Empowers disability and elderly couple improved livelihood
Mr Mai and Ms Chan live in Lue ethnic village in remote area of Luang Namtha province Laos, they have been married for more than 10 years. Mr Mai has difficulty movement while his wife has hearing impairment for very long, they have one 12 years old daughter who study in grade 2 secondary school and received educational scholarship from LWF since 2014. The family belongs to the poorest family in village and LWF’s supporting priority.
Before the intervention of LWF Laos, the family mostly rely their living by gathering local vegetable in the deep jungle, more than half is from Ms Chan’s supports since she can walk easily while Mr Mai will be responsible at house caring.
Concerning to livelihood improvement, the family have been receiving home garden training and village development fund to run income generation activities from LWF. In 2014, they use given fund to buy couple of pigs for their income generation optional, and now they are reproduced for other families in the waiting list. Ms Chan said that ‘‘ Now we about to have enough money to pay back the fund ’’ Mr Mai said that ‘‘ this is our first time to receive this kind of assistance’’
According to basic observation from LWF, there are still some practical issues that need to be more enhanced both villagers and local authority for instance participation of the community toward village development.
When it comes to participation, Mr Mai said that ‘‘ we don’t quite often attend meetings in village, because we are not quite often informed as well and even informed we still could not participate that’’ However, after the supported, LWF expects to see the living conditions of villagers especially the vulnerable groups have been gradually improved by developing of their own potentials and equally in the community.
Though there are still many challenges that will be encountered especially concerning to accessing to information e.g. local policy on availability public services, law on human rights, resilience to climate change, disaster, inclusion of participation etc. Nevertheless, LWF will continuously support to solve these challenges through existing advocacy and project intervention from grassroots levels.
From current interventions, LWF understands more on actual situation of the community and people especially the vulnerable groups, the process implicates realistic needs and problems of the community that interpret into way forward of the LWF project interventions.
Story and photo by: Alounsavath Thongphanith/LWF Laos Program Support Officer
