A youth-powered tsunami recovery

After the 2004 Boxing Day tidal wave brought a halt to traditional life, villages in south-western Thailand are being led by an innovative student-driven learning program to recover their livelihoods and develop solution-finding skills to better manage their local natural resources.

From Ranong, just beneath Myanmar's lowest border, Thailand stretches 600 km south towards Malaysia in a leg-like, verdant peninsula. Its spectacular western coast, which took the brunt of the 2004 tsunami, is world-renowned for the archipelagos of near-shore islands that bejewel the Strait of Malacca.

The tsunami destroyed whole villages and killed working family members, taking with it occupational tools, equipment and the means crucial to livelihoods - like fishing boats and gear, or vegetable gardens - and in many cases permanently altering the coastal ecosystems. Some marine species important to the communities, such as crabs, were irreparably depleted, and in other places the traditional balance of habitats has now changed, reducing productivity. These effects have doubly compounded the difficulties of life and made the psychological impact of the disaster difficult to surmount.

'We felt that these isolated villagers needed a much more empowering alternative to the direct material tsunami aid that was getting through,' Chaluaywan Panya, known simply to her friends as Tui, says. She's pleased with the recent progress of 'Youth Leverage', the program she set up with partner Dr Opart Panya in mid-2005 to help remote southern Thai villages recover from the devastation of the 2004 tsunami. 'We had to try to find a way to actually reunite the community, to restore a sense of purposefulness and pride around new livelihood options - that's the only way to really heal from something like this.'

'We also wanted to take the chance to build new skills and knowledge while working on cultural and research learning activities, and we felt that training the young people, to empower the rest of the village or town, was the answer for the long term. They have the enthusiasm.'

Although local and international agencies rushed to assist in the region by providing basic relief as well as replacing essential equipment - and often, housing - the well-intentioned efforts caused unexpected issues. While generally the relief was free, some required villagers to pay for supplies over time. And where affected villages were closer to main access towns, multiple aid efforts actually became overwhelming and sometimes failed to consider any development plans already being run by the locals themselves. In many cases, the remoteness of affected communities meant relief didn't reach them effectively, or at all.

It was against this background that the 'Youth Leverage' project was designed and then proposed for funding, through Mahidol University in Bangkok, where Tui and Opart Panya teach community based natural resource management.

'We saw that the Youth Leverage program could involve post-graduates from the university getting experience by training the younger people of the affected villages in how to design and research projects on their local environmental issues and cultural history.

'The program aims to get villages back together through the youth projects, helping people to see for themselves what is still "good" about their communities. It gives empowerment through new skills and knowledge, but with cultural sensitivity,' Dr Panya says.

20 graduates from universities around Thailand were selected to work with young students of 20 villages in six provinces along the south-western coast. The university held workshops to train the graduates in how to teach informal research techniques to the village students so that they could then investigate the most important issues in their villages. This aimed to develop an investigative nature and process.

Supported by the graduates as well as by their local teachers, the students were then divided into groups and asked to inquire among parents and elder village members about the main environmental and resource priorities, local cultural history issues and the potential for community managed ecotourism opportunities. As a result of this process that Tui calls 'living research,' many of the village projects across the six provinces are now underway. While there are differences in the thoroughness, progress and participation in the projects depending on the village, many are showing signs of real, long-term practical success.

In Ban Buu Boi, Satun Province, the locals are finding advantage from the influx of jellyfish which suddenly appeared after the tsunami, forcing a change to regular fishing. As a result of their Youth Leverage involvement, villagers are now working with outsiders to harvest the jellyfish and process them in small shore-side 'factories' for export to Bangkok where the jelly is further refined into commercial agar. The project has united the village and provided a very successful alternative livelihood for many families - another clear success of the program.

Another outcome of this project for Trang Province has been the setting up of fish rearing cages as a way to supply food to the village as well as generate new income from local sales. One hundred cages have now been established by the students of Thambon Tha Nglo, after they recognised that the nearby reservoir was an underutilised resource. These cages are capable of generating 12 000 Baht (AU$400) per month for the 17 stakeholders now taking part.

'The villagers involved say they have more optimism now and a sense of independence,' says Tui. 'That's what we hoped for.'

By James Porteous
Managing Editor, ECOS: Australia's magazine on sustainability

Edited with permission from ECOS magazine. Click here for the full article.

• Added to ADG on: 10 June 2008 , contributed by: CSIRO ECOS
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