammar School Medal for Service to Society in Australia (2014).
‘School’ means a lot more than a physical space to learn. Mechai’s definition of it elongates the cardinal existence of the school towards a space to integrate students and the community’s way of life.
Session Information: Plenary 3: What are the Roles of Public-Private and People Partnership? Mr. Mac Glovinsky, UNICEF Mr. Ruangroj Poonpol, KASIKORN Business-Technology Group Dr. Mechai Viravaidya, Mechai Viravaidya Foundation, Thailand Moderator: Mr. Ichiro Miyazawa, UNESCO Thailand Session Q&A:
