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Reclaiming Respect

Mookda Intrasan was born to a well-to-do family in northern Thailand in 1959. At her high school not too far from home, classmates taunted her for coming from a district whose chief "export" was prostitutes. She resolved to restore respect to the women of her native Dok Kham Tai district.

She began by majoring in social studies and became a secondary school teacher in 1982, also acting as the school counselor and working on several local development projects. She married Sangvorn Intrasan, a teacher who shared her notions about respect. Together in Dok Kham Tai, they undertook a series of community modernization and development initiatives. By 1989, one of these had become the Home for Quality of Life Development. It involved taking poor children into their household, largely girls from the Yai tribe whose poverty might otherwise have sent them into prostitution.

Assisted by NGOs and individual donors, Mookda obtained scholarships for these girls and other local students, "adopting" nearly 100 with her husband over the last ten years and watching many become village leaders.

Mookda also helped villagers form groups that used local materials to make mulberry paper, decorative flowers and other products for sale. She encouraged the planting of bamboo shoots. Local agricultural earnings had been depressed by middlemen for generations. Mookda set out to reduce their power by assisting villagers to establish a "rice bank." As households took an increasing share of farm prices, she helped found a village bank for the investment of the income. Well aware of the benefits of pooling experience, the Intrasans promoted the linking of 35 villages throughout Dok Kham Tai in a grassroots network.

In 1993, Readers Digest named Mookda a "Hero for Today." A year later, the Thai-Rat Foundation and the Village Foundation awarded her the title of Khon Dee Sri Sangkhom (Good Person of Society). More important, she reviews development proposals for the Thai Social Investment Fund for the province of Phayao and represents her region in the drafting of the country's forthcoming Economic and Social Development Plan. Through her involvement in UNDP capacity-building activities, she also works to develop sustainable livelihoods throughout the province to combat the poverty that destroys the spirit as well as the body. For Mookda, it is fundamentally a matter of rebuilding respect.