Projects > Mekong Learning Initiative

Mekong Learning Initiative

The Mekong Learning Initiative is a reformulation of the Mekong Curriculum project. The Mekong Learning Initiative takes a long-term approach to Oxfam America's strategic change objectives. It does so through a focus on learning processes and learning outcomes among the professionals, opinion leaders and decision makers of the future, that is tertiary level students. It also works with a group of highly dedicated academics with strong social and environmental commitments and with keen motivations to enhance their own and their students' mutual learning with and through partner educational institutions in other Mekong countries. A significant aspect of the initiative is community engagement, under which each institution is involved with local rural communities of small-scale farmers and fishers in sustainable livelihoods-oriented work through outreach of various types. Some of the universities have established resource centres that have outreach value both within their own localities and within a wider Mekong regional framework. Several are also involved in policy at the academic and applied levels. The university network is significant in its own right and is quite tightly woven into existing NGO and other civil society networks throughout the region. Universities also provide part of the relatively limited political space in which small-scale farmers' and fishers' interests and concerns can be articulated on a wider stage in several countries of the Mekong Region. The academics involved with the network have primary research and teaching interests in the overlapping fields of sustainability, community rights, and appropriate farming and fishing systems as well as community-based natural resource management and resource tenure issues. By interacting with regional level institutions, MLI will also forge an important but largely missing connection between the various regional initiatives and institutions (MRC, IUCN, ADB, etc) and critical learning environments. A significant learning aspect is a focus on the impacts of mainstream development in its various manifestations and the alternatives as they are understood and applied in different country contexts.

Duration: 2005 - 2007

Partners:
Yunnan University (China)
National University of Laos (Lao PDR)
Chiang Mai University (Thailand)
Khon Kaen University (Thailand)
Ubon Ratchathani University (Thailand)
Royal University of Phnom Penh (Cambodia)
Tay Nguyen (Vietnam)
Can Tho University (Vietnam)

Funding bodies: Oxfam America (Mekong Learning Initiative), Open Society Institute

Earlier project stages: Stage 1 - Mekong Curriculum

Mekong Learning Initiative in more detail

© 2005 Australian Mekong Resource Centre