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L. Thaveetermsakul: Address to World Summit 2017
Written by Dr. Lek Thaveetermsakul, Vice Chair, UPF Asia
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Address to World Summit 2017, Seoul, Korea, February 1 to 5, 2017
It is my great honor and pleasure to address you on the critical challenges of our time, peace and human development, as well as the principles and practices for peace and human development.
With the time limit, please allow me to go directly to the main issues of my analysis and recommendations for practical solutions and actions that are necessary to bring about good and healthy human development, and prosperity and peace in society, nations and the world.
There are many critical challenges to peace and human development. Fundamentally, I believe they all come from the very root cause of the breakdown of marriage and family and problems of the young people, under the mainstream influences of the selfish individualistic and materialistic free sex culture in our modern global society.
The trends of increasing domestic violence, divorce rates, family breakdown, unwanted teenage pregnancies, abandonment of new born babies, and illegal abortions have become the critical challenges to good, healthy, loving human development and relationships, and consequently to peace and security in society and the nation.
Without a good, warm, loving, healthy and strong family foundation, there can be no model and foundation for good, healthy human development and loving human relationships, which can resolve human conflicts and nurture peace, security and prosperity in the society, nations and the world.
Family is the fundamental foundation and the beginning of love, life, lineage, human relationship, values, norms, traditions, culture, history and human civilization. Family is the basic sustainable unit that can grow, develop, multiply and expand into the society, nation and to the whole world. Family is the first and fundamental school of love and peace; it is where all people can grow and learn how to love and live together in harmony and peace.
It is where we can find and experience joy, happiness, freedom and peace, in the sphere of the four great realms of heart and love, consisting of the parental heart and love, conjugal heart and love, sibling’s heart and love and children’s heart and love.
Once the family is securely settled down, centered upon the absolute value and standard of true, genuine sacrificial love for the sake of others, it can become the model building block for the development of a peaceful, loving community, society, nation and global human family, transcending nationality, race, culture and religion.
Family starts with the bond of love in marriage between one man and one woman. The true, ideal model of family can only be built on the absolute value and standard of pure and genuine sacrificial love for the sake of others. That kind of value and standard can only be set up and bear fruits by upholding absolute sexual morality and ethics; that is, absolute sexual purity before marriage and absolute fidelity in marriage, as the prescription for overcoming the destructive influences of the selfish, individualistic free sex culture in our modern global society on the family and young people.
Therefore, my recommendation is that we urgently need new grassroots family education and revival movement, as well as pure love education and campaigns for young people in schools and colleges to save, protect and strengthen the family and young people from the challenges and influence of the selfish individualistic free sex culture. Once we lose the family and the young people, there will be no hope and no future for peace, security, development and the prosperity of our human society.
Understanding the critical challenges and urgent need for a solution, Rev. Sun Myung Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon have dedicated their entire life to teaching, practicing, setting up and launching the model of a true family movement—centering on the marriage rededication blessing ceremony and pure love movement for young people on the global level, and through the foundation of a global network of organizations that includes UPF, FFWPU, WFWP, YFWP and CARP to launch a worldwide grassroots education and revival movement for family and young people for the realization of one global peaceful family.
Before Rev. Moon passed away, as his last prayer and last wish and will, he urged all Ambassadors for Peace and families of the entire movement to follow the model that he has set up on a global level and continue to expand the grassroots family and young people education and revival movement in communities to strengthen society and build the model nation of universal peace and unity.
In Thailand we have applied his model in the community and have expanded it to the district level, provincial level and national level, centering on UPF, FFWPU and YFWP.
During the past three years, from 2013 to 2016, UPF and FFWPU Thailand launched the national family revival campaign called Thai Families Understand, Love and Unite Project, on the community and provincial levels in 77 provinces. It combines the education seminar and the Interfaith Peace Family Blessing Festival to establish a model of peaceful, loving families and communities.
We held seminars for provincial government officials with the support of governors in the Governor’s Provincial Meeting Halls, and also launched the education program and Family Blessing Festival for families on the community level to set up the model in the province. So far, we have held the campaign and activities in more than 50 provinces and have reached out to more than 100,000 people or more than 50,000 families. All the families who participated in the programs and activities were so happy, and many of them had life changing experiences in their family lives.
The programs and activities received overwhelming support from community leaders, government chief sub-district and district officers, local interfaith religious leaders, school principals and directors. Up to now, they felt hopeless and helpless about family problems. They did not know what to do and how to resolve the many family problems in their communities. Therefore, they were so happy and inspired by the activities, because they know that family issues are so important and that education and programs such as these are really needed.
Through continuous follow up on the education programs that empower the participating families to set up model family networks and model communities, we could evaluate the impacts and results of our project and campaign—we interviewed the families and received their feedback and testimonies. There was a lot of positive feedback; for example, dramatic, positive changes to loving care relationships between husbands and wives; domestic violence, drinking, and smoking stopping; more unity and cooperation in families and in communities. Also, communities gained inspiration, hope and confidence to strive forward to build model families and a model community, and to expand this to other families and neighboring communities.
When we started our family campaigns, so many parents, teachers and government officers were crying out to us to also help educate their young people in schools, because there are so many problems, especially teenage pregnancy, among them. They all felt that the current curriculum of condom-based sex education or safe sex education is going in the wrong direction; it only increases sexual activity and promiscuity among young teenagers, and therefore, has led to more problems than has prevented them.
Therefore, in 2015, UPF and YFWP Thailand proposed the National Pure Love education program and campaign to the Ministry of Education and for it to cohost it, and the Minister approved our proposal. In 2016, we started, with a one-day pilot education program and campaign for thousands of students from high schools and colleges in each of Thailand’s 12 provinces. We are going to hold seminars and activities in the schools as well as special seminars for school teachers to be able to conduct education in their own schools later on.
The teachers, school and college administrators, and the provincial government education administrators are so happy, so inspired and feel so much hope from the content of the education for the students. They really want to incorporate the Pure Love education programs and activities into their school systems.
In Surin province, the school teacher association started to take responsibility and ownership of the project with us by raising funds and finding lecturers to conduct the program in all the schools in the province. We already have many young students and leaders who are showing the examples and working directly with the students in the schools.
In conclusion, we can see that such a movement can bring about healthy and positive social and cultural impacts and changes among families and young people in communities and in schools. We can also see that such a movement is really important and necessary to protect and strengthen the family and help young people overcome the challenges of our time, especially influences from the selfish, individualistic free sex culture—and stand strong to rebuild a model family and model community for the sake of human development, peace and prosperity of the nation.
Not only in Thailand has such a movement multiplied and expanded; it has also expanded in many nations in the Asia region, including the Philippines, Nepal, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. I hope that such a movement can also develop and contribute to human development, peace and prosperity in your nations as well.
Thank you very much.
Dr. Lek Thaveetermsakul, Vice Chair, UPF Asia
Dr. Lek Thaveetermsakul is Regional Vice Chairman of UPF Asia and FFWPU Asia; he is also Secretary General of UPF Thailand Foundation. He received his medical doctor degree from Chulalongkorn Medical School and thereafter taught medicine in Thailand and volunteered his medical services in Viet Nam and Laos. As a pioneer for the Unification Movement, he worked to develop the Movement in Thailand and Southeast Asia. Dr. Lek has also served as Southeast Asia Regional Director of the International and Interreligious Federation for World Peace as well as Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
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