WFP Programmes
WFP began providing emergency assistance to the Lao PDR in 1976 in response to natural disasters. Since opening a Country Office in 2000 in Vientiane, WFP has increasingly focused on recovery and development programmes aimed at relieving seasonal rice shortfalls. WFP’s goals are to help communities achieve food security, and to improve access to primary education in remote areas.
In 2008, WFP distributed 11,319 tons of food to over 470,000 food insecure people. WFP operated in 87 districts in the 17 provinces of Lao PDR and in over 1,828 villages across the country [1]. WFP Lao PDR has now 7 sub-offices and 5 field posts located in 12 provinces.
Protracted Relief and Recovery Operations (PRRO) [2]
WFP’s Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation (PRRO) offers immediate and medium-term assistance to food insecure households after a shock or by helping them build resilience to future shocks.
Map: PRRO Operations in Laos in 2008
Source: PRRO Factsheet, Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping unit and Public Information unit, WFP Lao PDR January 2009
Food for Relief
Relief assistance helps villagers overcome immediate food needs caused by livelihood shocks and enables them to concentrate on activities to rebuild their livelihoods. In 2008, WFP, in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, distributed relief food in 161 villages in 7 provinces, where 83,600 people received 15kg per person per month for two months to be able to cope with immediate food needs.
In addition to this, WFP provided 1,600 tons of relief food to nearly 60,000 people, victims of the floods that hit Laos in August 2008, in the nine most affected provinces of Luangnamtha, Bokeo, Luangprabang, Vientiane, Bolikhamxay, Khammuane, Oudomxay and Phongsaly as well as in Vientiane Capital, reaching households that lost their food stocks or were unable to meet their immediate food needs. In a second phase, PRRO plans to give recovery assistance to help the reconstruction of damaged infrastructure through Food-for-Work schemes [3].
Food for Work
In many areas, relief is followed up with food-for-work activities to help villagers build resilience to livelihood shocks. Food-for-Work activities aim at creating productive assets that can benefit the communities and sustain their food security on a long term basis such as paddy land, constructed infrastructure – bridges, roads, irrigation canals, dams, fish ponds and fruit and timber tree plantations. Beneficiaries receive rice as payment for building assets of their choice. Communities engaged in food for work tend to live in remote areas or have recently relocated to more accessible locations and are struggling to adapt to new conditions. They represent diverse ethnic groups. WFP Lao PDR also assists ex-opium cultivating communities who, in response to the Government’s ban, had in some cases to sell their productive assets, especially livestock, to meet immediate needs and in this process have endangered their long-term food security. Given the ban on shifting agriculture, opium eradication, and the relocation of isolated villages to more accessible areas, these communities need to establish new secure livelihoods.
In 2008, the PRRO implemented food-for-work schemes in 198 villages across the country, reaching more than 75,000 people. Priority is given to the most food insecure communities and to those who have received relief assistance. WFP works closely with the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare on food for work project design, implementation and monitoring and provides regular capacity building training sessions to government partners at all levels [3].
UXO Clearance
Many of the areas where WFP implements the PRRO are still contaminated with unexploded ordnance (UXO). WFP collaborates closely with the UXO clearance organizations Fondation Suisse de Déminage (FSD), UXO-Lao and Mines Advisory Group (MAG), which clear land before food-for-work implementation [3].
Food for Training
In partnership with the International Management Group (IMG), which has an agreement with the Ministry of Health, WFP Lao PDR is piloting food-for-training activities that provide non-formal education in issues related to household food security, namely nutrition, health, hygiene and childcare knowledge, at IMG’s Maternity Waiting Homes. Through this partnership, women and their family members who attend the Maternity Waiting Homes will receive food as incentive for seeking medical care for deliveries and for participating in the training activities. The Maternity Waiting Homes operate in each of the 17 districts across Saravane, Sekong and Attapeu, which have been identified as areas experiencing high rates of maternal and infant mortality.
HIV
People living with HIV/AIDS are particularly vulnerable to malnutrition and food insecurity. For this reason, under the PRRO, WFP Lao PDR started a pilot project, implemented in partnership with the Savannakhet Provincial Hospital in cooperation with Medécins Sans Frontières-Suisse to give food assistance to the patients and their families. In this facility, anti-retroviral medicines are provided to HIV/AIDS-affected people together with nutritious food, which is a crucial element for the human body to sustain the treatment and to respond in a comprehensive way to HIV/AIDS. Good nutrition improves the efficacy of the treatment and reduces its side-effects. Food is given to the patients of the hospital as well as to their families, reaching a total of 2,900 people in 2008.
School Feeding and Feeding the Future [2]
Implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Education, the School Feeding Project aims to increase primary school enrolment and attendance rates. It improves concentration of students by providing nutritious mid-morning snacks every day at school and encourages the families through the distribution of take-home food rations for girls, boys and informal boarders.
WFP provides a vitamin and mineral fortified corn-soya blend snack to primary school children in the provinces of Phongsaly, Luangnamtha and Oudomxay which have poor educational indicators. In addition to sugar, vegetable oil has been added for the preparation of corn-soya blend mid-morning snacks to provide a good source of fat - identified as lacking in many rural Lao diets. In addition, girls and boys receive a take-home family ration of canned fish, rice and iodized salt as an incentive for parents to send them to school. WFP also provides informal boarders - children who have no primary school in their own village and who have to walk for more than an hour or stay in dormitories at the school- with extra take-home rations to encourage them to study and attend school a long way from home.
The project has contributed to an increase in school enrolment. From 2002 to 2007, neiot enrolment rates in primary schools in targeted provinces increased from 60% to 86% (for boys) and 53% to 80% (for girls).
WFP Laos is honoured to be one of five country offices worldwide granted funding from the USDA McGovern-Dole through its International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. WFP Laos has been awarded a total of USD 9,185,700 for a three-year period from 2008 to 2010. With this contribution, WFP will be able to expand school feeding activities to the three southern provinces of Sekong, Saravane and Attapeu to reach an additional 25,000 students in the initial phase from February 2009. The provinces identified in the south have enrolment and malnutrition rates amongst the worst in the country, particularly for girls. WFP will target 60% out of the total primary school students and reach approximately 550 schools. It plans to target eligible schools in collaboration with the Ministry of Education.
Map: School Feeding Operations in Laos in 2008
Source: School Feeding Factsheet, Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping unit and Public Information unit, WFP Lao PDR January 2009
Feeding the Future
Food Security Studies reveal that chronic malnutrition persists in rural Laos. The main findings of the 2006 CFSVA show that despite the steady economic growth experienced by the Lao PDR in the last decade, children’s nutritional status has not improved as much as it should have. Every second child below the age of 5 years old is chronically malnourished, and that this figure is higher in some ethnic groups in the Northern uplands. Stunting affects the physical and cognitive development of children and, as a consequence, hampers their income earning potential in adulthood. Thus, chronic malnutrition impacts the country’s economic development by perpetuating the cycle of poverty and hunger.
As a complement to the School Feeding Programme, WFP Lao PDR has launched the Feeding the Future initiative, a community-based approach to nutrition education, with support from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). It aims at teaching women of reproductive age and care-givers about good nutrition habits which are culturally accepted and adaptable by using locally available foods (including nutrient-rich insects) in sustainable and environmental friendly ways. Feeding the Future is providing nutrition solutions starting in the womb. To reach out to women of non Lao-Tai ethnic groups, the trainings are rolled out in Lao, Hmong, and Akha languages.
Village-based trainings were piloted in four 30 villages in Oudomxay, Luangnamtha and Phongsaly and will be scaled up after being evaluated in collaboration with the Ministry of Education (Department of Non-Formal Education), the Lao Women’s Union, the Lao Front for National Construction and the Ministry of Health for technical advice on the training content [4].
Livelihood Support [1]
The Livelihood Support Project seeks to improve food security and strengthens livelihoods through partnerships with international organizations in rural ethnic-group communities. Emphasis is given to communities that are in transition from swidden cultivation to more permanent agricultural practices, from opium production to the cultivation of other crops, and those that are not yet linked with basic rural road networks and markets. The partners implement food-for-work projects to build productive assets such as paddy land, fish ponds, irrigation schemes, roads, etc. for communities that live in remote areas or have recently relocated to more accessible locations and are struggling to adapt to new conditions. Workers receive rice as payment for building assets of their choice. The project also includes Food for Training to provide non-formal education to women and adolescent girls.
Map: Livelihood Support Project implementation in 2008
Source: Livelihood Support Project Factsheet, Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping unit and Public Information unit, WFP Lao PDR January 2009
The Joint Sustainable Livelihood Programme
WFP, together with FAO, has taken leadership in developing a Joint UN Programme for two districts – Nga and Xay – in Oudomxay province. In addition to UN agencies, the international NGO German Agro Action (GAA/DWHH) has expressed interest in contributing to the project. The primary objective of the Joint Sustainable Livelihoods Programme (JSLP) is to improve the livelihoods asset base of vulnerable target populations and their resilience to shocks through the provision of an integrated interagency livelihoods support programme.
This process will bring about increased income and improved food security while preserving the natural resource base, as well as increased well-being and reduced vulnerability for the villages involved. The second objective is to strengthen the capacity of provincial and district government staff to establish and manage sustainable livelihoods programmes, through partnership with the Government of Lao PDR.
Finally, the third objective is to inform provincial and national policy dialogue and decision making on sustainable livelihoods issues so that the experiences of the JSLP are taken into consideration.
The formulation of the programme will incorporate the results of the situational analysis of the project areas, as well as the perspectives of Government counterparts and UN agencies. It is anticipated that the programme will operate over a five-year period and will target 41 villages, reaching approximately 15,000 people.
[1] Laos: Operations, Facts and Figures, WFP Lao PDR factsheet, September 2008
[2] WFP Lao PDR Annual Report 2007
[3] PRRO factsheet, January 2009, WFP Lao PDR
[4] Feeding the Future factsheet, January 2009, WFP Lao PDR
