 LAO PDR
Peuan Mit Street Children Project
A program for street children, their families
and their communities.
Peuan Mit (meaning ‘friends’ in Lao) is a program designed and implemented by Friends-International in close collaboration with the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare to address the needs of street children and youth in Laos.
Peuan Mit works with 800 children and youth every month in the Lao capital, Vientiane, helping them to reintegrate back into Lao society and to prevent more children from coming to the streets. We support children and young people to return to public school, find employment, return to their families, become citizens of their own country, to discover their own culture and to express themselves.
Today, the team of 50 Lao staff at Peuan Mit provides a range of services:
- A mobile school provides remedial classes in communities in Vientiane and in the harder to reach communities in the suburbs.
- A home based productions project supports parents of children at risk to make an additional income so that their children can stop working and go to school.
- A center located in the center of Vientiane (and provided by the Lao Government) provides remedial classes, hygiene facilities, recreational workshops (art, dance, drama, sport) emergency shelter, life-skills education and counselling sessions to children and youth.
- Vocational training and job placement – training is provided to young people in hospitality (through the Makhpet restaurant) and in mechanics (at the Peuan Mit garage) and graduates are supported to find employment once they have completed their training.
- The reintegration team supported 400 children to return to public school in 2008 and helps children to return to their immediate or extended families. For those who do not have any family, a foster care program - the first of its kind in Laos - places children with local families.
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