Laos: Safer Land, Food For Education
In early 2006, the Humpty Dumpty Institute received a $2.93 million Food for Education grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to improve basic education and address major barriers to school attendance such as unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the south eastern Asian country of Laos. Our partners on this project are Mines Advisory Group (MAG) and International Relief & Development (IRD). This is the first USDA Food for Education grant in Laos, and it is also the first initiative in Laos to explicitly link UXO clearance with increased school attendance through school feeding. Our project, located in Khammouane province, one of the poorest provinces in Laos, is benefiting over 10,000 children in 50 villages.
To this day, Laos still holds the sad record of being the most bombed country in the world. During the conflicts of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Laos suffered intense ground battles and witnessed over 580,000 bombing missions that left 9 of the country's 13 provinces heavily contaminated by UXO. Khammouane province in central Laos, bordering Thailand to the west and Vietnam to the east, is one of the most highly UXO-contaminated provinces in the country, and has one of the highest UXO accident rates. Within Khammouane, the districts of Boualapha and Ngommalat were among the most heavily bombed districts, receiving 36,800 bombing missions over an eight-year period (1968-1975). Scattered in and around these districts are thousands of unexploded rockets, mortars, bombs and cluster munitions.
Boualapha and Ngommalat districts have also been identified as being chronically food insecure and amongst the poorest and most vulnerable districts in Laos with 93% of the villages described as poor due to the fluctuation of rice yields through drought, pests and floods. In all local villages, the presence of UXO represents a daily risk as people go about their daily lives. Children are denied safe play areas and daily activities such as going to bathe, going to school and foraging for bamboo, frogs, crickets and other forest products used to supplement a families' diet. While many villages in this area have primary schools, poverty and the need to meet basic subsistence needs often prevents children from attending school and many children do not advance beyond Grade 2. Increased cash needs and material aspirations alongside poor yields and dwindling forest resources means that children often do not attend school, preferring instead to collect scrap metal using Vietnamese metal detectors. This potentially exposes children on a regular basis to UXO and indeed this is becoming the highest cause of UXO related injures in Laos.
HDI and its partners are currently clearing UXO from 50 school sites in Khammouane. The school-feeding component of the project will begin with the new school year in September 2007. HDI and its partners will serve nutritious mid-morning snacks, provide take-home rations for the families of girls, educational supplies and equipment, develop school gardens, and improve school facilities.
This project is being implemented in an integrated manner with HDI assuming responsibility of overall direction and coordination. MAG is implementing UXO identification and removal activities. IRD is responsible for commodity logistics, school feeding, health promotion, and educational development activities. The results of the project will be greater enrollment and attendance at local schools, especially by girls; healthier children and families; and improved literacy and educational achievement.
Each partner in this project is seeking additional resources to complement those of the USDA grant. MAG is providing UXO clearance support for additional schools and villages with EU funding, and IRD is contributing $100,000 in schools supplies. Working with Congresswoman Betty McCollum, the Laotian community and the corporate community in Minnesota, HDI hopes to secure in-kind contributions of additional school supplies and educational equipment valued at about $100,000.
