Vietnam and Laos

In mid-July, 2007, Jack Chance, Karoline Kemp and Stephanie Guyer-Stevens met up in Hanoi to begin production work focused on Tranh Thi Lanh, the founder of SPERI, a Vietnamese NGO dedicated to empowering local indigenous people in Vietnam and Laos to incorporate their agricultural traditions in the creation of public policy. It seems to be working—and taking hold. Lanh and her staff seem to have taken some of the most forward-thinking conservation strategies and combined them with a leadership structure that emphasizes the traditional knowledge of the ethnic people in both Laos and Vietnam. SPERI has stepped far forward in gender development in their work, by ensuring that traditional roles are not overlooked and that women’s customary sources of community power are used as the starting point for development work within the community. It’s a forward-thinking strategy that could provide a model for gender-focused development across the globe.

We are deeply appreciative of our time in Laos and Vietnam, which offered us a glimpse into the realities of two communist countries in a poignant moment of transition into the full market economy, and a chance to see first-hand the profound work being done to stem the tidal wave of the economic giants into the region.

Many thanks to the Shelly and Donald Rubin Foundation, the LEF Foundation, and the Lucius and Eva Eastman Foundation for their support for the production work in Vietnam and Laos.

Hawaii
The Hula Lesson

Cambodia
Girls from Cambodia

Solomon Islands
The Story of Lata

Burma
Kawthoolei

Vietnam and Laos
In Process

"For millennia women have dedicated themselves almost exclusively to the task of nurturing, protecting and caring for the young and the old, striving for the conditions of peace that favour life as a whole. To this can be added the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, no war was ever started by women. But it is women and children who have always suffered most in situations of conflict. Now that we are gaining control of the primary historical role imposed on us of sustaining life in the context of the home and family, it is time to apply in the arena of the world the wisdom and experience thus gained in activities of peace over so many thousands of years. The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all."
—Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (from keynote address to NGO Forum on Women, Beijing, 1995)