HOME > Starting an organization

Arrangements were immediately 

set in motion to conduct the pilot test in Bang Lamung.

With input and concurrence from the community, a volunteer was selected
from each village to become the CBFPS village contraceptive distributor.
When contraceptives became accessible to the residents of these 24 villages, the community's response was emphatic. the community's response was emphatic. 
Community-based distribution was greeted with the people's unqualified approval, 
proving once again that when contraceptives are made readily available to women by someone they know and trust, they do not hesitate to use them, even if they have 
to pay for them. Community-based distribution was greeted with the people's unqualified approval, proving once again that when contraceptives are made readily available to 
women by someone they know and trust, they do not hesitate to use them, even if they have to pay for them. 
The payment scheme was simple. Each cycle of pills cost five baht (The equivalent of 25 cents US), and five condoms cost three baht. The village distributor kept one baht for each sale as an incentive. The remainder was remitted to the project to defray the costs of training and administration. A district supervisor visited each village distributor once per month on a motorbike to examine records, answer questions, resupply contraceptives, and collect funds. The system worked because it was so simple. 
 

In view of the community's enthusiastic response, Mechai realized that further expansion of this program beyond Bang Lamung could only be done with the acquiescence and blessing of the Ministry of Public Health.

He had gone this far without it, but now things had to be done correctly. Besides, IPPF funding was contingent upon Ministry of Public Health approval. He would now proceed to the second hurdle.
Dr. Choed Tonavanik, Director General of the Department of Medical and Health Services, and probably the most powerful and influential physician in the Ministry of Public Health take care of this. He assured his colleagues that the Department of Medical and Health Services will provide all medical backup for the first phase of the CBFPS experiment in 24 districts. With Dr. Choed's support, approval was immediately forthcoming.

Following Ministry of Public Health approval, IPPF gave Mechai the go-ahead to proceed with the entire project. 

Actually, the IPPF-funded project had three components. The first component, and by far the largest, was the Village Program that was piloted in Bang Lamung and planned to expand to 76 districts in five years. The second was the Private Sector Program, a condom social-marketing project where Gold-, Silver-, and Rainbow-brand condoms were marketed at subsidized prices through retail outlets throughout the country. The third component was the Institutional Program, where Mechai's organization trained teachers about population and family planning and brought family planning services to teachers, parents of school children, and factory workers. The IPPF grant was allocated annually, with each subsequent year's funding contingent upon an external evaluation of the previous year's results. he grant would terminate after five years, at which time the project was to be self-sufficient through the sale of contraceptives. The first grant of US$ 250,000 for Year 1 came in 1974. The Institutional Program actually started. The Teacher's Council, a union of teachers to which all primary and secondary schoolteachers working for the government belonged, would bring teachers together each summer for special courses to upgrade their qualifications and skills. In five years, his organization trained 320,000 schoolteachers, all of whom could order contraceptives by mail for themselves or for resale to others in their villages and pass useful family planning information on to their students. Starting in Bangkok, the training was eventually expanded to 24 locations around Thailand. CBFPS had one half day during the training to transmit family planning messages.
  
 
Prior to launching this program, Mechai commissioned survey research to identify the most influential  
and respected leaders in the community.

First were the Buddhist monks. Then came the schoolteachers. If these were the two most respected informal leaders, he wanted to assure that Buddhist monks would not oppose him, and to enlist the active support of the teachers, because each teacher could reach many children and children had always been a crucial component of Mechai's strategy. The teachers were taught new rhymes and songs to be introduced into the classroom. First was the family planning ABCs, in which A was for Abstinence, B was for Birth spacing, C was for Condoms, D was for Delayed marriage, S was for Sterilization, V was for Vasectomy etc. Then there was a popular Thai jingle, perhaps as familiar as "Jingle Bells" in English, in which the words were changed so that every contraceptive method was mentioned, and demographic messages explaining overpopulation explained. Teachers were encouraged to have students take an oath to "try to marry as late as possible after 20 and try to have no more than two children."
Mechai became personally involved as a trainer, a role he maintained until his staff could replicate his techniques.He walked into an auditorium where 2,000 teachers were gathered for the training.  
Mechai was introduced to the expectant audience. Most of them had heard of Mechai from his stint in television and family planning, hence his reception was warm and spirited. With a presentation honed over several performances, he began by explaining Thailand's population problem, and that now the means were available to delay pregnancy. Holding the condom up before the audience, he said, "The condom is actually a very versatile implement. It can be a tourniquet, for snake bites and deep cuts. It can cover the barrel of a gun, and the lubrication can be used for skin cream. It can even carry water, coffee, or Coca Cola. It is also a balloon." He then put the condom to his lips and started blowing it up. "It was like magic," Mechai remembered. One minute the audience was just sitting there, quite moribund, looking self-conscious, and the next minute they were roaring with laughter. Now he knew he was on to something. Why not get the audience to participate in the fun? 
 
Mechai's assistants fanned into the audience and ushered dozens of reluctant 
but curious volunteers to the front stage.  
Each was given a condom. "On the count of three, I want all of you to start blowing up your condoms.
The one to blow up the largest condom in one minute will win a year's supply." This group of quite ordinary teachers started frantically blowing up their condoms on the count of three. Some were quite adept, slowly but surely inflating the condom like a giant balloon. Others were clumsy, unable to express exhaled air into the condom. All of them were hysterically funny. The occasion was hilarious, as 2,000 people laughed uncontrollably at their colleagues blowing up condoms, with Mechai at the microphone providing a humorous play by play of the action. Mechai's announcement of the winner of the contest elicited wild approbation and applause from the audience. They loved the entire experience. Each was given a condom. "On the count of three, I want all of you to start blowing up your condoms. The one to blow up the largest condom in one minute will win a year's supply." This group of quite ordinary teachers started frantically blowing up their condoms on the count of three. Some were quite adept, slowly but surely inflating the condom like a giant balloon. Others were clumsy, unable to express exhaled air into the condom. All of them were hysterically funny. The occasion was hilarious, as 2,000 people laughed uncontrollably at their colleagues blowing up condoms, with Mechai at the microphone providing a humorous play by play of the action. Mechai's announcement of the winner of the contest elicited wild approbation and applause from the audience. They loved the entire experience. 

Mechai would go to any extreme to get his message across.
To mark the International Women's Year, he invited women in Bangkok to "vasectomize the man of your choice." On Labor Day and H.M. the King's birthday, he set up a clinic near the Grand Palace and offered free vasectomies to any interested customer. Television crews from around the world, there to film H.M. the King's birthday celebration, beamed Mechai's brightly colored mobile vasectomy van around the world. In 1979, the first year the mobile vasectomy clinics appeared, 146 men walked in off the street for vasectomies at the various sites Mechai had set up around Bangkok. In 1984, a total of 129 vasectomies were performed on H.M. the King's Birthday in one site, believed to be a world record at the time. After his family planning organization had been operating for one year, the condom had become Mechai's visual trademark. It had become synonymous with family planning.
For all the publicity and showmanship, all the unconventional antics and humorous behavior, the real core of Mechai's family planning program was its novel grassroots approach to contraceptive distribution. 
From long experience, Mechai knew intuitively that any solution to Thailand's population problem had to rest with Thailand's people. Unlike traditional family planning programs, conceived centrally and administered vertically, this program began at the village level and was run by the people.As Mechai repeated so often it became his mantra, "The people must have a sense of participation. They must be enlisted as partners. They must ultimately assume responsibility for the program's success." The backbone of the program was the village distributor. Most were married women, many of them shopkeepers with a place of business frequented by the villagers. The distributors were chosen carefully, in consultation with each community, on the basis of their community standing, support for family planning, and their ability to keep accurate records.
 
"The village people know our distributors. They trust and confide in them. 

And the distributor is right there in the village. The villagers don't have to take a long, expensive bus trip whenever they want contraceptives. Our distributors offer the convenience of round the clock,on the spot service." From its humble beginnings in Bang Lamung District in 1974, much of which is now Pattaya City, the program expanded first to 76 districts with IPPF support, then an additional 80 districts through a grant provided by USAID in 1976. By 1980, the program had 10,800 village distributors covering a population of 18 million people operating in 16,000 villages, one third of all villages and districts in Thailand. In this short span, 320,000 new family planning acceptors had been recruited, and 250,000 couples relied on CBFPS for their contraceptives.
  

 

For all the publicity and showmanship, all the unconventional antics and humorous behavior, 
the real core of Mechai's family planning program was its novel grassroots approach to contraceptive distribution. 

From long experience, Mechai knew intuitively that any solution to Thailand's population problem had to rest with Thailand's people. Unlike traditional family planning programs, conceived centrally and administered vertically, this program began at the village level and was run by the people.As Mechai repeated so often it became his mantra, "
The people must have a sense of participation. They must be enlisted as partners. They must ultimately assume responsibility for the program's success." The backbone of the program was the village distributor. Most were married women, many of them shopkeepers with a place of business frequented by the villagers. The distributors were chosen carefully, in consultation with each community, on the basis of their community standing, support for family planning, and their ability to keep accurate records.

"The village people know our distributors. They trust and confide in them. And the distributor is right there in the village. The villagers don't have to take a long, expensive bus trip whenever they want contraceptives. Our distributors offer the convenience of round the clock,on the spot service." From its humble beginnings in Bang Lamung District in 1974, much of which is now Pattaya City, the program expanded first to 76 districts with IPPF support, then an additional 80 districts through a grant provided by USAID in 1976. By 1980, the program had 10,800 village distributors covering a population of 18 million people operating in 16,000 villages, one third of all villages and districts in Thailand. In this short span, 320,000 new family planning acceptors had been recruited, and 250,000 couples relied on CBFPS for their contraceptives. 

This period also saw Thailand experience one of the most dramatic and rapid declines in fertility ever recorded. 

By 1981, Thailand's Total Fertility Rate had fallen to 3.9 from its peak of 7.4 in the 1960s. Its Crude Birth Rate of 46.6 live births per 1,000 population had fallen to 28.6 by 1984. The Population Growth Rate had plummeted from the 3.3% in 1960 to 2% by 1980 and 1.6% by 1984; or in more tangible terms, rather than doubling every 21 years, Thailand's population was doubling every 44 years by 1984, still high but no longer economically debilitating in view of the sustained trend of declining fertility. Most impressively, 65% of eligible Thai couples were practicing some method of contraception by 1984, up from 3% in the 1960s. Some observers called this performance a miracle. Most attributed it to plain hard work.

  


Visitors: 10,260