Project

Youth as Agents of Democratic Change through Knowledge and Information Acquisition and Exchange in Laos

Grantee: Participatory Development Training Center

The project enhanced the technical capacity of youth group leaders to introduce rights-based development knowledge. It also supported leadership development, and therefore was a relevant effort to involve youth in democratic and participatory processes regarding the management and use of natural resources. In addition, trained teachers of 17 primary schools from 6 provinces developed locally relevant curricula introducing indigenous knowledge. Given the political and administrative realities, the identification of bio-diversity issues and general development challenges, rather than direct democracy issues, represented smart approaches to support participation in environmental policy formulation by youth.

The youth’s field-work identified about 30 different bio-diversity themes and general development challenges, and subsequently suggestions were made related to farming practices, but also to the need to preserve local culture and traditions. In view of the appreciation expressed by central and provincial representatives, evaluators are of the view that the project effectively contributed to improved consideration of local and biodiversity knowledge in local community development processes.

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Lessons from Project

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The grantee (a) imposed on itself very ambitious target indicators, and (b) confused monitoring data, all of which made analysis and reporting of project outcomes less pertinent.

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There is an over-reliance among project beneficiaries on external funding due to a lack of foresight by donor and implementing partner which results in an expectation that the costs for material needs of both the youth and teachers involved in environmental and other locally relevant action research will be paid for by others.
Therefore the grantee needs to involve the Ministry in developing a strategy providing an appropriate response to the participating schools’ basic material needs. Indicatively, such strategy could foresee shared financing by the Ministry (e.g. for pencils, pens, paper) and by the participating schools. The latter could consider selling the products generated during indigenous knowledge education sessions, thus creating revolving funds covering future needs.

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There are concerns whether and how teaching and promotion of environmental and indigenous knowledge among the Lao youth will or can be continued given the mobility of teaching staff. It is also not clear how it could be expanded to locations previously not covered by the project given inconsistent teaching staff knowledge.
It will be crucial to secure the Ministry of Education’s (implementation partner) agreement that its existing structural, human and financial resources will be accessible to support a future expansion of the project.

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Bio-diversity and indigenous knowledge topics (local customs and traditions) have made their way into the education curriculum of primary schools in more provinces and are taught by more teachers than expected in Laos.

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As a result of the project local and provincial authorities have started to consider natural resource management suggestions. Using educational activities with youth as a way of encouraging them to propose solutions to mitigate negative environmental effects, was a way of encouraging discussion of more complex political realities.

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