The Population and Community Development Association (PDA)
was founded in 1974 as a non-governmental organization with the
initial aim to complement the efforts of the Royal Thai Government
in promoting family planning in Thailand, especially in areas where
knowledge and access to services were scarce. Utilizing a participatory,
community-based approach, PDA recruited and trained residents of
villages and urban neighborhoods to provide information on family
planning, including the supervised, non-medical distribution of
oral contraceptives. This distribution network covered more than
one-third of the country, thus contributing significantly to the
decrease in the annual population growth rate from 3.3% in the mid-1970s
to 0.6% in 2005. During the same period, the number of children
per family fell from 7 to under two.
After addressing the immediate family
planning needs, PDA expanded its activities to include primary health
care, HIV/AIDS education and prevention, water resource development
and sanitation, income-generation, environmental conservation, promotion
of small-scale rural enterprise programs, gender equality, youth
development, and democracy promotion. Most recently, PDA has aggressively approached the problem of rural poverty by empowering the poor through the Village Development Partnership, which establishes a community-owned Village Development Bank for the purpose of microcredit.
 
Today, PDA is the leading and most diversified
NGO in Thailand, employing over 800 staff members and working with
over 12,000 volunteers. PDA has 18 regional development centers
and branch offices located across 15 provinces in rural Thailand. It also manages operation of the Lamplaimat-Pattana Primary and Secondary Schools, which is revolutionary, private education for the poor.
PDA has pioneered sustainable grassroots
endeavors, marked by extensive villager involvement not only as
beneficiaries, but also as partners, planners, managers, and leaders.
PDA’s programs are based on the belief that local people are best
suited to be an equal partner in shaping and sustaining their own
development. 35 years of PDA’s involvement has created significant
change in the following areas:
• Health, AIDS
& Family Planning
• Income
Generation & Poverty Reduction
• Rural
Microcredit
• Water & Environmental
• Youth as Agents
of Change Today and Leaders of Tomorrow
• Education &
Nutrition
• Corporate Social
Responsibility - The Village Development Partnership
• Emergency Relief
Services (CBERS)
• Asian Center
for Population and Community Development (ACPD)
• NGO
Sustainability
• International
• Human
Rights Promotion
PDA and its leaders have been recognized
internationally by various organizations for their work in making
lasting, systemic changes in Thailand and Southeast Asia. Two of
the programs have been recognized as Best Practices by UNAIDS.
The PBS television special, “Rx for Survival”, highlighted
PDA’s pioneering successes in family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention,
as well as in the area of changing attitudes and behavior towards delivering
services to the rural poor. Representatives of organizations from
nearly fifty countries have come to Thailand to learn about PDA’s
successes through PDA’s international training arm. Another
acknowledgement of PDA’s key contributions came from the World Bank,
in November 2005, which estimated that seven million lives were
saved from HIV/AIDS through the intensive public education and prevention
program designed and introduced to the public through PDA. PDA's Chairman, Mechai Viravaidya, was awarded the Gates Award for Global Health in 2007 for the pioneering work in HIV/AIDS prevention, and the organization was awarded the 2008 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship
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