STELLA and the Rural Development Agency (RDA) have collaborated to support VOICE Laos’ existing Grantees to link and learn with one another in the role of Linking and Learning Facilitators (LLF). The ultimate aim of the project is to create supportive and enabling environment where such network can be formed and thrived. This is gearing towards sustainable mutual support that can later extend beyond VOICE project scope in the future.

To get there, STELLA and Rural Development Agency collaborate closely with VOICE Laos to shape Linking & Learning 2023 – 2024 in such a way that Grantees can co-create their own learning opportunities through six key approaches and methods below:
I. Community of Practice (CoP): CoP is designed to be the space where Grantees, who have the same expertise and issues, can band together to organise sharing and learning events, in hope that knowledge are shared and issues are solved together.

II. Community of Stakeholders (CoS): When grantees determine that they would like to engage with actors outside of their immediate grantee groups, LLF will work with Grantees to identify topics that they would like to exchange with relevant stakeholders. LLF will co-manage with relevant grantees to make it happen.

III. Capacity Strengthening: When co-sharing and co-learning are not possible within the CoP, Grantees will also have the opportunity to ask for capacity strengthening support through LLF. LLF will then work with the CoP to find suitable trainer(s) or resource persons to provide capacity strengthening workshop for Grantees.

IV. Innovative Project: Grantees coming together to share and learn might come up with new and innovative ideas they would like to pilot. Such collaboration will be supported by LLF so that grantee team can focus on implementing their pilot and harvesting learning results.

V. Online Portal: Some tools, when applicable, will be transformed into digital version to be stored on an existing online portal, www.panya.online. Other learning resources and Most Significant Change stories will also be stored there and share to all grantees and wider networks as learning opportunities.

VI. Learning Festivals: All the dedication for the betterment of rightsholders’ state of living should be celebrated! Learning Festivals will be great opportunities for all grantees from different CoPs and relevant stakeholders to come together to celebrate their achievement, learnings, and value of staying connected. These events will celebrate such qualities and also the spirit of VOICE and its values.

Project Journey: People, the Heart and Soul of Linking and Learning 2023-2024 

Rural Development Agency (RDA) and STELLA decided to take on the role of Linking and Learning Facilitators (LLF) for 2023 to 2024 to help 19 VOICE grantee partners to link and learn from each other. The main approach used was the creation of Communities of Practice (CoPs), where interested members from the grantee partners could join to learn what they want to learn and share their knowledge to others. From such interactions, it was anticipated that there will be capacity gaps identified and innovative ideas emerging.  Then, the grantee partner members could come together to address those needs. Once a year, all the grantee partners came together to celebrate their own learning and achievements via the Linking & Learning (L&L) Annual Event. In the final year of Voice, another key emphasis of the L&L during this time was also focus on exploring the sustainability of the L&L beyond VOICE. 

Between January 2023 and June 2024, the LLFs supported 19 grantees partners to form five CoPs that identified and created during the first kick-off workshop. These CoPs are: 1. Management, 2. Finance, 3. Facilitation, 4. Communication, and 5. Rightsholders; and joined by 44 current grantee members. Throughout the 18 months, LLFs and CoP members co-organised 15 CoP sessions. From these sessions, six new innovative ideas were born and three of which were funded and piloted, two capacity strengthening workshops on finance and facilitation skills were organised, five grantee members joined leadership development workshop, eight workshop games were developed and filmed as an attempt to make them more inclusive to all five rightsholders of Voice. In addition, the Gender Action Learning System (GALS) for the first time in Lao language were video documented as tutorials for all facilitators. A dozen of change stories published and two annual L&L events were also organised. All in all, more than 125 grantees and rightsholders participated in these activities.  

“I will tell people in my village like this, ‘Oh, I went to Vientiane Capital and joined the activities of people living with disability. I saw many things. Our village has contributed to the event as well.’ That’s what I will tell them,” said Mr. Soutta Phai-Aloun, rightsholders and village coordinator from People with Disabilities Development Association – Xiengkhuang; as he was reflecting on his experience joining the Voices of Hope, L&L Annual Event 2024 (Full recap video can be accessed here). The fact that he said ‘activities for people living with disability’ and ‘our village has contributed’ are great tribute to the mission of NOW-Us, or the mission to put rightsholders at the center of what we do as LLFs. His level of ownership shows that LLFs have come another step closer to realising the NOW-Us principle. 

In addition, when grantees were interviewed in the Annual Event 2023 (Life-Long Learning) as well as  in Most Significant Change (MSC) stories to understand grantee’s experience through CoPs and Capacity Strengthening and Innovative Grants, many interviewees also voiced something similar to how they take ownership over their ideas and the courage to share and to learn from each other. 

In reflection, despite the progress LLFs has contributed to the growth of grantees, there is one key challenge that is still in need of future planning and exploration. In the Lao context, any organisation whether it is formal or informal like CoPs, there needs to be leadership appointment and chain of command. This creates clarity of direction in one hand while it creates dependency on the other. Meaning, each CoP has its own leaders, but the leadership and their members often look to LLFs for approval and support in organising their own CoPs despite the fact that LLFs mentioned several times throughout the project period that CoPs should ideally be community-led. In fact, LLFs had gradually transferred the leadership and organising roles from LLFs to the CoPs themselves. This shifting of ownership happens, but very slowly. Within the 18 months, LLFs managed to move from organisers in the first kick-off CoP session of each CoP to co-organisers a year later. This shift only happens when members started to realise that CoP is a new mechanism for small, mutual beneficial informal learning and sharing, set aside from other conventional formats that they are used to such as meetings (formal), workshops (led by experts), and conference (big gathering). If there were more time, the best practice of organising a community-led CoP could be discovered, and the mission of NOW-Us in CoP could be realised. 

As Linking and Learning Facilitators, Rural Development Agency and STELLA are looking back at L&L 2023 – 2024 with pride and humility. Not everyday such an important work to contributing to the sharing and learning of 19 grantee partners would knock on your doors step. As the final curtain falls on Voice, we could only look forward to the future and wonder what would all the 19 grantee partners do with the knowledge that they, too, can share what they know to other rightsholders in their own communities. Only time will tell. 

Written by: 

Khouanfa Siriphone 

Creative Director & Co-founder, STELLA 

Jeng.siriphone@thestella.org