The Nation October 13 1998

International Focus:

On his second trip to North Korea, Wattanapong Santatiwat and his group were finally allowed to see children, a request they had been making from the beginning.

At the orphanage, a little boy toddled over to him and tried to grab his leg. Wattanapong reached down and picked him up. Under the heavy coat, he could barely feel the child.

''How old is this child?'' he asked.

''Five years old,'' the people told him.

''My daughter is five,'' he thought. ''She's not fat, but she is healthy. What has happened to this child?''

Wattanapong, World Vision International vice president of the Asia Region, then did what one should never do in Asia: he confronted.

He demanded to see the minister in charge, and stated, ''We can rescue these children only if you allow us.''

After 18 months of negotiation, it took one confrontational vice president for the authorities to say yes. ''But they forced us to start small,'' Wattanapong remembers.

Today, with the World Food Programme, Unicef and EU NGOs, World Vision has 10 centres working to identify the people's needs as well as agriculture and nutrition teams to advise.

In addition, six noodle factories have been set up. Trained government-appointed local people operate the machinery and generator, producing noodles from flour sent every month.

According to Wattanapong, the 60,000 bowls of noodles produced feed about 90,000 children daily.

''The whole operation depends on trust,'' he says, ''and the trust comes from delivering what you say you will.''

Wattanapong is the first Thai to hold this vice presidency, which covers the area from Afghanistan to the Solomon Islands, from Mongolia to Indonesia.

It's the largest region in World Vision, with the largest population, and the one that has suffered so badly politically and economically, not to mention the natural disasters of 1998 alone.

For the past 12 months and the next 36 World Vision is focusing on emergency and rehabilitation responses in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh and North Korea.

The budget of US$60 million at the beginning of 1998 has now grown to $90 million. Wattanapong expects to end 1999 with $100 million, ''and we now have $70 million in hand,'' he says. By 2002, a $200 million budget is projected.

''Conditions are so bad for children,'' Wattanapong says. Mongolia, for instance, has been able to switch from the Soviet hand-feeding style of government to a democracy. Children who cannot be cared for in their own communities are moving underground, into the insulation of the Soviet-designed heating system.

In Indonesia, millions of children in both urban and rural areas are expected to drop out of school in the coming year. There, World Vision has launched a Food/Cash for Work programme. In an oyster village outside Jakarta, for instance, workers who carry out community activities for World Vision receive three kilos of rice a day.

Among the commonest questions Wattanapong -- and other people in World Vision -- face is the question of religion. World Vision, after all, was founded in 1950 by an American missionary and journalist to alleviate the hardships suffered by the Korean people during the Korean War.

''Of course, we're Christian,'' says Wattanapong. ''However, our programmes do not oblige people to become Christian. There are no strings attached.''

''Besides,'' he adds, ''how many people have converted as a result of our programmes?''

On the other hand, the people in World Vision hope to leave some change in values. ''We would like people to learn to share with their neighbours, to understand that individual donors have provided resources for you to have a better life. This is not Christian, though, but human.''

In the next century, World Vision faces two major challenges, he says.

First how can World Vision's community-based programmes keep people abreast with a country's development? China, for instance, has been enjoying steady economic growth, but the gap between rich and poor is getting larger. ''The rich are getting richer, but the poor are staying poor,'' he says.

The other challenge is to develop local people to help their own people. Society needs a balance of distribution, he says, pointing to Indonesians, who, despite the Indonesian crisis, have already donated ''hundreds of thousands'' of dollars to help others.

''When we started World Vision in Thailand, all help came from the West,'' Wattanapong says. ''This year we raised $50 million, not just the rich. Ordinary people too.''

Thailand:

It is July 19, 1997, and all the villagers of Mod Ta Noi are lined up along the side of the road. An extremely poor village in Trang, all they know is that people from Bangkok have been working with them to improve their living standards, and today important people are coming to visit them to wish them well.

They line up to pay their respects to Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai, Pratin Buranabunpot, president of Thai Fuji Xerox, and Thanachai Theeraphatvong, chairman of the Nation Multimedia Group, accompanied by Wattanapong Santatiwat, vice president of the Asia Region of World Vision International, and Chusak Wuthiwaropas, national director of World Vision Foundation of Thailand.

The guests reach the end of the line of smiling people. And then they stop. There is something about the last person in the line that has caught their attention, a child sitting in a chair, her legs twisted awkwardly, her hands and arms resting unmovingly by her side. But she smiled.

''The girl's eyes were so bright,'' recalls Thanachai today. ''There was so much life in her face, so much intelligence.''

At that moment, Chuan, Thanachai and Pratin immediately want to know more about her. The story was typical of a poor family living in a poor village with poor health resources.

Aree Benmood started out in life with even more against her. At birth, she did not receive enough oxygen, partially destroying the part of her brain controlling motor functions. She could move neither her arms nor her legs.

For 19 years, until the visit of these VIPs, she had never left the house. Her parents had no money for medical help, nor the time to carry her to school. He had other children to support as well, and between his long hours in the fields, he would spend his time helping Aree bathe and dress.

''Of all members of society, the poor have the weakest voice,'' says Wattanapong. ''They don't know what the government policies are. They don't know what resources are available.''

In Aree's case, her meeting with World Vision officials, as well as the prime minister and two other men who work as problem-solvers on a daily basis set her on a road she could not have imagined possible.

With help from the Public Health Department of Trang province, World Vision Thailand, Chuan, Thanachai and Pratin, she has been brought up to Bangkok, where she receives physical therapy at Sirinthorn Centre. Doctors at Chulalongkorn Hospital have already operated on her to loosen her atrophied muscles.

While she waits, she's also learned to read and write in a few short months.

Aree is a lucky offshoot of the community development programmes that the World Vision has been instituting since the 1980s. Officially established in 1974, World Vision Foundation of Thailand (WVFT) originally started out working in refugees camps.

Wattanapong, who joined the foundation a year or so after it was established, was assigned to coordinate the camp activities. Coming from a comfortable life as an architect in the United States, he found an entirely different viewpoint in Nong Khai and Chiang Rai.

''It was the first time I was confronted with such a level of hopelessness and poverty,'' he says. ''These people had been somebody in their own country. They had lost their pride. They faced uncertainty.''

He also saw Thai villages that had nothing. ''You ask yourself, 'What's life?' ''

In the early 1980s, when Thais began shutting down the camps, WVFT began pulling out as well. ''There were plenty of NGOs for refugees. We decided to shift our focus to children in Thailand, to villagers.''

As WVFT expanded, moving from relief to long-term development, Wattanapong's role expanded as well. As operations director, he helped implement the changes in World Vision's directions.

''We came to realise that the creative part must come from the people, and to learn what they want and what they feel they need, we have to go to them, learn from them, stay with them,'' he says. ''We have learned, I hope, how to create a dialogue, and to listen.''

World Vision has altered in other ways as well. ''We rely heavily on transparency,'' says National Director Chusak. ''We must show our donors that we are using the money the way we said.''

Earlier, donors and sponsors from abroad seldom checked. They faced a language barrier, and in addition, the WVFT staff themselves did not know how to talk with people from abroad.

An unexpected shift in funding has taken place, however. In spite of the economic downturn, growing numbers of Thai people are donating to WVFT, for such projects as its Child Sponsorship Programme, Future Fund for Needy Children Programme, Lunch Programme, World Vision 24-Hour Famine Programme and Gift-in-Kind Programme.

''This is a true miracle,'' Chusak says, adding that he hopes Thailand will eventually become completely self-supporting.

The foundation is also moving outside the country. For the first time in its history, it is supporting a sponsorship programme in Yunnan, with money to go to 15 schools to combat iodine-deficiency.

''We don't believe that anyone is too poor to give,'' says Wattanapong, ''Fund-raising offers the individual the sense of dignity and pride.''

ü LOOK for dignity and pride, and you can find it in the farmers of Thaptan in Uthaithani. In an area so dependent on rain that they can grow only one rice crop a year, the villagers themselves are working on a massive eight-year programme that will eventually involve over 25,000 people.

With funding from World Vision United States, the farmers have set up a rice mill, with 450 members holding over 5,000 shares. Farmers from eight villages bring their rice to the mill, which also does value-added production on a small scale.

With the mill, they've been able to cut out almost all middlemen. In addition, the mill association's meeting room has been turned into a trading floor once a week, where the farmers handle their own negotiations.

Three of the leaders of the rice mill association, Somboon Disprapass, headman of Moo Ban 6, Tambol Nong Yai Da, Amphur Taptun and chairman of the rice mill, Phuyai Kamikan Yuan Poonphan and Kamnan Tawai Maison promptly dispel any image of uneducated farmers working without much thought.

They speak knowledgeably about rice prices. Fluctuations, after all, are leading them to future phases of their project. They are now building a pumping station to bring in more income, and then they are seeking a loan from the Government Savings Bank to build a storehouse.

''We want to be able to sell when the price is high,'' Somboon says.

Working with Somsak Yimnarong, WVFT area supervisor, they would also like to start supporting the children in the area, eventually providing tuition, uniforms, nutritious food, but that will come later.

The rice mill is already paid off, the farmers say proudly, thinking cautiously but hopefully about the future.

BY LAURIE ROSENTHAL

Nation