Country: Laos

Client(s): US Department of State

Services: Curriculum Development, Teacher Training

Expertise: Life Skills Training

Website: https://laos.worlded.org/projects/uxo-education-and-awareness/

The Comprehensive Mine Risk Education Project aims to reduce injury and death from unexploded ordnance (UXO) by informing school-age children about how to protect themselves and their peers.

Formerly known as the UXO Education and Awareness Project, World Education began developing a primary school curriculum about UXO safety in 1996. While the number of UXO accidents in Laos has decreased significantly since that time, children represented 53% of UXO casualties from 2016 to 2018, which demonstrates a continuing need for mine risk education. Today, the project reaches young people at risk of UXO accidents through a school curriculum as well as through puppetry performances in communities.

The project focuses on building the capacity of the Ministry of Education and Sports (MOES) to manage mine risk education in the future. In the current three-year project (2018-2020), the project added Bolikhamxay as a target province and now reaches all 88 districts in Xieng Khouang, Luang Prabang, Houaphan, Khammouane, Sekong, Champassak, Savannakhet, Saravane, Attapeu, and Bolikhamxay provinces. Project activities include:

• Supporting the Government of Laos to integrate mine risk education (MRE) into the national primary school curriculum, enabling over 500,000 children in 5,820 primary schools to receive messages about UXO safety;
• Developing a new handbook for teaching MRE in secondary schools;
• Ensuring 3,800 student teachers in the eight teacher training colleges throughout Laos will learn how to teach MRE in primary schools.
• Enabling 220 puppetry troupes in primary schools to disseminate MRE to thousands of fellow students and community members throughout Laos.

Learn more about the Comprehensive MRE Project.