GAPE is currently seeking applications for the Program Manager position. Interested persons can find more information here.
Community Announcers Develop Broadcasting Skills
Assistant leader Keobounthanh Keopakasith explores methods of announcing with participants.
Community broadcasters from six villages came together in Pakse last week to hone their announcing skills. Freelance media consultant and writer Bounthanh Phongphichid lead the training, guiding participants to reflect on the importance of audio media and their role as communicators. During the training villagers developed skills related to presentation and production. Each village received a tape recorder in order to integrate pre-recorded segments, interviews, and music into broadcasts.
Training participants practice announcing over a PA system during a visit to a village in Paksong.
Although broadcasts present segments related to local cultural practices and incorporate musical interludes, the primary focus is on local news from surrounding villages. In particular, GAPE encourages announcers to investigate relevant land issues and use broadcasts as a tool to raise villagers’ awareness of their rights in relation to these. The thirteen workshop participants are now implementing their new skills over public address systems provided by GAPE.
GAPE Begins Nutrition Work with Local Communities
GAPE will soon be working with eight communities in Phathoumphone and Bachieng Districts to improve nutrition and understanding of the signs and dangers of malnutrition. The community-based work will be conducted in conjunction with an on-going training course for six GAPE and local Government staff organized by the World Food Program’s Feeding the Future initiative.Studies indicate that fully half of Lao children currently suffer from malnutrition, and this figure is higher among ethnic minorities and those living in mountainous areas. Furthermore, policies promoting the rapid expansion of a modernized and monetary economy–including concessions, cash cropping and relocations–are causing many rural Lao populations to lose access to and control over their traditional sources of food and livelihood.
Staff will work primarily with women of child-bearing age, and those who are pregnant or have young children. Focus will be on foods available locally from forests, gardens and markets, as well as on dietary diversity. In addition, the training will help ensure the nutritional quality of these foods is maintained from harvest through storage and preparation.
Concerns about P4R Financing
GAPE has joined with over 200 other organizations from 51 countries in expressing concern and alarm at the World Bank’s draft Operational Policy 9.00 Program for Results (P4R) Financing. The letter sent to the World Bank Executive Board states in part:
P4R is a new form of financing which could undercut decades of efforts to establish strong social and environmental standards and accountability mechanisms at the World Bank. Under the laudable rubric of providing governments with more flexible financing for health,education and other programs, P4R actually would allow the Bank to fund potentially harmful projects and activities that specifically would be exempt from complying with most World Bank safeguard policies, including those related to Indigenous Peoples, involuntary resettlement, natural habitats and dam safety, as well as other important policies, including those related to transparency, project supervision and monitoring.
Further information and comments can be found at www.p4rcomments.org
The Value of Forests, the Value of People: The Kmhmu and Shifting Cultivation
The Kmhmu are a group of people living primarily by shifting cultivation in the mountainous region of northern Laos. Their life is full of knowledge relating to natural resource management. This documentary film, produced by Mekong Watch, introduces Kmhmu people’s life and the actual situation surrounding the practice of shifting cultivation.
“Land of the Sky” Published
The book “Land of the Sky” (ດິນຂອງຟ້າ) has been published in Lao, is currently being distributed, and an English translation is underway. It contains twenty short stories written by secondary students in Paksong District, Champasak Province. The work was guided by Mr. Bounthanh Phongphichid.
Many of the stories address serious problems the students and their families are now facing. Land concessions, illegal logging, chemical-intensive agriculture and other factors are threatening both their environment and their livelihoods. Some of the stories highlight agents of change and positive role models who are looking for a better way of life for themselves and their communities. They are striving to improve their lives while standing on their own legs.
It is hoped this book will play an important role in raising awareness among urban and international populations on these critical land, environment and development problems. Journalists, other writers, lawyers, program planners and policy makers can learn from its content. The book can also be used as resource material in trainings and other educational activities.
Hydropower-Induced Displacement and Resettlement in the Lao PDR
The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) is one of the poorest countries in South East Asia. Yet it has great potential for hydropower development, and the Government of Laos plans to build a large number of hydroelectric dams on the tributaries of the Mekong. Among the areas where these dams are being built is the Bolaven Plateau, the country’s main coffee-producing region, inhabited by 22,000 smallholder households (15,000 of which pro- duce coffee), distributed in small villages of 40 to 300 households each. This paper describes the attitudes of the farmers displaced due to the construction of dams. Fieldwork was carried out in com- munities displaced by two dams: the Huay Ho, completed in 1997, and the Xe Katam, whose construction, at the time of the fieldwork in early 2009, was planned to start in the near future. By comparing these different communities, the authors look at the attitudes, expectations and perceptions of those faced with future relocation, as well as the difficulties and coping strategies of those relocated, 13 years after they were resettled.
Hydropower-Induced Displacement and Resettlement in the Lao PDR
Local Concerns about the Lower Sesan 2 Dam
Five villages from northeastern Cambodia participated to create videos to express their concerns about the proposed Lower Sesan 2 dam project. Each village chose filmmakers that received basic training on operating a video camera and using a microphone. These five videos were then edited together to make a composite “statement film” to represent a spectrum of feelings about the proposed dam. The five participating villages represent two different provinces (Stung Treng and Ratanakiri), and three different ethnic groups (Lao along with the Pnong and Brao indigenous peoples).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xVCjHXUyq4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbdYw3C8XcQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXMdaXkQlNY
Also related is the report: Best Practices in Compensation and Resettlement for Large-Dams: The Case of the planned Lower Sesan 2 Hydropower Project in Northeastern Cambodia, Ian G. Baird, The Rivers Coalition in Cambodia, 2009
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