EX-BANKER DEDICATES HIS LIFE TO HELPING AIDS ORPHANS

       If not for the sake of compassion and humanity, then look at it as a way of helping society. That was the message from a former banker who now devotes his life to young HIV/Aids victims in China.
       Speaking at a recent function in Bangkok, Chung To, the winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2007, talked about the need for communities to take action and care for these victims.
       "We really have to change and transform society," said Chung To, who is the director of the Chi Heng Foundation.
       "If we do not help them now, they will grow up uneducated and vulnerable, becoming a large force for social instability for decades to come," Chung said.
       Chung To urged the Thai government to work towards reducing the stigma surrounding children orphaned by HIV/Aids. One way to do this is by empowering local communities to take care of them, saving them from isolation. But his work is not limited to just HIV-positive children in China.
       Chung To was born in Hong Kong but migrated with his family to the United States when he was fifteen. He attended Columbia University, earned a master's degree at Harvard, and went into a career in banking.
       In 1995, success led him back to Hong Kong as a senior bank executive. By this time, he was already aware of the Aids crisis following the death of a favourite teacher and many friends.
       In Hong Kong he was alarmed to find the male homosexual community largely ignorant of the threat. Gay men accounted for a third of the city's HIV/Aids cases, yet unprotected sex was commonplace.
       In 1998, Chung To decided to set up the Chi Heng Foundation to give gay men the means of protecting themselves.
       Beginning in Hong Kong but later expanding into mainland China, he enlisted the help of pimps and brothel-owners and hundreds of volunteers to distribute condoms and safe-sex kits in gay bars and clubs.
       He set up a help line with frank, factual information about HIV/Aids and offered workshops and personal counselling, legal advice and links to doctors. He exploited the rising popularity of the Internet to reach millions of gay Chinese.
       By 2006, Chung To had established Foundation branches in 10 Chinese cities. The United Nations named his direct, management-savvy approach one of its "best practice" models for China.
       In 2001, an encounter with Aids victims in Henan province led him in a different direction. There, the Aids epidemic resulted not from sexual contact but the egregiously careless practices of blood buyers. Many peasants contracted HIV/Aids while selling blood to earn extra income.
       In some villages today, more than 40 per cent of adults have either died of Aids or are HIV-positive. Tens of thousands of orphans have been left behind. Most of these orphans do not have the HIV virus themselves.
       Citing the United Nations Children's Fund's (Unicef) records, he says there are half a million children in China today who have been orphaned by the disease, are HIV-positive, or are living in households with at least one HIV-positive parent. Their grim lives and futures stirred him to launch the Aids Orphans Project in 2002. He left his job at the bank to devote himself full-time to China's Aids crisis.
       He started a programme to help Aids-affected children by sponsoring their education and providing psycho-social support and vocational training.
       "I figured the world could do with one less banker, but these children, they cannot wait," he said.
       The Aids Orphans Project provides every child who has an Aids-infected parent with school fees and expenses through university or vocational school.
       To avoid reinforcing the Aids stigma and its social isolation, Chung To spurns orphanages and foster homes and insists that Aids-affected children attend normal village schools and live with relatives.
       The idea is to make every life as normal as possible, just like for other children. There have been incidents in Thailand where certain Aids hospices have exploited HIV-infected children and adults for personal gain.
       Chung To's foundation provides the children with self-affirming counselling through art and writing therapy, summer camps and home visits by the Foundation's volunteers.
       Starting with only 127 students in a single village, today over 4,000 children in five of China's provinces are benefiting from this work.
       "We help them to go back to school with children not affected by Aids," he added.
       Chung To was speaking at the Magsaysay Forum's Peer Learning Programme, the first event organised in Bangkok to praise the awardees' efforts and dedication, and to share publicly their achievements and success stories.