Speaking about the royal duties of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn on nutrition let me begin by sharing with you an interview by one of Her Royal Highness' friends I read 2-3 days ago in the newspaper. I must apologize for forgetting the name. Her Royal Highness remarked to the friend that among the many things she has done in life, only two things were for self-interest, that is, education and eating. But come to think about it, it's obvious that Her Royal Highness is not only thinking about personal interest or satisfaction when doing those two things. Her concern about eating also extends to her subjects, especially the part of the population troubled by the problems of malnutrition. Her efforts and projects to deal with this problem began long ago, perhaps even before documents on malnutrition had been published. For instance, the setting up of centers for young children dates back to 1984, or 19 years to date. Two to three years after that, projects on nutrition for babies up to small children, or 0-60 months old, were started. By the way, I have always wondered what a child of zero month looks like. Well, that's how the official documents tell it. So when the center was established, activities on nutrition were carried out in conjunction with its operation.

Today I wish to draw your attention to the characteristics of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn's working nature. Such a discussion may be quite impudent, but as a loyal subject and person working to fulfill her royal initiatives, I believe it would be interesting and fitting for Thai subjects to give attention and learn from the underlying principles of the projects; namely, the concept of thinking, the philosophy, and the methodology, which are applicable to their daily lives. It can be easily seen that Her Royal Highness starts projects or various activities in a manner similar to the public sector. At first Her Royal Highness tries to gather as much information as possible and carefully review the causes of the problem. However, the ensuing approaches which the public sector takes are slightly different from those of Her Royal Highness. As a former civil servant, I found out that in most cases, the public sector resorted to formulating plans and setting up projects when encountering any problems. The public sector would hastily proceed to solve the superficial causes of the problem rather than the root causes. This type of problem solving which focuses on the superficial causes instead of the root causes, has occurred repeatedly throughout the history of the country's administration, and during the procedures, loopholes were always found. Her Royal Highness' work approach, after having determined the problems, is to proceed step by step. Her Royal Highness reviewed the problem of child malnutrition, especially children living in rural areas, by determining the roots and facets of the problem.

The problem of child malnutrition did not come from the children. It occurred from other factors that are directly related to the children's lives, specifically, the father and mother and the surrounding environment. Tradition and culture are also indicators of the roots of the problem. For the past 20-30 years now, Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn has begun projects by developing a knowledge base. Man's endeavor has to begin with knowledge. His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej stated three key words, "learn", "love", and "unite". His Majesty begins with the word "learn" because without first "learning", we will lose our directions to proceed with other ensuing activities. It is a must to learn, to know, and to gather knowledge in order to undertake any management tasks.

Closely following up and observing the School Lunch Projects at different schools

Thai officials checking the quality of the food from seeing the menus prepared by the Orphanage Culture School (Km. 67 Center), Laos PDR

A clear case of the importance of knowledge occurred 4-5 years ago when Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn set up an exhibition and gave a lecture at the Kew Gardens in England. Her Royal Highness brought odd food dishes to display at the exhibition, including silkworms and Nepesthes flowers, which were used to keep steamed sticky rice. Local guests were invited to the exhibition and to them, Thai dishes were regarded as exotic food. There happened to be a plate filled with deep-fried silkworms cooked in different seasoning flavors. On that day, I also had a part in helping to arrange the exhibition. Although westerners may be smart in many things, when it comes to exotic food I think they still have a lot to learn. It occurred to me that before developing into silkworms, everyone should know of the origin or where they come from. By chance there were cocoons neatly placed in a bag. With good intentions I carefully picked up the bag, without taking out the cocoons, and placed it above the plate. My intention was to let the guests know that the cocoon is the origin of the silkworms before they are placed on the plate and put in our stomach. Besides myself, there was somebody else who had an even better intention. After walking around for a while, I turned around and saw that the cocoons had been taken out of the bag and placed on the plate beside the silkworms. Here some of you may close your eyes and imagine what happened after that. The victim was one of the Directors of the Kew Gardens, and I have forgotten the name again. I glanced over to the plate with great apprehension, but thinking positively that he would not put the cocoon in his mouth. Was I ever wrong! He walked past the plate and grabbed the cocoon. Who could resist the luminous gold color! Just imagine if it was food, it would have a perfect combination of looks, taste, and coloring. I could have tried, but, it was too late. He had already put the cocoon in his mouth and there was nothing I could do about the situation. I gathered it must have been like chewing gum and that no harm was done to his health, but just only expanded in his stomach. He probably didn't feel hungry at dinnertime and perhaps experienced some minor discomfort at breakfast time. I thought that he had already caught on. But what do you know, 2-3 minutes later, he returned to the plate and put another cocoon in his mouth. That triggered my curiosity and desire to try the cocoon. I never ate one before and he made it look very tempting to taste the golden-looking object. On that day, he came back to the plate three times. Her Royal Highness was highly concerned and told us to check whether he was alright the next morning. This case confirms the fact that a basis of knowledge is very important. If there's a lack of basic knowledge and a wrong interpretation of what we see, we will not have a correct understanding of what we are dealing with. I consider learning to be very important; everything has to begin with knowledge.

Bringing us back to the royal projects on children and nutrition, it's clearly seen that Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn starts each project with persons responsible for taking care of the children. It has to start with the parents - father and mother - by educating them about the problems of malnutrition. To the people living in the rural areas, anything they can put in their mouths is considered food. They are not aware of the contents of the food like vitamins and nutritional values. Due to a lack of time to inquire about such things, these people don't even know the five basic categories of food. To them, food is food. It is then necessary to start by providing them with knowledge. Next Her Royal Highness would focus on making use of the surrounding environment for the benefit of the projects, including the case of the school lunch project. On the other hand, the public sector is accustomed to bringing outside materials or resources into the problem area and to the target group of people. At the beginning of the project, Her Royal Highness would attempt to encourage the staff to acquire knowledge and try to adapt the existing surroundings, as well as available materials within the school or that particular area, to be beneficial to the project. I believe this approach is regarded as a path to sustainability because one already possesses knowledge and knows how to make use of available materials as well as to start the work properly.

I remember the story Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn graciously shared with us that despite families which raise chickens and grow plants as well as fruit trees around their houses, their children still suffer from malnutrition. Apparently, these children grew up in an environment with a culture that is different from ours. It is a culture in which men do not work and women go to work instead. It's their culture's way; nobody's to blame. By the time the mother has finished slitting and collecting the sap, it's already ten o'clock and the children are crying. So it's after ten o'clock before the children have a chance to eat, which means that they have missed breakfast. Sometimes we look at the problem superficially. Children lack food so we bring them food. But in actual practice, that's not the way things work. There has to be a systematic and ongoing process.

I wish to give an example of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn's working method which I have observed and read from the documents. After learning about the problems and then beginning to solve them, Her Royal Highness sets up a process of clear and definite monitoring systems, to be followed by a complete and periodic evaluation of the results. With such a method, every one hundred children will have the babysitter or caretaker to monitor their growth. I am well aware of this situation because when I was the Secretary-General of the Royal Development Projects Board, I had authorized the purchase of a motorcycle to replace the old royally-granted one. The staff would have their own visiting schedules and observation charts, as well as measuring cards to record the children's periodic weighing. This means that there's a process of close monitoring and evaluation, which leads to modification and improvement of the plan. It is a very interesting working cycle and agencies in the public sector admit that there are no existing projects with such detailed monitoring; that is, on a daily and individual basis. It is an outstanding feature, which I believe the public sector has not yet embarked on. When I was serving as Chairman for scrutinizing the work of the Ministry of Education, I discovered that management for the school lunch projects was very ineffective. I do not mean to hurt anyone's feelings by using the word failure, but after inspection, it was shown that the goals, procedures, methodologies, and operations were not as effective when compared to the amount of money invested. But following Her Royal Highness' approach, every single baht invested in the project reached its goals under an environment which has been efficiently adapted. For instance under the school lunch project, it was not necessary to procure any assets to start the project because they were available onsite. Every school had plenty of land area; the question was how to adapt it to facilitate the production of raw materials for preparing the food. Moreover, the projects did not only teach how to make use of the land, they provided demonstrations on how to prepare the food too. Overall, the project provided a comprehensive lesson. Her Royal Highness also graciously demonstrated some cooking like stir fry dishes and somtam (Thai spicy papaya salad). The project taught people about management. Sometimes raw materials were collected in great amount but people lacked the knowledge on the methods to prepare them properly to provide optimum benefits.

Plots growing vegetables to prepare lunches for the students

Therefore under various royal duties, Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn illustrates proper management methods, which have to be followed by detailed monitoring and evaluation, before finally leading to any modification and improvement. In some cases, it is reported that although supplemental food and powdered milk have been delivered to the children, they still suffered from malnutrition. This is because the children never got a chance to eat them, but their parents and the rest of the family did. Adults ate all the children's food and the matter about their weight was insignificant. This situation is also recorded in the papers.

Another important factor is continuous improvement. Once a child is registered under the nutrition control program, each will have his own card. Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn also visited the children and checked on their weight increase personally. Internationally, the school lunch project has extended across the border to Laos PDR. This project is currently implemented at the Orphanage Culture School (Km. 67) which Laos officials are now capable of running on their own. However, we might have a little difficulty in understanding the report presented by the Laos officials. They categorized the children into two groups: dek joi and dek pee. Dek pee means fat children and dek joi means skinny children. Unlike our reference in age groups, Laos use the term fat and skinny children as units of measurement. Besides physical description grouping, the report is also prepared by measuring the children's weight, a method that is controlled by a regular monitoring system. Concerning nutrition, Her Royal Highness also works jointly with other foreign countries, the UN or certain universities.

Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn states that nutrition is a very important matter. It is important at a national level because it is the origin of the country's powerful strength. If the population's health is poor or if the brain is damaged, especially at a young age, this will undoubtedly have an affect when they grow up. Resultantly our population will have poor mentality. Therefore Her Royal Highness' approach is considered a solution which deals with the problem at the start of life. Several people regard Her Royal Highness' project to start from pregnancy to the cremation because the monitoring system applies to the people at every stage of life. There is even a project of tuamtiem raising tohtae, that is, tuamtiem means elderly people and tohtae means toddlers. In other words, the project uses all the resources available around us, be it natural or human resources, to gain maximum benefits. This is the highlight of the projects royally-initiated by Her Royal Highness.

If the public sector responsible for this matter adapts its work process, it will be very beneficial and our children will certainly be protected from the state of malnutrition. I wish to stress that matters of knowledge, adaptation of nature, and assorted demonstrations, are essential factors leading to the cycle of learning. I believe this is the heart of running the operation for this type of project. Projects which extend to the community require participation. If we cannot encourage people to participate in the program, then projects of this nature will have difficulty in becoming successful. So upon embarking on nutrition projects, the starting point is the parents. If they want their children to have proper health, a cheerful nature, and strong bodies, then the father and mother have to assume responsibility. But we have to accept that such cooperation may work only in some rural areas. Traditional ways of life, when the housewives used to have plenty of time, has changed. Now parents barely have the time to take care of the children. So instead of providing knowledge to the parents who have no time, it may be more beneficial to extend it to the elderly people as Her Royal Highness stated. This is because in these days the raising of children often rests with the grandparents, so knowledge has to catch up and reach the right persons.

The problems of nutrition are not only about food and humans. They also involve culture and tradition, environment, and ways of managing the problems, all combined to create a complex situation. Therefore I believe that to solve the problem of a lack of food by purchasing food for the people is not a realistic solution. It entails some cultural changes, especially the recognition of the importance of having knowledge. Even for myself with a doctorate degree, I still have inadequate knowledge on nutrition. I eat medium rare steaks and resultantly, I gain more cholesterol and unnecessary fat, as well as ensuing illnesses. I have learned from doctors that 57-60 % of the illness is not caused by bacteria, but instead by our behavior. Behavior is developed based on knowledge. So children are not the only issue, it has to be both the children and adults. It is harmful if we lack knowledge about what's good and bad, and toxic and dangerous. If something exceeds a balance and basic needs, then it's unproductive. So when it's excessive and toxic, then it's harmful to our health. Simultaneously, if there is inadequacy then it is also damaging. Therefore, a state of equilibrium is the factor to success.