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Government Encourages Contraception Among Adolescents

lao mother
lao mother

In an effort to reduce maternal and child morbidity and mortality rates, Laos will focus on reducing the unmet need for contraception to 13 percent, and increase the contraceptive prevalence rate from 42 to 65 percent by the year 2020.

During the first National Family Planning Conference held in Vientiane on Tuesday, statistics indicated that the nation’s unmet need for family planning still lingers at a high 20 percent, and surging up to 31 percent among various ethnic groups.

Statistics also revealed that the adolescent birth rate is 76 live births per 1,000 girls in the 15-19 age group, adolescent contraceptive use is low at 22.3 percent, and the unmet need for contraception is at 22.6 percent.

Themed “Investing in Family Planning for Economic Prosperity”, the National Family Planning Conference was officiated by Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Sonexay Siphandone, with representatives from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), World Health Organisation and World Bank in attendance .

The Minister of Health Associate, Prof. Dr Bounkong Syhavong stated, “quite simply, family planning provides choice to individuals and families, helping us work towards a future where every pregnancy is wanted and every childbirth is safe.”

The Prof. Dr added, “we have seen Laos’ maternal mortality ratio drop from 357 per 100,000 live births in 2012 to 206 per 100,000 live births in 2015, surpassing the Millennium Development Goal target we had set. We have come a long way, but we still have some miles to go to reach the target of 180 per 100,000 live births, in order to graduate from the Least Developed Country status in 2020. We couldn’t have done this without family planning along with strengthened midwifery services.”

By granting easier access to family planning, the number of adolescent pregnancies will decrease significantly, allowing young women to stay in good physical health, completing their education, striving towards future goals, and eventually  deciding on their own terms, when and how many kids they may want to have.

On a global scale, family planning has contributed to preventing maternal and child morbidity and mortality substantially.

Along with UNFPA, Laos has also seen tremendous support for the family planning program by Family Planning 2020, the global initiative funded by a range of donor governments and institutions, and hosted by the United Nations Foundation.

Laos; a Key Part in the Grand Scheme of Things

belt and road
belt and road

The “One Belt, One Road” initiative is a crucial part of China’s development strategy to deepen economic cooperation with countries in Asia, Europe and Africa.

The Belt and Road Initiative was initially proposed by China in 2013, and refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, focusing on developing a trade and infrastructure network that connects Asia with Europe and Africa, along the ancient trade routes of the Silk Road.

Vice Minister of Public Works and Transport, Lattanamany Khounnyvong, states that the initiative commonly seeks the development of the countries along the Belt and Road with the goal of  “joining hands towards prosperity.”

Highlighting the country’s in-depth involvement in the initiative, Mr Lattanmany explained that the China-Laos railway, which began construction on Dec. 25, 2016, has been cited as the most significant project in the Eighth National Socio-Economic Development Plan 2016-2020 of Laos.

“As this is the No. 1 project of Laos, it is necessary to implement national policies well, promote socio-economic development, support the mission of poverty eradication along the railway route and help increase the incomes of local residents,” he stated.

According to the Vice Minister, Laos has been earnestly collaborating with Chinese contractors to assist local villagers, supporting infrastructure construction of roads, schools and healthcare services running along the railway.

It was also added by Mr Lattanamny that, “once completed, the railway will help facilitate people-to-people exchanges, reduce travel time and costs. The railway will also help promote agricultural production in Laos, increase income, attract more foreign investment and provide more employment opportunities.”

It is speculated that when the high-speed railway has reached completion and is fully functional in Laos, Lao people can offer services along the route, creating job opportunities for local people. Laos can also benefit from freight charges and people commuting via railway.

According to the Vice Minister of Public Works and Transport, this project will be crucial  in assisting Lao people escape poverty and raise living standards significantly, also citing that the construction of the China-Laos railway will help train high-tech personnel from Laos and provide valuable experience for the country in railway construction.

As previously reported by The Laotian Times, the China-Laos railway will run a total length of 414 km, with over 62.7 percent of bridges and tunnels, linking the Mohan-Boten border gate in northern Laos and the capital city of Vientiane.

Construction of the railway is scheduled to be completed within five years, and will cost an estimated 5.8 billion U.S. dollars to fabricate; 70 percent of which will be covered by Chinese investors, and the rest covered by Laos.

The China-Laos railway is the first overseas route connecting with the railway system in China, using Chinese technology, equipment and investment.

Lao Minister of Energy and Mines, Khammany Inthirath, added that the Belt and Road initiative is a significant and indispensable way to deepen cooperation between Laos and China in a plethora of fields such as investments, industrial production, trade, finance, culture, social integration policy and infrastructure.

On the Table: Building a Startup Community in Vientiane’s First Co-Working Space

Toh-Lao-Co-Working-Space

The life of a freelancer and startup can be a lonely and tough one, especially when you don’t even have an office to work from each day. A co-working space to work in – a desk, a chair, and internet connection – is as much about fostering a community as it is about amenities.

Souphaphone ‘Nana’ Souannavong discovered this pretty quickly when she returned to her hometown of Vientiane after years of studying overseas. Having completed a Masters in Finance in Rochester, New York, she set herself up as a freelancer, to get back into the swing of life in Vientiane. But during her seven months as a freelance consultant, one thing bothered her – she didn’t have an office.

Coffee shops or the house she shared with her big family had to do, and neither was satisfactory. This was back in 2009, and by then, Nana had already started to ponder the possibility of setting up a co-working space in Vientiane – the kind of shared office community that has taken the world by storm over the past decade. But while many of the world’s major cities have large and profitable co-work hubs, Nana didn’t believe Laos was ready yet.

In the ensuing years, she read about co-working spaces popping up all over the region – Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia. But it wasn’t until she read about a space opening in Myanmar that she really began to take notice.

It’s now four years down the track, and Nana is speaking inside what is now an established work hub – Toh-Lao, just off the main riverside road in the centre of Vientiane. The name translates literally as “Lao Table”, a concept that speaks to the simplicity of the idea of a co-work space – a place that gives you the basics to work productively. It has already attracted all kinds of tenants – expats on short-term consultancies, foreign freelancers doing visa runs, local businesses needing a registered office space while they get their enterprise off the ground. But it has also become something of an incubator for start-up talent in the tech sector. The space offers both individual desk spaces and private offices, and one of the larger offices upstairs is full to bursting with young programmers, tapping away intensely at computers.

Bizgital, a technology start-up, moved in just 10 months ago with three people. Now, it has 15 staff and counting, and has outgrown its temporary home at Toh-Lao. It’s a dilemma Nana is only too happy to be able to solve, with a new space set to open nearby. The company is also a perfect example of why she wanted to set up the space in the first place.

Apart from her personal need for an office and a focused working community, she says she wanted to test a personal theory she had about Laos.

“I wanted to prove something, because Lao people, especially young people, we always have this belief that we don’t have entrepreneurs – real minds,” she says.

“For example, when you’re in college life, you might have some idea of wanting to start your own business, but then when you actually graduate, your parents will say, ‘Don’t do a business, it’s too risky. Do something else, work for the government, work for a big organisation’. So that’s why I wanted to check it out, whether this country has hope for start-ups or not.”

She also wanted to expand her own career as a financial advisor, and explore what she had been noticing more and more in Laos – the number of investors who were ready to take risks. The country was ready, in other words, for a start-up community, and it was time to, well, start one up. It was a challenge, at first, to get many locals to use the space, much less up-and-coming businesses.

“Lao people probably thought, what is a co-working space, why come to this office with just a chair and a table? What are we going to do here? They don’t realise the value of the community here,” she says.

She began running free workshops and seminars to spread the word about the possibilities of working in a shared space, without the pressures of renting an exclusive office.

startup-weekend-Toh-Lao Co-working Space

She also organised the first Lao chapter of the international event Start-Up Weekend, a kind of intensive pop-up event that’s an opportunity to pitch ideas for a start-up and get feedback from a community of mentors and successful businesspeople. This was back in 2014, and more than 50 people signed up, more than half of whom actually took to the stage to pitch their ideas.

Nana’s theory was proven, at least in the world of tech start-ups. While she still tries to keep a range of tenants in the original space – foreigners, consultants, local freelancers – her new space will have a more concentrated focus.  And while she sees Toh-Lao as a type of incubator – “we make a little idea happen to make a business, but it takes longer because we let them grow organically” – the new space will be an accelerator.

“It’s where, when you have an idea, and you have a team of people, you bring them in, you give them a lot of mentors, you put mentors to work with them, to make sure that they can actually go to market and launch their business within three to six months,” she says.

Bizgital is the perfect example of a potential tenant for the new – as yet unnamed space – initially a group of “hardcore programmers” unaccustomed to doing business, who have since been matched with an established investor, and have now shifted their model to digital marketing and IT consulting.

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Toh-Lao is now part of the wider co-work space ecosystem, partnering with other such spaces in neighbouring countries so that members can access the same space and benefits when moving between countries.

What Nana wants most of all is to find a start-up champion – a person or business committed to growing small businesses and helping ideas flourish.

“That’s our immediate goal, and we really hope that with the acceleration program, we can make it happen faster,” she says.

But she is realistic about the comparatively slow pace of the market in Laos.

“If we look into the whole eco-system itself, the problem is still with the skills and education, so we hope that in the future we can play some role to have some courses dedicated for start-ups and entrepreneurs, not like subjects they learn in universities and college,” she says.

“The way that start-ups think, you have to disrupt the industry, basically you have to be creative and think out of the box. So that’s very important, to set the right mindset for them, and I believe it comes from education, it comes from younger age, and we hope to be able to contribute in the long run.”

 

Champa Meuanglao
Written by:
Sally Pryor
Originally Published in: Champa Meuanglao,  official Lao Airlines in-flight magazine, 2017 May-June Edition

Staying On Top: How 108 Jobs is Riding the Startup Wave

108 Jobs

When it comes to technology-based start-ups – or any new business, for that matter – disruption is the name of the game. You want to storm an existing market, or creep into the margins and beat others at their own game, securing your own place in the vast ocean that is the modern start-up landscape.

For some, it’s enough simply to cruise the waves and keep your head above the water. But for Keovisouk Dalasane, treading water will never be enough. His rapidly growing jobs website, 108 Jobs, may have arrived on the Lao market at just the right time, with the rise of the internet and the subsequent weakening of the print classifieds, but for Keo, this is all the more reason to stay on the alert for the constant threat of disruption.

And so the website – an easy-to-navigate, constantly updated list of employment vacancies in Laos – comes with a magazine of the same name, and now, an app to appeal to the many people who search the job market from their phones.

Keo has always had an eye to the future. Raised in Vientiane, he finished his schooling there, before heading overseas to study. In Thailand, he studied human resources, never imagining that two decades on, he would have a grip on the Vientiane employment market via his own start-up. He went on to study economics in Japan, where he started a PhD and decided, after envisaging his future post-doctorate, that he didn’t like what he saw, and dropped out in his third year.

But he’s adamant that his failure to finish has never been a problem.

“That’s one thing maybe I want to share with people. It doesn’t mean I spent two and a half years as a waste. I myself actually value the process a lot, not the end result,” he says.

“In between, you see what you learn, the journey is more important, and I learned a lot. I might not make it to a degree, but then all those things are still with me. How you analyse things, how you see things differently.”

By the time he returned to Vientiane in 2009, he was ready to settle down, start a family and find a niche ripe for a start-up enterprise.

Although the internet was still relatively new in Laos, he knew from his experience overseas that the sector would grow rapidly, and that internet-based services had the potential to turn a profit if the timing was right. 

“I worked for an online market research company in Japan that allowed me to travel to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, all these South East Asian cities, and I started to see how things would evolve in my own country.”

And so, in 2012, 108 Jobs was born – so named for the Lao expression meaning “tons of jobs”. “We decided to launch a website at that time, but we decided also to make it a little bit different from other websites, by launching together with a magazine,” he says.

“That could differentiate us. As for the competition with local newspaper we have the website as an edge.”

108 Jobs

“In Laos, you cannot be too specific, we must be ready for a broader audience, and even when we launched, the NGO sector already had their own website. But then what made us really, really different was we had this online platform, we had this magazine, which is freely available, plus the dedicated customer service team, that made it different, I think.”

There were other online job sites at the time, but 108 soon surged ahead, taking just two and a half years to become a success. The new app was, to him, a logical step along the way, tapping into the multitudes of people who not only live their daily lives through their phones, but also value the catchiness and cache of a cool new app.

But 108 Jobs goes beyond just appearances. Behind the user-friendly façade is a busy network of contacts and all kind of synergies when it comes to the employment market.

“We have customer lists, we have customer relationships, so what we do is we offer them whatever they need within the space of HR, not only job ads,” he says.

“Over the past two years, we’ve expanded into recruitment, we do payroll service … and we do recruitment outsourcing and all that extra stuff.”

Keo has also launched a companion website, Job Jib-Jib, aimed at the high-turnover hospitality sector and job-seekers wanting short-term employment.

“It’s another website which is simplified, very easy, you can just post three lines – what age, what time you work, for what. And we’re launching an app for that, and that’s going to be even more disruption than 108 Jobs.”

“It’s an untapped sector, where we can see a lot of things happening. It’s going to be very amazing where people can sign onto our app, and the restaurant owner can hunt for you. They are going to look for you, or you can apply and you can chat. This is happening in the west now.”

The team has also developed a restaurant- listing website, Spoon.la, and the synergies with 108 Jobs is obvious, while the name of the magazine has recently changed to just 108 Magazine, allowing it to spread beyond just the hospitality sector.

“The reason I am doing a lot of all this, I think, is we are in a very innovative space,” he says.

“Anyone can disrupt – see how we disrupted the existing classified business.  And we can always be disrupted by a new guy, and we want to be disrupting ourselves before anyone else comes in.”

So, while riding each new wave might look easy to an outsider, Keo says it’s important not to get too comfortable up there.

“We’re always on the top of the wave and seeing what’s coming,” he says.

“If we don’t stop, we will always see what’s coming next.”

 

Champa Meuanglao
Written by:
Sally Pryor
Originally Published in: Champa Meuanglao,  official Lao Airlines in-flight magazine, 2017 May-June Edition

Trillions of Kip Emerge From State Audit

kip stack
kip stack

Following an audit conducted by the State Audit Organization, an estimated 3.135 trillion kip (USD 384.776 million) has been uncovered as additional revenue, representing 3.11% of the total state revenue.

President of the State Audit Organization, Ms Viengthong Siphandone, also revealed at the ongoing 3rd Ordinary Session of the National Assembly, that the audit reports submitted indicates that 9.819 trillion kip (USD 1.204 billion), equaling 8.15% of total state expenditure, has been confirmed as additional expenditure.

After gaining knowledge of the revenue leakage from the audit, the National Assembly and Lao government immediately issued resolutions, orders and announcements determining correctional procedures. A majority of the funds discovered  have been retrieved and directed to the state budget.

New regulations have been endorsed and put in place to address the revenue leakage, resulting in a decrease of financial rule violations, including the identification of fabricated projects.

The newly implemented regulations specifically aim to improve the accounting and finance system, the revision of the state accounting system manuals, and the improvement of national treasury accounting systems at both central and provincial levels.

“The implementation of planned audit activities over the past five years have been given sound support and won trust from relevant sectors in society as the audit authority has exerted the role authorized to it by the Party and people, performing its authority openly, transparently and by means acceptable to all sectors and according to the audit procedures,” stated Ms Viengthong.  

The audit conducted by the State Audit Organization focused on the implementation of state budget expenditure and revenue collection between the fiscal years of 2010-2011 and 2014-2015.

The president of the State Audit Organization also explained her frustration with the audit, detailing failure to audit all budget units, the lack of standard regulations and ineffective collaboration between the State Audit Organization and the State Inspection Organization.

Or-Laam: A Dish Fit For A King

Or-Laam

It wasn’t an easy job, being a Lao king. Imagine the discomfort of having to dress in the finest silk and adorned in the purest gold in an air-condition-less era in one of the most humid places in the world. Imagine the burden of wandering around the royal gardens anticipating the next invasion from warring neighbouring armies, monitoring the tributes that vassal princedoms had to pay, balancing the complex power-hungry factions of the court, and last but not least having to select a politically agreeable husband for your daughter.

But even with the weight of the kingdom on his shoulders, a king still has to eat. We do not often think about that vital and much-anticipated interruption – the queen calling him in for an elaborate supper. One that took many hours to make, and, in Laos, almost certainly featured Or Laam.

Like many traditional Lao dishes, Or Laam is made from simple ingredients that have been available to local people for as long as anyone can remember. And, like many Lao dishes, the secret to Or Laam’s distinctive flavour and texture is mired in the country’s long history.

But the famous Luang Prabang delicacy differs from many other much-loved Lao foods in that it is, quite literally, a dish prepared for a king.

Or-Laam

Centuries ago, and even as recently as the 1940s and 50s, rural populations in northern and central Laos often ate what has become known as Or – small amounts of meat stewed in large amounts of vegetables. The meat was usually whatever had been caught that day which also had to be bulked up – for nutrition as much as meat scarcity – with as many vegetables that came to hand, with the dish varying in ingredients from village to village, province to province.

But when it came to cooking for the royal family, no expense could be spared, both in terms of time, and the quality of the ingredients. The country’s finest chefs discovered that meat that was already cooked – grilled or sun-dried – was far more fragrant and flavourful when it was boiled than fresh meat, preferably for at least two to three hours at a time. And it was only after years of culinary trial and error did the chefs come to the realisation that when added to the stew, another ingredient, pepperwood (known in Lao as sakkhan), created another wonderfully magical aroma that gives Or Laam its title as the dish of kings.

If planning Or Laam for the King’s supper, the kitchen staff would usually begin preparing the elaborate dish around noon – selecting the dried or grilled meat, and boiling it with vegetables including eggplants, yardlong beans, black-ear mushrooms, lemongrass, chilli and pepperwood. It is a dish that, for centuries, was synonymous with luxury, requiring the means to source the very best ingredients and plenty of time in which to prepare it.

It is, in other words, a dish fit for a king, although today, many traditional Lao restaurants serve it. The Champa Meuanglao Editor’s choice is the version served up by the Vientiane institution Kualao Restaurant, a much-loved restaurant housed in a beautifully restored, yellow-walled French villa in the city centre, close to the equally iconic That Dam stupa.

Champa Meuanglao

Written by: Francis Savanhkham
Originally Published in: Champa Meuanglao,  official Lao Airlines in-flight magazine, 2017 May-June Edition

Naked Espresso: Bringing Café Cool to Vientiane

Naked Espresso CML

When he arrived in Sydney as a student in 2001, Ariya Khamvongsa spent his first days sightseeing.

But as he took in the famous Darling Harbour and the iconic bridge, it wasn’t the world-famous landmarks that caught his eye – it was a queue outside a harbourfront café.

With no idea why he was lining up, he gamely joined the queue, and was baffled when he reached the end and discovered what everyone was waiting for – a coffee.

“I said, it’s gotta be something good! So I lined up with them, and then realised, oh, you’re waiting for a coffee?” he says.

“Australians and their coffee is just manic – they drink a lot! It’s all about their coffee. That particular place, Jamaican Blue Cafe, did up to 1000 cups a day.”

Until then, Ariya, known back in his home country of Laos as “Pop”, had never liked coffee, at least not the bitter black brew with sweetened condensed milk everyone drank in Vientiane. But on this day, he tried a latte – with two sugars.

The next day, he went back and asked for a job, becoming a dishwasher and later, a sandwich-maker, in the hours around his studies. By the time he’d graduated to waiter and, finally, a fully trained barista, he had weaned himself off the lattes, one sugar at a time, and hasn’t drunk anything but espresso since.

That was a long time ago, when he was just 18. Today, 16 years later, he’s the proud owner of Naked Espresso a growing empire of hip, buzzing coffee shops. They are distinctly urban-Australian, with industrial-style décor, “latte art” infographics on the wall and energetic young staff in yellow shirts, all bearing the café’s logo.

But outside, the tropical heat and narrow streets couldn’t be more difficult than an Australian city. Naked is Vientiane’s very own slice of Australia – or four and a half slices, to be precise.

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Speaking in his flagship café in a street off the riverfront in Vientiane’s bustling town centre, Pop says he knew, right from the start, that he would probably run a coffee shop someday, switching his studies from accounting to international hospitality and hotel management – a decision he says his parents found difficult to understand at the time.

But it wasn’t until a visit to Vientiane in 2010 that he realised he could do it here, and that his real inspiration was closer to home.

He remembers sitting with his wife at Khop Chai Der restaurant in the town centre, and observing streams of foreigners coming in and out of Joma Bakery Café across the street.

“It’s very inspiring to see the amount of people walk in – they’re the Starbucks of South East Asia,” he says of the Canadian-run local chain.

“There’re three in Vietnam, four in Cambodia. It’s very consistent, very systematic – they’re just spot-on.”

The two decided to return to Vientiane to start a family and set up their own café – a long journey that brought them eventually to their first venue on Dongpalane Road.

The atmospheric Naked is named after the type of filter Pop uses in his machines – harder to master and known technically as “bottomless porta-filters”.  

“That was harder to say and a bit long and boring, so we went with Naked,” he says.

The first Naked Espresso branch – Sydney-style with modern art and vintage bicycles on the walls – opened in 2012, on his 28th birthday. At first, he says, his clientele was mainly foreigners looking for an authentic coffee fix that was closer to what they were used to. But steadily over the intervening five years, he has noticed more and more Lao people embracing café culture.

“When I first opened my first shop, there were only four or five cafes, and now there’re about 50 cafes [in Vientiane],” he says.

He says both locals and foreigners love to work over coffee on their laptops, have meetings or catch up with friends – just like in Australia.

“That’s our plan, to bring Australian coffee culture to Laos,” he says.

“We’re celebrating 65 years [of diplomatic relations] between Australia and Laos and I think Australia has given me a lot.”

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at Naked Espresso

And he even got the chance to tell this to the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, in person when he was in Vientiane for the ASEAN Summit in September, 2016.

The Australian Embassy, wanting to give Mr Turnbull a memorable experience while in Laos, selected the Naked Espresso riverside branch as a venue for a special reception.  

“It just was a dream come true – he’s a guy that I look up to,” Pop says.

“We even created a Prime Minister’s blend, very limited.”

Today, two of the four Naked Espresso branches are franchised, with one to open shortly in Vientiane’s up-and-coming cafe and shopping district on Khouvieng Road, and another slated for Luang Prabang. He’s planning a roasting house and barista training courses, and is focusing more and more on using single blend coffees from Laos and overseas.

We tried to set up a new standard that I think eventually people will want to explore, what the international world is like.  

“We also do events, pop-ups, boat racing and That Luang. We’re trying to bring Lao people in. Now it’s picking up the Lao younger generation.” 

“We try to be a supporter to other cafes as well. My aim is to step back and do wholesales now,” he says.

“We’ve got this theme that we’ve tried to build values – that hospitality is a good job. Laos needs it because it’s a small country. People were quite embarrassed to be working as a waiter in Lao culture, but now it seems like people are enjoying it.”

He’s not the first to say it, but of course, happy staff leads to happy customers – not a problem for the Naked Espresso franchise in Vientiane’s coffee renaissance.

 

Champa Meuanglao
Written by:
Sally Pryor
Originally Published in: Champa Meuanglao,  official Lao Airlines in-flight magazine, 2017 May-June Edition

Ministry Focused on Wiping Out Malaria

Malaria Laos

With the theme being ‘End Malaria for Good,’ for World Malaria Day 2017, the Ministry of Public Health has set forth an ambitious goal to reduce the number of malaria infections and deaths in the upcoming years.

At the 60th session of the World Health Assembly in 2017, a meeting sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO), a proposal was put forth to change ‘Africa Malaria Day’ to ‘World Malaria Day’ in an effort to shed light on the existence of malaria in countries worldwide, and to create awareness on the global fight against the preventable disease.

Minister of Public Health, Mr Bounkong Sihavong, stated that in recent years people have been getting sick and dying of malaria and that has caused a negative impact on the socio-economic development in many countries around the world.

According to the WHO, an excess of over 200 million people were infected with malaria and 429,000 were killed by the disease in 2015 worldwide. There was a 21 percent decrease in the number of people infected, while deaths from the disease decreased by 29 percent as compared to 2010.

In Laos, over 16,000 people were reportedly infected with malaria last year, with 1 life being claimed. That’s 44 percent lower than the figures reported in 2015, when more than 36,000 people were infected with malaria.

“Until 2000, Malaria had been a significant health problem. However, our ministry has an ambitious plan to reduce the number of people infected with malaria and eliminate the disease by 2020,” stated the Minister of Public Health.