Background

The overall understanding of accountability and governance remains weak in target communities. Systems and process that enable communities to participate meaningfully in decisions that affect them remain severely limited in Laos, with communities having little access, knowledge, capacity or opportunities to be heard in safe spaces.

A collaborative INGO research paper (including ChildFund Laos) showed that effective development practices involve initiatives that improve community ownership and enable individuals to take collective action. In Lao PDR, children, youth and adults reported that working together as partners (rather than beneficiaries) is the most important way to achieve positive change in communities.

Project Description

Project Goal

Creative writing activities are adopted into partner secondary school curriculum as a means to strengthen facilities among teachers, and improved Lao language skills, critical thinking skills, and imagination skills among students.

Project Objectives

Ojective 1:

• 1A: Participating teachers understand the principles and objectives of creative writing and can facilitate creative writing workshops.

• 1B: Participating secondary school students demonstrate improved learning behaviours and skills around literacy in Lao language.

Objective 2:

• To build the capacity of children and youth to better learn about and understand key development issues that affect them.

Key Outputs:FY 2019-2020

• Creative Writing in Schools (CWIS) and Choice-Based Storytelling (CBS) approaches are finalised.
• 3 CWIS trainings are delivered to 27 selected secondary school teachers.
• 3 CWIS trainings are delivered to 144 selected secondary school students by trained teachers.
• 3 story books (7 stories in each book) written by 144 young authors are finalised.
• 1,000 copies of the story books are published and distributed to schools, young authors and relevant partners.
• 3 sessions of district-level end of semester learning are organised for 27 teachers.
• 3 sessions of young author community event are conducted in the project target areas.
• Engagement in national annual reading/literacy event.
• 1 group of young researcher groups: 36 members including 18 young females is formed.
• Young researchers are trained how to use tablet in collecting data and tablets are distributed to them.
• 1 research report compiling data collected by the young researchers is produced and shared among young researchers and with community ChildFund Laos and relevant partners.
• 2 action researches are conducted on key cross-cutting issues in ChildFund Laos program areas, which is participated by the young researchers.
• 2 action research reports are produced and shared with concerned stakeholders including the community, government partners and other INGO partners.