Friends-International Blog

Last month, the US embassy in Lao PDR approached Peuan Mit to identify youth for an English Access Microscholarship Program as they were striving to find the most disadvantaged students in Vientiane. This highly effective training program is designed to provide a significant English-language learning experience to bright non-elite 14- to 18- year-old students. Funded [...]

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This week has seen Friends Board Members, Program Directors, International Coordinators, managers and staff from across the world gathering together in Phnom Penh at the FI HQ building for our annual sharing meeting. This is a rare opportunity for us all to get together, to share our achievement from the previous year and to look [...]

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For International Women’s Day, we focus on two of our amazing female staff from the Peuan Mit program in Lao PDR. Let’s meet Davanh Keoninanluck, the school follow-up and case manager (part of the Peuan Mit Reintegration Team) and Parsialy (Sia) Boualong, a non-formal education teacher and case manager, part of the Drop In Center/Outreach [...]

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A success story from our Peuan Mit program in Lao PDR – how referral, vocational training and case management all combined to build a stable future for a young man with a troubled background. This month, former vocational training student Mr. S. will be taken off Peuan Mit’s job placement books. In January 2012, he [...]

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Enabling the young people we work with to express their creativity is a crucial part of the work we do in our centers and out in the communities we visit.  We love to explore new opportunities also, so when our Peuan Mit program in Laos was offered a couple of workshops in some new media [...]

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One Thursday back in May, Peuan Mit hosted a party for young people from marginalized communities for the first time… but not the last! The mobile school team, who have worked in these communities for many years went out around 5pm to pick up teenagers and young adults from Nongdouangthong community. A few younger children [...]

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Young people from very poor communities in Vientiane Capital and Vientiane Province in Laos have very little opportunities to complete their primary education, and most of them do not progress to secondary school. Vocational training centers are still fairly rare, even in Vientiane, and most of them are completely out of the reach of very [...]

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Ms K lived in a rural area of Vientiane Province with her grandmother and young brother until she was 15. Her parents, very poor farmers, left their children and traveled to Vientiane to earn a better living. They found work at the municipal landfill, 36 km south of the city. They lived on the dumpsite, [...]

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‘My name is Thongkham (I’m known as Kiao) and I started working in Peuan Mit in 2005 as a social worker in the prevention team, driving and doing activities with the mobile school. People always thought I was a doctor, I was very good at first aid for them!  Now I’m team leader of the [...]

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  One day Peuan Mit received an email about a young boy spending his days and nights in front of a local guesthouse. A volunteer staying there had talked to the boy who seemed to have no family or  place to stay, and didn’t seem to be eating or sleeping much. He was about 16 [...]

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