SangNamGan: Reimagining Community Development in Lao PDR

Giving villagers a voice in local development initiatives

Project Context

In 2016, while working in northern Lao PDR, I discovered a school director and English teacher of Nam Meung Town desperately wanted a secondary school library. From their view, the question was simple: no funding and no way to get funding.

After initial efforts to apply for funding on the community's behalf was unsuccessful, I took on this project personally. I performed qualitative research within the community to formulate a way to fund the library. I conducted extensive ethnographic work, carried out contextual inquires with NGO workers, community leaders and townspeople, and led a focus group for feedback.

The Problem: So Many Needs, Medium-Sized Villages Not Prioritized

I emailed more than 10 education-focused NGOs to solicit their help, but each has its own reason for declining to help—understaffed, lack of funds, outside of their pre-determined program activities. While the current aid system was certainly helping many villages in need, there were still many more villages that were not being served. I noticed a gap in the market, a design opportunity.

I began generative research with the following questions in mind:

How might we enable this community to build a library? More broadly, how might we design a model that empowers communities to garner investments for projects?

Additional Constraints

No Handouts - There would not be a "knight in shining armor" complex within the model.
Inclusion and Empowerment - The community would be involved from the onset and empowered throughout the process.

My Role

I led the generative research and ideation phases of SangNamGan between August 2016 and October 2016. Once an approach was proposed, I continued working on the project during the implementation phase from October 2016 to October 2017.

Discovery Phase: $$ Follow the Money $$

I formulated research questions to investigate the two widely held beliefs of lack of funds and lack of agency. My research questions included:

Question 1: How do people spend their money?
Question 2: What are the most prioritized spending categories?
Question 3: What are the miscellanous categories? Do people have money to "treat" themselves?

Ethnographic Field Research

I immersed myself in Nam Meung village for four weeks, living, working and volunteering in the town. I became friendly with villagers through passive and active participation, including celebrating holidays and attending community events, joining family dinners with friends, helping with weekend chores like rice farming and bamboo collecting, and teaching English twice a week for secondary and primary school children.

Key Findings

I observed spending habits and money flow in great detail:

Rotating savings accounts outside of banks A group of 10 people would pool their money in a 10-month period, with each person assigned a set month to receive the pool. The person who received the first month's pooled money lost in interset, but had the first access to a sum of money.

Lottery Tickets Worth the Risk People were often buying lottery tickets, gambling on a quick win. Three days of the week, lotto sellers set up their tables to sell numbers and there were regular customers.

Events Galore Baby showers, weddings, and small community gatherings were all part of the daily life. At these types of parties, a contribution of 35,000LAK was common.

Synthesis & Proposed Solution

My research had unconvered a few insights:

Disposable Income: Some members of the community had disposable income that could be directed towards the implementation of a community project - the issue was how to motivate users to invest in long-term projects over short-term needs.
Multiple Personas: Multiple user personas existed within the community. Some households were doing well for themselves, with side hustles and regular savings.

A 50/50 Model: Increasing Motivation Through Loss Aversion

A reoccuring theme was that people were not interested in investing without a clear return. To combat this feeling, we tapped into the loss aversion theory. Loss aversion suggests that for individuals the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining.

We offered to cover half of the needed funding through non-profits and foundations if the community came up with the other half.

Concept Testing

Parent Focus Group: How do villagers respond to the idea of funding 50% of projects?

I led a focus group of mothers to determine what they thought of communities funding 50% of a project. Would 75,000LAK (~$9.25) be a feasible contribution for each of the 200 households in Nam Meung Village and Meng Town? The responses were revealing.

The women I led the focus group with were on-board, but concerned about villager who rely on subsistence farming. They did not believe those families would be able to pay such a contribution. I considered alterantive plans in the event that community members could not financially contribute. Could they volunteer their time? Lumber? Other materials instead? This was a concern I noted down and brought back to my community partners.

Outcomes

The 50/50 model was proposed to multiple non-profits and foundations and Jai Lao Foundation agreed to fund a 12-month pilot. The pilot launched in August 2017 and ended in October 2018.

Measurements of Success

The secondary school library was the first project under SangNamGan. Word spread and soon other community leaders began reaching out about potential projects. Future iterations of the concept continued to flourish - with adjustments made to allow communities to contribute labor and materials in replace of a monetary match.