Rapid urbanization throughout much of Asia threatens the individual caught up in this process with psychic shock. Torn from the traditional security of a family-centered rural way of life, he is compelled to make his way in a strange, new, uneasy and demanding environment. The human cost is apparent in the growing number both of mental cases and juvenile delinquents. 

As Dr. PHON SANGSINGKEO has observed, “Societies have a threshold of tolerance for rate of change which, if exceeded, must lead to some measure of social disorganization.” He had made it his professional life concern to ameliorate the human price of this transformation.

Care of the mentally ill has progressed greatly since the late 19th century when in Thailand, as often elsewhere, treatment consisted of placing the afflicted in chains or locking them in small barred rooms, and administering holy water and decoctions of snuff. Today, Thailand has eight major mental institutions providing hospitalization, neurological treatment and enlightened care for mentally retarded individuals. Mental health clinics attend to outpatients and provide child guidance, aided by psychiatric units in general hospitals and mobile psychiatric units. In pleasantly designed mental hospitals named after flowers, therapy includes participation in farming, furniture making and other crafts. Although there still is scope for improved curative treatment, including acceptance of psychiatry as a vital field of medicine, emphasis now is upon prevention and mental health education. 

Since he first trained to become a doctor in Thailand, except for tours of graduate study in psychiatry in the United States and Europe, Dr. PHON, now 59, has devoted his talents to government service. Beginning as a local community health doctor at Sakolnakorn in northeastern Thailand in 1930, he moved on to direct the Mental Hospital in Thonburi and become chief of the Mental Hospital Division in the Ministry of Public Health. Recognition abroad led to his election as president of the World Federation of Mental Health in 1961. The following year he was named Director-General of the Department of Medical Services and in 1964 became Undersecretary of State for Public Health. 

Associates and friends affectionately remark that Dr. PHON has been “cool” like “rain” the meaning of his name in his approach to the mentally ill. In shaping development of his country’s mental health services and encouraging the men and women who staff them, he has combined traditional cultural practices and values with modern techniques. The institutions and methods of care for the mentally afflicted and the preventive education established under his vision and guidance are helping his people make the transition toward modernization with minimal human cost. 

In electing PHON SANGSINGKEO to receive the 1966 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his farsighted design in creating and staffing superior mental health services for his country.

In accepting the 1966 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, I wish to express my deep gratitude to the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for having bestowed on me this great honor. It is indeed the highest reward I have received in my life and it makes me feel inexpressibly delighted that the fundamental importance of mental health, to which interest my life has been devoted, should be recognized by this noble Award. I will be extremely happy if I may be permitted to say a few words to express my deep appreciation. 

As a medical doctor, I always think that body and mind are one and indivisible. These two elements, combining together, form the person. When I give medical treatment to a patient, I do not think merely in terms of curing a disease but I direct my efforts at treating the person as a person. So we must in our studies explore ways and means to reach a better understanding of the interaction of culture, customs and social environment on human beings. Sociology and other related subjects should be compulsorily taught in the medical schools in order that students will gain clearer appreciation of the importance of the dictum: Treat the person as a person. 

It is impossible to gain understanding of the person without studying his social structure. In any society, the family is regarded as the primary unit of that society. Therefore mental health of the community must be promoted through this same family unit. When the family attains happiness and peace then it is much more likely that the community, the nation and the world will also achieve those ends. The rapid advances in technology are frequently in conflict with local culture and give rise to some of the mental health problems today. But these problems and adjustments cannot be avoided and must be faced. If, however, one seeks to understand the nature of the changes and tries to adjust oneself to them without losing the finest features of the existing culture, the inevitable problems will be less disrupting to mental health. 

Needless to say, the Ramon Magsaysay Award given to me this year is a good expression of its objective, which is to promote happiness and peace the world over. It is my firm belief that this Award is stimulating the people in various ways to appreciate the fields of endeavor which contribute to world peace and contentment.

Among architects of modern India few have been so broadly effective as KAMALADEVI CHATTOPADHYAY in challenging orthodoxy and then giving substance to the innovation. She has shown that women from a traditional society, while winning equality of acceptance in community affairs can also build needed new social institutions, graced with their more delicate touch. 

In an era when great traditional crafts and artistry often are submerged by mass production of standardized products, KAMALADEVI has led in mobilizing for new generations these ancient skills. In her view, “development of any country’s handicrafts rests primarily on the women.” 

While “modern taste is restless and prepared to renew and replace articles more easily and quickly,” she has written, handicrafts “speak of an age when dignity lay in silence and beauty in subtlety.” In them “one instinctively senses the unity of all arts.” To her they are “the ensemble of flowers, fruits, birds and animals, leaves and creepers, gods and human beings.” The vehicle for translating this concept into reality became the Indian Cooperative Union, which she founded in 1948, initially to assist refugees uprooted by Partition who were demoralized and often destitute. The first cooperative, a farm, was formed at Chattarpur, some 12 miles from Delhi. The Union joined in building the new city of Faridabad to rehabilitate 30,000 refugee Pathans from the Northwest Frontier, providing tools, loans and directions in a new way of living. 

With rehabilitation largely accomplished, the Union over which she presides turned to establishing consumer and handloom cooperatives which multiplied with remarkable success. The Central Cottage Industries Emporium in New Delhi developed as a marketing outlet for some 700 cooperatives, private dealers and individual producers. Through it, designs were introduced, buyers attracted, and products achieved Indian and international sale. Commercial success led to creation of credit cooperatives and other services always buttressed by education to meet family needs of both rural folk and urban craftsmen. 

The woman who guided this enterprise was born in 1903 at Mangalore, India, into the family of a District Collector. After receiving a diploma in sociology from London University, she was among the first educated women in India to appear on the public stage, popularizing the theater arts. As an organizer of the 1930 Civil Disobedience Movement, she was arrested and jailed for five years. An accomplished writer, her interests have ranged far beyond her homeland to participation in international conferences. 

While many nationalist leaders have been content to coast with old causes and slogans, KAMALADEVI has had the perception and courage to discover and develop solutions to contemporary needs of her society. Thus she has helped realize the hopes of her countrymen that independence would be more than political, allowing them that added dimension of greater freedom in total life concerns. 

In electing KAMALADEVI CHATTOPADHYAY to receive the 1966 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes her enduring creativity with handicrafts and cooperatives, as in politics, art and the theater.

I feel very deeply honored by the distinction conferred on me by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. I am fully aware that it is indeed a rare privilege to be selected for this Award. In fact, when I was first told of it by a pressman, I exclaimed quite involuntarily that it could not possibly be, it must be some mistake, for it is given only to “great people.”

I am, however, glad for one reason, that the quiet, unobtrusive type of community service that fails normally to attract public attention does get recognition sometimes. I do not claim it in a personal sense. I am only too conscious that it is the job which is accomplished that calls for attention, not the individual who is but an instrument employed in the achievement. 

In my opinion leadership is a burden It makes one only too community of one’s limitations and smallness. In the context of community service, it may even be somewhat of a handicap and create a barrier, a false image of a personality away from the crowd. My own conviction is that really to serve one should put oneself last among our fellow beings. What fortifies and ensures long and effective service is the capacity to win and sustain love and confidence and the ability to penetrate into the remotest crevices of the minds of those we work with. What one has to hunt for is not prestige but conquest of human hearts. Projects are nurtured into growth not through personal projections but tender affection. I consider myself but a weak aspirant, ever failing, ever trying, my failures making me ever more vigilant, my trials but intensifying my faith. Service is an obligation, not a reward, for one owes it to others to share with them what one may have and they have not or to unfold one’s own talents and gifts in communion with others, which otherwise would merely languish and perish. In Indian tradition this is defined as self realization because one can really find oneself only by serving one’s fellow-beings. 

I cannot close this address without acknowledging my deep debt of gratitude to my great leader Gandhiji, under whose inspiration and guidance it was my rare good fortune to work. “I hate privilege and monopoly” he said. “Whatever cannot be shared with the masses is taboo to me. . . .I cannot imagine anything nobler than to identify ourselves with the masses and through them all mankind. I cannot imagine a better worship of God than that in His name I should labor for the poor even as they labor.” 

Today, we are finding ourselves increasingly in the predicament of having to adjust ourselves to the rising velocity of a rocket spinning nuclear age. We seem at times to be almost overcome by a sense of defeat, a moral coarsening and a sense of being lost. Old usages and pointers fail us when old social patterns crack up and call for new values and guidelines that are related to this complex world of the present. A new creative flame needs to be lit even as Gandhiji and other seers did whenever twilight descended on this world. A new ark has to be built to save the spiritual heritage of man from the menacing flood of moral crisis threatening mankind. I will quote what Gandhiji had to offer to mankind at this zero hour: “Having flung aside the sword there is nothing but the cup of love I can offer. It is by offering that cup that I expect to draw them (fellow-beings) closer to me. I cannot think of permanent enmity between man and man. Love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet is the humblest.”

Mobilizing Asia’s resources to meet man’s growing needs is often crippled by narrow sectional and traditional loyalties. Such shortsighted insistence upon more immediate and personal advantage frustrates rational solutions to many common problems.

Since it was established nine years ago, the MEKONG COMMITTEE has shown what can be achieved for farmers, fishermen and new industry by international cooperative effort in one of the world’s most troubled regions. Created in response to a recommendation of the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, this COMMITTEE joins Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam in common utilization of the immense potential of the Mekong River. Technical and financial assistance has come from 21 countries outside the basin, 12 United Nations agencies, three foundations and a number of private business organizations. To date, equipment, technical services, grants and loans totaling some US$105 million have been marshaled—about one-third pledged by the four riparian countries.

The hitherto untamed Mekong—one of the world’s 10 1argest rivers—rises among the snows high on the Tibetan Plateau and has carved a twisting course, often through rugged mountains, some 4,600 kilometers to the South China Sea. The Lower Mekong Basin, which is the focus of this effort, extends for some 2,500 kilometers from the forests of the Burma border, through Laos, along the dry northeastern frontier of Thailand, through jungles and deltas of Cambodia and Vietnam. It drains an area nearly twice the size of Japan that is inhabited by some 20 million persons.

Extensive studies by teams of scientists and engineers from the riparian and cooperating nations have now produced an overall Basin Plan with both mainstream and tributary projects. These multi-purpose projects will provide irrigation, power, vastly improved navigation, expanded fisheries, control of seasonal floods and many other benefits. Navigation improvements now permit night sailing upriver to Phnom Penh. In November 1965 the King of Thailand inaugurated at Nam Pung one of the two electric power and irrigation projects already completed. Construction is underway on four other tributary projects and one tug and barge building program.

Among projects for the mainstream of the Mekong, three have a “one” priority. At Pa Mong, just above Vientiane, a massive dam between Thailand and Laos will create a reservoir more than 200 miles long, have an installed generating capacity of over one million kilowatts and irrigate roughly one million hectares, or two and one-half million acres. Sambor, in Cambodia, will be the site of a second major power and irrigation dam. A barrage across the Tonle Sap waterway in Cambodia, that each year alternately admits Mekong water to the Great Lake and then drains it, will amplify fisheries and irrigation and hold back silt from delta lands in Vietnam while deepening water in the shipping channel to the sea.

When the Lower Mekong Basin program for the period 1965 to 1975 is completed at an estimated cost of more than three billion dollars, the largest single natural resource of southeast Asia will be substantially under productive control. The fact that, despite turmoil, war and other differences in the region, so much headway has been made represents a triumph of reason and consideration of mutual well-being.

In electing the COMMITTEE FOR COORDINATION OF INVESTIGATIONS OF THE LOWER MEKONG BASIN and COOPERATING ENTITIES to receive the 1966 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes purposeful progress toward harnessing one of Asia’s greatest river systems, setting aside divisive national interests in deference to regional opportunities.

On behalf of the MEKONG COMMITTEEthat is to say on behalf of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and the Republic of Vietnam and on behalf of the United Nations and the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, whose Executive Secretary is with us this afternoon, I should like to express profound thanks to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for the great honor you are conferring upon us. We are especially pleased by your mention of the entities cooperating with us: notably ECAFE, and also 11 other members of the UN family; 21 countries from outside the basin, three foundations, and a number of private business organizations. Our Mekong project has two origins. On the one hand is the vast Mekong River itself: tenth largest river in the world, 4,600 kilometers long, draining in its lower basin an area larger than all France and twice as large as Japan, inhabited in our four countries by 20 million people, and pouring annually more than 400 million acre-feet of water into the South China Sea. On the other hand is the appreciation, slowly dawning upon our four countries, of the tremendous underutilization of this great resource. Our objective in the MEKONG COMMITTEE is to bring this great resource into use. In doing so, our four-member MEKONG COMMITTEE one member from each of our four countries follows one basic rule: we work for all the people of the basin with absolutely no distinction as to nationality, creed, or politics. On the mainstream of the Mekong we are pushing the planning of three major projects which will be among the largest in the world. We hope and believe that these three mainstream projects, or at least two of them, will be at the finance and construction stage by or before the end of the present decade the United Nations Development Decade. The COMMITTEE also has projects scheduled for the 34 principal Mekong tributaries. Here the COMMITTEE’s work has gone beyond planning to construction. On 14 November 1965 His Majesty the King of Thailand officially opened the first of the MEKONG COMMTTEE’s tributary projects to be brought physically into being: the Nam Pung in the parched northeast of Thailand. This was followed on 14 March 1966 by a similar ceremony at which His Majesty opened the much larger Nam Pong Project, also in northeast Thailand. Two modest but welcome hydroelectric projects are advancing in Laos, near Pakse and Luang Prabang. In 1965 the COMMITTEE and its friends concentrated fundraising activities in the US$24 million Nam Ngum tributary project in Laos. These efforts culminated in success; Nam Ngum in Laos and Nam Pong in Thailand are to be interconnected, pursuant to a covenant signed by the four MEKONG COMMITTEE members and the United Nations, and work is now proceeding whereby power generated at Nam Pong in Thailand will be in use across the Mekong in Vientiane, Laos, by mid-1967. The stage is also set for construction of the Prek Thnot tributary project in Cambodia. Some work has already begun and the MEKONG COMMITTEE, assisted by the Secretary General of the United Nations and the Executive Secretary of ECAFE, is now exerting every effort to arrange financing for this project pursuant to an ECAFE resolution endorsing the MEKONG COMMITTEE decision to consider 1966 as “Cambodia Year.” No less determination is invested by the COMMITTEE in its efforts to improve navigation in the maritime lower reach of the river, in the canal network of the delta, and in the Lao and Thai reaches of the river upstream of the Khone Falls. We are also pressing forward with a large number of ancillary projects, including a network of experimental and demonstration farms, forestry and fisheries development, power market projections, mineral surveys, industrial planning, and social development and public health projects. Training is a vital part of our activity. Forty-one percent of the COMMITTEE’S professional staff are drawn from the four riparian countries; these staff members are contributing greatly to the COMMITTEE’S progress, and at the same time are growing with the COMMITTEE. In addition, the COMMITTEE sponsors an extensive program of seminars, study tours, and fellowships, and obtains considerable quantities of textbooks and technical studies for use throughout the basin. Much money is needed for all this work. We are happy indeed to have received some US$110,000,000 in pledges to date. And we are proud that nearly one-third of this is coming from our four Mekong governments themselves. President Marcos, Senator Manahan, and members of the Board of Trustees, may I say in conclusion that your decision to present to us the Ramon Magsaysay 1966 Award for International Understanding marks an important milestone in our work. For the first time in our history an eminent body from outside our basin, a body with which we have had no previous contact, has paid tribute to what we are trying to accomplish. Through this major and splendid Award, you give each of us deep inspiration, which will be a source of assurance and strength in all that lies ahead. You have touched the Mekong Spirit with something of the spirit of Ramon Magsaysay. My friends, allow me to record our deep appreciation.

“Whangsan,” or “Wasted Hill,” was the local name for the inhospitable three and one-half hectare plot outside Seoul that KIM YONG-KI and his family chose as their challenge 11 years ago. There, with “one hand on the bible and a hoe in the other,” KIM provided for his family and built a productive farm and school for farmers. Today the transformed hill is respectfully called “Canaan.”

For the war-scarred ancient land of Korea and some three-fourths of its citizens who are farmers, he has shown that the most basic and enlightened of skills applied with work and love for the soil bring consequential material returns. Reaching far beyond agriculture, he has demonstrated the value of erecting simple houses of improved design, adopting a cheaper and more healthful diet, wearing more practical clothes and shunning wasteful, customary social demands. Within this context he has tested his ideas, established a nondenominational Christian Church and written his book, The Way To a True Living. 

KIM and his family are the core faculty of the Canaan Farmer’s School, working from four in the morning until 10 in the evening. Specialists from outside are invited as visiting lecturers. In this unique work-study institution 1,893 men and women have been trained over the past four years. They have learned to raise field crops, vegetables, fruit trees, strawberries, bees, rabbits, goats, cattle and much else. More notable have been the feeling of pride in working the soil and producing food, and the sense of nearness to God and nature that this allows; these they have carried with them to other villages. 

The dream of rejuvenating Korean rural life that led KIM to Canaan began in his youth. He was born in 1912 in Yangjoo County, Kyunggi Province, into a family of farmers. Formative influences were his study of the Confucian classics and a deep commitment to Christianity. In his twenties he built a model village in Bongan and became perhaps the best sweet potato farmer in Korea. This effort he left to a friend to manage and, in 1945, founded a new community on waste land in Koyang County, complete with a school and church. In 1950 KIM moved to Yongin County where he led in creation of the Farmer’s Evangelical Folk High School. After five years he could leave this institution to the management of associates and move on to found the Canaan farm and school. 

Guided by an idea and faith, KIM has shown that rural material circumstances in Asia, even when meager, can, with sustained work, be shaped for the better. In his scheme, the spiritual awakening of farmers, so that song becomes an intimate and natural expression of their zest, is crucial. 

In electing KIM YONG-KI to receive the 1966 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his example of Christian principles practically applied to improve agriculture and imbue rural life with new joy and dignity.

I wish to express my deep gratitude for the honor given to me to be present at this meaningful ceremony today. And I have to thank God who enabled me to have this honor. 

Since God created the world, He has been working continuously to utilize all creatures, to control them in their natural order, so that they might have a good society. First, He created Adam and Eve and blessed them to be upright before Him and bear children and prosper. He put them in the Garden of Eden giving them their own work to do on the earth and made them a good family. Ever since that time, numberless people have come on earth and have gone to the eternal world according to the plan of God. Only a few could live over a hundred years. But during their short lifetime, many disobeyed the will of God and lived in sin. Such people provoked the anger of God. They only inflicted harm on the people and brought bad luck to their own nation. Finally they brought unhappiness on themselves. They made a history to be ashamed of by man and God. They lived a demoralized life out of crooked conscience. In time, they died and went to the unknown world leaving harm to the people after them. 

On the other hand, ever since history began there have been some people who shine like morning stars in the dark world. They have been the suns to the people who have lived in despair. They could give hope, light and joy to the aimless people. They could glorify God, the Creator. They could go to the true eternal world after their death. Certainly there have been such noble characters among us. 

As we all know, the late President Magsaysay was born in 1907 in the Philippines, not a big country, which belongs to Asia. He gave new strength and new hope to the Filipinos when they were living in deep agony. He laid the firm ground of a happy nation. The world still admires his courage, wisdom and devotion. He could set an example to the world by starting a brilliant history. But alas! He was taken from us and has gone to the eternal kingdom by the calling of the Creator. But I have no doubt that his unselfish love for his nation will never fade without bearing good fruit in the course of time. 

Korea belongs to the same East as the Philippines. We have a long history, beautiful land, agreeable weather, and good people. Unfortunately, for some time we were oppressed by the unrighteous neighbor country, and we have not had much chance to establish a prosperous country. We all regret some of our past historical facts. However, through the grace of God we were delivered from the hands of the enemy, and now we are making some progress though our pace is tedious. I am deeply impressed by this occasion to be awarded this prize in this kind of historical situation. I realize its significance. 

I was born in a good Christian family. I have tried my best to imitate the best lives of my forefathers in religion, life and patriotism. I found my mission in farming, and I can say without scruple that I worked for the progress of the welfare of farmers which would promote the welfare of the whole nation. But comparing my insignificant life to the famed prize I am getting I am ashamed of myself. 

This prize is much valued in the world. Realizing that such a prize was awarded to a man like me I begin to feel that we are now overpassing the boundaries of nationalism. We are in one mind and in one purpose to realize a bright society in a corner of the world. We are in a great movement to liberate the people from the slavery of horror and disorder and lead them to a peaceful world. We are needed to be the salt and light of the earth for such a noble enterprise. This should be the way to glorify God, the Creator. I am reconfirming my resolution to follow the way already shown by our forefathers and devote my life to this purpose, though it be of small account. 

In closing, I want to thank the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, the Philippine people and all of the friends of my country who helped me to have this honor today.