Joyfully Serving
Serving in Lao-Peoples Democratic Republic as a tropical agricultural specialist
Village Development
The goal of our village development is to bring together and develop the people in the villages, to equip them and work with them to improve their own commmunity.
This is the focus of what we do, we listen to the villagers, work with them to help them meet the needs they feel they have. They always own the work, and help them help themselves. After a few years working in a village, we leave and the villagers actually continue the work: genuinely sustainable development.
For example in one village in Laos we were teaching them about the need for toilets, having organised a village development committee to drive forward the work. The village agreed for health and hygiene reasons they needed toilets, but completely independently of us the same village development committee realised they needed piped water for their village and organised that themselves.
I'll be putting on here some more training materials, for training national workers, in due course.
It is worth checking out Medical Ambassadors who are wonderful at supplying training and teaching materials helping us deliver genuinely community centred and owned development into the poorest places of the world.
Of course get in touch if you have any queries regarding village development, especially in tropical places; it is such a difficult process but even small projects if truly community lead and owned can make a huge difference to people's lives.