“Participatory village development planning is the first step and the most important step in development and is to give absolute rights to all people in the village, especially women, ethnic groups and the poor, to express the wishes of the people themselves so that their families and communities have a better future.”
The social section team of Nam Theun 1 Company Limited (NT1PC), based in Viengthong District, Borikhamxay Province, held a training to empower employees to be facilitators in participatory village development planning between October 9-11, 2023. In the training, there were 6 participants from Phonesack Group Limited (2 women), 2 participants from NT1PC (1 woman), and an official from Women’s Union of Viengthong district, and a committee of District Working Group. This training was led by Mr. Souksamone SENGALOUN, a Senior Officer of Institutional Strengthening, NT1PC. which brought lessons, experiences and tools from other projects to deliver to the participants. The purpose of the training was to learn the process of creating a local development plan by planning from the bottom to the top such as village level, village group level (if existing) and district level respectively. In that, the participants studied theory and practiced for 2 days. As for the target villages, there were 2 villages: Huay Hoy Village and Mueang Muan Village in Viengthong District, Bolikhamxay Province.
After the training, the social team, led by Mr. Souksamone SENGALOUN, organized a village development planning meeting for 3 years (2024-2026) at Muang Muan Village on October 11, 2023 and Huay Hoy Village on October 14, 2023, with participants such as the village head, village organization and both men and women in the villages from age of 18 and above.
Mr. Souksamone SENGALOUN, shared his opinion on this training: “the participants came from many sectors and had different backgrounds and knowledge. Therefore, a participatory training was organized in which the trainees also shared lessons with each other. The training may have a short duration, but the participants have been trained and become facilitators who can lead the people to plan well enough. Also, the development plans of both villages have been completed as expected. For the people, they were very interested, and women were very involved. They gave their own opinion and expressed it fully. Therefore, it can be said that participatory village development planning is the first step and the most important step in development and is to give absolute rights to all people in the village, especially women, ethnic groups and the poor, to express the wishes of the people themselves so that their families and communities have a better future”.
During the activity, the participants were divided into 3 groups: women’s group, men’s group and village authority group. In that, the women’s group and men’s group focused on finding problems, causes, potentials and solutions to problems related to planting, raising livestock, fishing, services, creating agricultural products, handicrafts into goods and other improvements. For the group of the village authority, the focus was on access and infrastructure development within the village. The purpose of this meeting was to find ways to solve, improve and restore people’s lives as well as to improve the strength of family development and to be able to generate income for the family in a self-reliable and more sustainable way.
Mrs. Maichanh Vanmany, 47 years old, Village Authority responsible for the work of Women’s Union in Huay Hoy village, said: “I feel happy and have more courage to speak because there was a division of discussion groups between men and women. For the village development plan, we want to develop 3 priorities, namely: the road to the burial ground, the road to the agricultural land-livestock to be able to travel in both seasons and the reservoir to facilitate agricultural production in the dry season.”
Mrs. Bai, 49 years old, resident of Huay Hoy village, participant of the village development planning meeting, said: “I am very happy to participate in the meeting. I chose the activities of growing vegetables, food processing and taking care of livestock – vaccination to prevent animal diseases. In the past, when animals grew enough, they often died, such as chickens and ducks. Hence, I want the local administration and the project to find ways to help more.”
