A Generous Helping of Safe Sex

AIDS education and family planning are among the courses served at charity-run restaurant in Thailand

Near the Thai massage parlors on Sukhumvit Road here, past street vendors hawking T-shirts and

trinkets, an unusual restaurant attracts both locals and foreign tourists. But it’s not the food visitors seek out.

Inside the restaurant, plastic plants sprout multicolored condom “flowers.” Nearby a mannequin wears a condom suit, lampshades are covered in condoms, and instead of after-dinner mints, the wait staff hands out — yes, condoms.

Welcome to Cabbages & Condoms, where the kai hor bai toey (fried chicken wrapped in pandan leaves) is served with a hearty portion of safe-sex marketing.

The restaurant is the brainchild of Mechai Viravaidya, who is known in Thailand as the “Condom King” for his relentless advocacy of AIDS prevention and population control through the charity he founded in 1974, the Population and Community Development Association.

Mr. Mechai’s outlandish restaurant has been featured in dozens of travel guides, and has helped spread his message about family planning.

“Everyone who comes here and eats here, they see what we do,” he says.

Even the restaurant’s name communicates the charity’s mission “to make contraceptives as easily available as vegetables in the villages,” Mr. Mechai explains.

Cabbages & Condoms, which opened in 1980 and is located next door to the white headquarters building of the Population and Community Development Association, started as an informal get-together spot for the charity’s employees but grew into the two-story restaurant it is today, complete with beer garden, lounge, and gift shop.

Some of its proceeds are funneled into the charity, and soon diners will be able to indicate on their bills what social programs they would like their payments to support, says the Condom King.

Depending on how fund raising fares during a given year, Mr. Mechai’s nonprofit group can generate up to 70 percent of its $8-million budget from the restaurant and other commercial enterprises he has established.

Sipping tea in the restaurant’s Captain Condom Lounge on a recent Thursday, Mr. Mechai, 65, seems like a mischievous uncle — a balding man with a disarming wit, bow tie, and big glasses who is unabashed in his willingness to discuss sex.

He boasts that in 1987 he organized the largest number of vasectomies in one day — 1,214 — and that the Bangkok traffic police will soon hand out prophylactics to drivers as part of his “cops and rubbers” program.

Such flashy efforts, along with the restaurant, say global-health experts, have helped the nation curb its population growth rate from 3.2 percent in 1970 to 0.7 percent in 2006.

In addition, while AIDS remains a major cause of death in the country, Thailand has reduced the spread of the deadly disease. In 1991, 143,000 Thais became infected, while in 2003 that number was 19,000, according to the United Nations.

International Conglomerate

An economist by training, Mr. Mechai is a strong proponent — some might say zealot — of nonprofit groups creating businesses to market themselves and to raise money.

“Unless you have a business arm to earn income, your days as a viable charitable entity are numbered,” he says matter-of-factly. “Why not be a beggar and a businessman at the same time?”

In addition to Cabbages & Condoms, Mr. Mechai’s charity is supported by beach resorts, a construction company, and a real-estate development business. They are all part of Population and Community Development Companies, a corporate conglomerate Mr. Mechai helps operate.

Mr. Mechai began exploring commercial partnerships in the 1970s after experiencing the dangers of relying too much on the U.S. government and other donors.

“They hugged us and kissed us and gave us highways and Lord knows what. But as soon as the Vietnam War was over, they wouldn’t answer the telephones,” he says about American aid officials.

“I knew from there that foreign assistance was like an erection: It’s great while you have it, but it doesn’t last forever,” he quips.

Mr. Mechai encourages American nonprofit groups to explore commercial ventures, though he acknowledges that a Cabbages & Condoms-style restaurant is easier to open in a Buddhist nation like Thailand than in the United States, where contraceptives are more controversial.

“Buddhism says preventing birth is preventing suffering, therefore it’s perfectly all right to prevent a birth,” he explains.

Closer to home, the Population and Community Development Association has helped charities in Laos, Vietnam, and other South Asian nations emulate its model.

Need for Skilled Executives

But some nonprofit leaders here caution that Mr. Mechai’s approach, while successful, may not work for other groups, especially small charities and nongovernmental organizations that can’t hire the well-paid business executives that Mr. Mechai has.

“If NGO’s try to operate businesses themselves with no real professional business assistance, chances of success are limited,” Juree Vichit-Vadakan, director of Bangkok’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, writes in an e-mail message to The Chronicle.

“Mechai is one of the most creative and driven persons in the field of philanthropy and civil society,” she writes. But “I have witnessed many failed attempts by Thai NGO’s in the past to be self-reliant through various business initiatives.”

What’s more, other critics say that the Population and Community Development Association has greatly benefited from Mr. Mechai’s larger-than-life personality and his connection to the Thai government — he has served in the nation’s Legislature and as a deputy to the prime minister. Those are traits that other nonprofit leaders may not have.

Despite this criticism, Mr. Mechai is adamant that charities embrace for-profit operations. If they don’t, he says, they will resemble spoiled children.

“All life forms are somehow created — with or without sex — and are nurtured, educated, and trained so we can help ourselves in the long term,” he says. “Yet there are some NGO’s that believe they can survive and live and grow and do very well off the generosity of others forever.”

Groups that expect unconditional love from donors, he says, are “off on a trip to the moon.”