The Government of Lao PDR and ADB have always worked together to reduce poverty by improving rural infrastructure, social services, and agricultural production. Find out more about ADB's projects in Lao PDR and how they help alleviate the poor Laotians' lives.
Primary Health Care Expansion Project
This project, a follow-up to the Primary Health Care Project, helps to expand access to and improve the quality of essential services at village health centers and district levels in eight northern provinces of Lao PDR.
It aims to reduce poverty by:
- increasing their physical, social, and financial access to essential services
- focusing on interventions for diseases that affect them significantly and make them more marginalized
- improving the availability and quality of services for the disadvantaged and poor ethnic population groups
The project benefits women and children, especially the ethnic minorities and rural people by giving priority to cost-effective interventions, including
- promotion of preventive and reproductive health care
- prevention and treatment of common infections and micronutrient deficiencies
- first referral and emergency services
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The Basic Education for Girls Project is an example of an effort to address the needs of the rural poor, especially girls.
It employs several strategies to enroll more ethnic minority girls in school and to keep them there. It also promotes community mobilization by involving parents more actively in the village school activities and encouraging them to keep their daughters in school.
The project provides grants to 300 villages to assist poor families with school expenses, such as enrollment fees. It also encourages extra tutoring for weaker children, especially girls, to reduce the repetition rate.
School buildings for various school levels are being constructed in villages. Hence, children do not have to travel far just to complete the primary level.
Female teachers from the ethnic minority are being recruited and trained. They will be provided with more supervisory support in the classroom.
Locally adapted curriculum materials are also being developed to complement the national core curriculum and cater to the special needs of girls in the villages.
Shifting Cultivation Stabilization
This joint UNDCP-ADB project aims to improve the income of upland farmers. It eliminates opium cultivation by promoting diversified sedentary farming systems as alternatives to shifting cultivation and opium poppy cultivation.
The pilot area chosen for the project is in Xam Neua district in Houaphanh Province where shifting cultivation is widespread. Shifting cultivators are among the poorest and most disadvantaged in Lao PDR.
The project's components include:
- improved farming systems
- rural infrastructure - 55km of rural access roads; 50km of village tracks; and several community irrigation and water supply schemes
- village-based development
The project will benefit an estimated 12,600 people.
JFPR Community-Managed Livelihood Improvement
The project's goal is to reduce poverty among the the poorest families in five provinces in central Lao PDR through:
- the creation of sustainable, area-based, and community-owned alternative sources of income for the targeted poor
- the development of appropriate basic skills for relevant village committees, subcommittees, and village-based user groups
To encourage community involvement in the project, NGOs have been tapped to provide the technical expertise and to facilitate in the planning, community mobilization, training, monitoring, and impact evaluation.
Water Supply and Sanitation Sector Project
This project, with a total estimated cost of US$25 million, is the first project in the water supply and sanitation sector financed by ADB under a sector loan in Lao PDR. The implementation of the project started in 2000, and is expected to be completed by the end of 2005.
The implementation agency is the Water Supply Authority. It is under the Ministry of Communication, Transport, Posts, and Construction, the project's executing agency.
The project aims to support the Government's overall goal to bring about sustained improvement in the environmental health and quality of life for small urban communities, especially the poor.
The project's objectives are to:
- establish a regulatory framework for the urban water supply sector
- develop a sustainable operational framework for the decentralized management of water supply
- build capacity in provincial water supply organizations
- implement water supply and sanitation systems
It covers 17 small provincial towns. It is expected to benefit about 165,000 people, about 30% of whom live below the poverty line of KN160,000 per household per month.
The need to supply water and sanitation facilities among beneficiaries is high, particularly among the poorer groups. Better access to safe water and sanitation services will improve the overall quality of life of the target beneficiaries by
- reducing morbidity
- reducing the expenditure for water
- eliminating the drudgery and time involved in carrying water, especially by women and girls, who are traditionally responsible for carrying and managing the household's water