The project MYA/002 proceeded with setting up village water committees in the 6 villages that benefitted from the installation of a household water distribution system in 2018. These water committees will be in charge of its own operation and adequate maintenance of those systems.
Village Water committee of Che Nar Dea
Each of the 6 water committees was trained on how to draw their water distribution system map, the general functioning of the water distribution systems, the use of the tools and spare parts in the maintenance kit, and also the chemical and physical characteristics of water.
For some it has been a long time since they sat in a class room
Drawing the map of their water system
Given that most of these villages are located in a very remote area and access to education is very limited, the training was delivered in an applied learning by doing approach. Also, many villagers have never used tools such as wrenches or screwdrivers and need to get familiar with their use first.
Checking the pH level of the water
Apart from the schematics and the mechanical aspects of the water distribution systems did the project’s Operation and Maintenance expert also focused on team building and managerial aspects of the new water committees. Villagers are used to working with members of their family and have yet to fully understand the concepts of communitary work on common assets belonging to the village as a whole. The sharing of responsibilities and working in a team will be crucial for the proper maintenance of their respective water distribution systems.
À Djebock (commune d’Anchawady), comme à Tidjerwelene (commune de Tilemsi), dans la région de Gao, les femmes participent activement à l’économie locale et, plus généralement, à la vie de leurs communes.
Elles participent notamment à la reconstruction post-conflit de leurs localités respectives à travers des activités de tannerie et de maraîchage. Là où les autorités communales et administratives ont délocalisé leurs activités (les deux mairies sont délocalisées au niveau du Conseil de Cercle de Gao), les femmes sont restées sur place et mènent des activités productives à travers lesquelles elles contribuent activement à la relance de l’économie et à la promotion de la paix et de la sécurité.
La tannerie : À Djebock, les femmes de l’association Tihoussaye ont bénéficié de la mise à disposition d’un magasin avec hangar de négoce, d'équipements et d'intrants ainsi que d’une formation sur les techniques modernes de tannerie et de fabrication de tentes en peaux de bêtes. Aujourd’hui, ces femmes se retrouvent autour de leur magasin pour fabriquer des ornements, des coussins et des tapis. Cette activité, qui permet à ces femmes de se procurer un revenu, est aussi lieu de regroupement quotidien et de causerie.
Le maraîchage: À Tidjerwelene, l’insécurité est venue aggraver l’approvisionnement en produits maraîchers sur ce site déjà enclavé. Les femmes de ce site, regroupées au sein de l’association Tinfa, ont bénéficié de matériel aratoire, de semences, d’un point d’eau et d’une formation sur les techniques modernes des cultures maraîchères. Avant même que le projet ne réalise la clôture grillagée, les femmes ont débuté les activités de maraîchage. Elles ont déjà produit des tomates, des aubergines, des oignons, du chou et de la laitue, ce qui a beaucoup contribué à l’amélioration de la nutrition des ménages. Les regroupements sur le périmètre maraîcher constituent un moment d’échange convivial entre les membres de la communauté et contribuent à la cohésion sociale. Le fait que ces femmes soient bien organisées et présentes sur le site leur a permis d’être impliquées par la Mairie dans plusieurs cadres d’échanges touchant à la vie des femmes.
Le projet Relance de l’économie locale et d’appui aux collectivités II (RELAC II) intervient au Nord du Mali, dans 30 communes des régions de Gao, Tombouctou, Menaka et Taoudéni, toutes fragilisées par un conflit et par l’occupation par des groupes armés en 2012 et 2013. Le projet RELAC II a pour objectif général de poursuivre la stabilisation de zones post-conflit ciblées en accompagnant la relance de l’économie locale et l’amélioration des services rendus par les collectivités. Le projet RELAC II s’appuie sur une démarche de diagnostics participatifs dans chaque commune cible, permettant d’établir un dialogue avec les communautés et les autorités locales et de co-construire les actions les plus pertinentes dans le contexte de chaque commune.
In late November 2018, Regional Office in Vientiane Laos, as part of the mid-term evaluation team, visited several villages in Bokeo province (north of Laos) where the programme LAO/030 is working with 52 poor and multi-ethnic villages to improve better livelihood through Village Development Fund approach.
On the way to the target villages, we spoke to Mr Sisouk Khounvithong who is the Provincial Programme Coordinator about the village development funds and its planning in general.
Question: Why are village development funds supported by LAO/030 programme important in improving people’s live in the target villages?
Answer: In my view, they are, in many ways because:
1. Each community decides to use the fund based on their real need in a transparent and democratic way; 2. Each community decides, in consensus, to use the fund to help the poorest of the poor in their villages; 3. Each community selects representatives themselves who they can trust and handle the funds; 4. The fund directly meets community needs based on village development potential (geographically and local knowledge); 5. Village planning and its identified activities come from voices of all group (adult men, women and the poor) of people in each community; 6. The village development fund benefits both poorest of the poor households and community as a whole. So, no one is left behind;
7. Each village manages the funds with direct technical support from district authorities.
Village Development Fund Committee member explains the village activities implementation plan to the Mid Term Evaluation Team at Khae village, Parktha District, Bokeo province
Villagers vote for their Village Development Fund Committee and its activities, Piengthueng village, Pha Oudom District
Village Development Fund Committee selection result and village activities priorities and ranking, Piengthueng village, Pha Oudom District, Bokeo
Most of the villagers in Tor Lae, Bokeo province are raising local bees as part of their income generating activity from generation to generation.
Mr Sisouk Khounvithong, on the front row second right, is the Provincial Programme Coordinator and the Deputy Director General of Provincial Planning and Investment Department of Bokeo.
One of the aims of project MYA/002 is to provide villages in the 5 Tract area of Keng Tung township in East Shan with access to water. Already in six villages efficient door-to-door water distribution systems were installed and the villagers are very happy to have access to water at their doorstep. The efforts to provide more villages with door-to-door water systems from protected sources will continue next year. Access to water gives the project the opportunity to organise personal hygiene awareness campaigns. Improved personal hygiene decreases considerably the most common bacterial infection and causes of diarrhea in children.
Apart from installing village water distribution systems, project has also recently started with the construction of decent toilets and handwashing stations in the public schools operated by the Department of Education in the 5 Tract area. The aim is to provide all 17 government schools and some monastic schools with such improved facilities.
The works for these WASH (Water Sanitation and Hygiene) facilities is currently ongoing in the villages of Wan Kong, Nar Paw, Ah Maw Dea and Mong Lu. In the meantime, the project team decided to already launch in those 4 villages a Personal Hygiene Awareness and Demonstration training to the students of the public primary schools. The public school teachers assisted the project team in their efforts to discuss and raise the awareness of the needs of proper personal hygiene amongst the students. The students were gifted a set of soap, toothbrush and toothpaste to become ambassadors for personal hygiene and set examples to their siblings and parents.
After the project had trained the 5th batch of village veterinarian extension workers (village vets) in August 2018, it was time to introduce the 65 trained village vets to the concept of extension work. The project team put together information leaflets on the most common diseases in cattle, pigs and poultry and trained the village vets on how to approach the villagers and share the knowledge.
The village vets should approach the villagers in small groups and introduce them to the signs shown by animals if infected by any of the most common diseases. The villagers are then invited to contact the village vet immediately if those signs occur so that the animal can be treated or put under quarantine to avoid further spreading of the disease.
Although the information leaflets are in Burmese language and many of the villagers are illiterate, the fact that the village vets provided information in their local ethnic language (in these shown cases La Hu) and explained in detail the pictures, the villagers are able to recognize and react appropriately.
Upon a recent follow-up mission the project team and the field coordinator visited villagers and asked about the leaflets and their purpose. Many households were able to provide the information that was shared with them and even showed the coordinator which diseases they had already come across. They were also very happy to have a village vet who provides the medicine and can thus even cure their animal.
For the moment, MYA/002 project is supporting the village vets with the medicines/vaccines free of charge. The payment of the medicines/vaccines will start once the village vets have completed their full training and also when the project has provided further support to the farmers in improving their husbandry techniques and are able to create an income from their livestock. For now the importance lies on training the village vets and the farmers alike in preventing and containing most common diseases to avoid outbreaks and loss of valuable assets to the farmers’ livelihoods.
Since August 2018, the MYA/002 Agricultural Production Support team in close collaboration with the Department of Agriculture improved the knowledge in basic agricultural techniques of 45 participants from 21 villages of the 5 Tract area of Kyaing Tong township.
Identifying the most common diseases in paddy rice
Over the course of 3 days, the participants were introduced how to recognize the different types of soil and the most common diseases and pests in paddy crops. The training further included practical exercises in how to set up a compost heap to produce natural fertiliser as well as how to mix natural pesticides from garlic and soap for instance. As many of the farmers work on mountainous terrain, the technique of how to plot a sloping land using an A-frame was very informative to them.
The trainings were delivered in Burmese with a translation into the local dialect of either La Hu or Shan. Information cards were handed out to the participants to support the theory with pictures and images so that even illiterate farmers are able to understand the information more easily. The trainees are invited to share their knowledge with their peers.
Finding the bug in the rice field
Besides the training sessions, the project team visited those initial 21 villages and recruited farmers interested in setting up a vegetable garden (called home garden) as well as model farms with long term crops such as tea, coffee and/or fruit trees amongst the most common long term crops. The response from the villagers was phenomenal as more than 450 people are interested in setting up home gardens and 91 volunteered to try out the model farm concept. Home gardens are not very common in the villages as they are always ravaged by free ranging chicken and pigs but also most farmers are not very familiar with the needs or techniques of growing vegetables properly. The villagers would however be very happy to also see a change in their diet and are happy to learn how to grow them.
Visiting a farm in Loi Mwe growing cabbage and tea in a mixed plot
To wrap up this initial training, the project invited the trainees to a learning trip to the Loi Mwe area to visit the model and research farm from the Department of Agriculture, the famous tea village of Ba Wei (with over 70 year old tea plants), a farm/home garden plot as well as a multi crop (elephant foot yam, pineapple and pine trees) plantation on sloping land. For some this trip was also an adventure as it was the first time for them driving in a bus and also to have slept in a guest house. However, such learning trips are so important to help the trainees to better understand the theory as well as to exchange with other farmers in the area.
Ba Wei tea master showing how the fried green tea needs to be macerated before drying
In the upcoming months the project will support the volunteers with the necessary seeds, seedlings, tools and other material to set up their home gardens and model farms. The MYA/002 team and its partners are looking forward to soon be tasting those homegrown vegetables in a few weeks time.
Over the last five months, 371 households have seen their livelihoods improved by having access to water right at their house.
In very close cooperation with 6 villages of the 5 Tract area of Keng Tung township in Eastern Shan State, the testing phase of installing door-to-door water distribution systems has been successfully completed.
A total of 5 water tanks of a capacity of 20 000 l have been constructed.
From the main water tanks, a distribution system supplies inox tanks of a capacity of 3 000 l located at strategic points in the village. A maximum of 10 households are connected to one secondary tank. This means that each household has now at least 300 l of water at their disposal.
In comparison, the previous cement cylinders had a maximum capacity of 700 l and sometimes up to 40 households were connected to one cement tank.
The success of this testing phase has been tremendous and much of the credit goes to the villagers who have put volunteer work on top of their very busy agricultural schedule to get rice fields ready for planting. During the start of the rainy season, when roads and tracks became impassable, the villagers hand-carried the water distribution material from the nearest drop-off point to their village which could sometimes take 2,5 hours one way.
In the 6 villages, over 7 000 pipes have been placed and buried at least 50 cm deep in order to protect them from exposure to the elements and roaming animals.
Many lessons learned have been collected from this testing phase and the project has already identified the next batch of 6 villages to benefit from a door-to-door water distribution system.
In 2013, LuxDev launched the Climate Adapted Local Development and Innovation Project (VIE/033), benefiting 29 poor and vulnerable communes in three districts of Thua Thien Hue province.
The project’s primary aim was to protect people’s livelihoods and strengthen their resilience within a context of increasing climate shocks and stresses, including more frequent typhoons, more severe floods in the rainy season, droughts in the dry season and a substantial loss of land to the ocean.
The Final Evaluation report found that by end 2017, the project had contributed to sustainable, equitable and efficient trends of poverty reduction and adaptation to climate change.
These achievements were attributed to project interventions with relative certainty, because the outcomes were measured based on the pre and post data collected by the project Monitoring and Evaluation system.
To further test and confirm its impact on target beneficiaries, the project also conducted the Randomised Control Trials study, to help establish whether the achieved outcomes were natural, or rather induced by the project’s many interventions.
This at a time when the team for the final evaluation was on the ground Typhoon Damrey, one of the worst storms to hit Vietnam in years, made landfall on 4 November 2017 with devastating consequences for the central provinces of Khanh Hoa, Phu Yen and Quang Nam, where people rely heavily on rice and fish farming.
At least 106 people have died and thousands of houses have been damaged.
It was the worst storm on record since 2001.This exceptional situation of a natural disaster in the project area made it possible to compare the resilience of assisted households to non-beneficiaries.
The Randomised Control Trials are a technical evaluation that allows estimating the impact achieved by the project intervention. The validity of the estimate stems from a comparison of the beneficiaries (Treatment Group) to non-beneficiaries (Comparison Group) at the beginning as well as end of the project.
In May and June, the Veterinary Department of Kyaing Tong township with the support from the MYA/002 project, conducted two 3-day training sessions for veterinarian workers in the target villages of the 5 Tract area.
A total of 24 participants from 12 villages were successfully trained on how to identify the most common diseases in cattle, buffalos, pigs and poultry. Each trainee received a bag with a medical kit comprised of tools, generic medicine, and vitamin complexes to treat the livestock in their respective villages for free. The trainees were also invited to support the veterinary department in completing the livestock census as well as contact the department in case they notice an unusually high number of common diseases which could be an underlying cause for a more serious outbreak.
Each trainee was tested before and after the course on their knowledge and understanding of animal health care and treatment. They all worked very hard during the training and passed their tests with flying colours.
The project was particularly proud that Mrs Daw Na Maw became the first female certified animal health care worker. Mrs Daw Na Maw was very pleased with the training and the knowledge that she gained. At first she was not sure if she would be allowed to bring her toddler but it turned out he quickly made friends in the hosting village.
The organization and translation from Burmese into La Hu language was ensured by MYA/002 Cluster Field Coordinators, Mr Da Ye La and Mr Ha Ma.
On Monday 18 June 2018, Hue City celebrated the closing of the 5-year ODA-funded ‘Climate Adapted Local Development and Innovation Project’ (VIE/033), and in the same event launched the very first two projects funded by the Luxembourg Climate and Energy Fund to be implemented by LuxDev. These two new interventions are the ‘Energy Efficient Lighting NAMA pilot in Hue City’ (VIE/401) and the project ‘Climate Adaptation and Resilience in TT Hue Province’ (VIE/433).
The event brought together high-level delegates from the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Thua Thien Hue (TT Hue) Provincial People’s Committee (PPC) and relevant departments, the Luxembourg Embassy in Laos, LuxDev HQ and regional office in Vientiane, VIE/033 project partners and staff from the project’s target districts, some community representatives and beneficiaries, as well as some old ‘Friends of the Project’.
Group photo
Mr Nguyen Van Phuong, Vice-Chairman of TT Hue PPC, and Mr Claude Jentgen, Chargé d’Affaires at the Luxembourg Embassy in Laos, both highlighted and appreciated the long-standing and strong diplomatic relations between the two countries, with the 45th anniversary of these relations having been celebrated in Hanoi just days ago. Mr Jentgen remarked that Luxembourg is the fifth biggest European Union investor in Vietnam, and further reiterated that whereas its Official Development Assistance (ODA) is phasing out with Vietnam having reached middle-income status, new opportunities arise to transform the long-standing partnership into climate cooperation.
Dr Alain Jacquemin, VIE/033 Chief Technical Coordinator, presented the overall results of the project, measured through a set of 27 quantitative indicators. Out of these, 23 met or exceeded their End of Project (EOP) target – including six exceeding that target by 20-50%, and five by more than 50%. Four indicators did not meet their target. Further, data from a Randomised Control Trial in communes outside of the project target area and collected through baseline and endline surveys, gave more evidence and valuable insights on the real impact of project interventions in target areas versus non-project areas, reflecting major differences on household incomes and poverty reduction rates, as well as on the coping capacity of communities and households to respond to climate impacts.
Dr Adam McCarty, Team Leader of the project final evaluation and earlier also the Mid Term Review, called VIE/033 “an extraordinary success” referring to its key results, both quantitative and qualitative, as observed first-hand in the field and measured through the project’s elaborate monitoring system. He highlighted and appreciated the fact that the project did not just focus on its many successes, but also took the initiative to study and investigate activities that didn’t go as planned, rather than ignoring them, thus turning them into ‘lessons learned’ for future interventions.
Subsequently, the audience listened to a brief account by one of the district leaders, and to three testimonials from project beneficiaries. This was followed by the formal launch of the Project Compendium, a document that gives a fairly detailed account of overall project results achieved, and WHAT was done, WHY and HOW to come to those results.
Mr Nguyễn Lương Trí from Quang Tho II Agriculture Cooperative, Quang Dien district
In the second half of the meeting, with focus on the two new climate interventions in TT Hue, Dr Phong Tran of the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition–International (ISET-Viet Nam) sketched the context of climate change in Vietnam and Hue. He highlighted that Vietnam is one of the most vulnerable countries to the threats of climate change, mainly due to its densely populated and long coastline that is highly exposed to typhoons and sea level rise. “The sea level in Thua Thien Hue could rise by up to 94cm by 2 100 and this would continue to seriously affect the lives, incomes and health of local people, as well as the ecosystems and infrastructure systems of Hue City as they have done in the past”, he said.
The new chapter in the cooperation between Luxembourg and Vietnam was opened up by Mrs Dieschbourg, Luxembourg’s Minister for the Environment, who, through a 15-minute video message, pointed out that “this first bilateral climate cooperation can be instrumental for Vietnam to enhance its climate-finance readiness and be first-mover in terms of accounting, monitoring, reporting and verification of climate finance. In this sense, this little step will help to build international climate cooperation trust and practice. Luxembourg is at your side fighting climate change“.
Extract of the video speech by Mrs Dieschbourg, Luxembourg Minister for the Environment
Subsequently, Mr Nguyen Quang Cuong, Vice-Director of the provincial Department of Planning and Investment and Director of the Luxembourg Projects Management Board, briefly introduced the two new projects to the audience, and confirmed that both are in a position to bank upon the effective institutional structure, operational systems and implementation mechanisms that were put in place by VIE/033.
In his closing remarks, Mr Gaston Schwartz, Managing Director of LuxDev, once again highlighted the importance of monitoring and stated that “the methodology and the way that monitoring has been done in project VIE/033 should be an inspiration for LuxDev colleagues in other countries”.
Connexion 
Village Development Fund Committee member explains the village activities implementation plan to the Mid Term Evaluation Team at Khae village, Parktha District, Bokeo province
Most of the villagers in Tor Lae, Bokeo province are raising local bees as part of their income generating activity from generation to generation.
Mr Sisouk Khounvithong, on the front row second right, is the Provincial Programme Coordinator and the Deputy Director General of Provincial Planning and Investment Department of Bokeo.
Group photo
