A dream for Dala’s future

Becoming a teacher is a common dream for many children in the rural areas of Lao.

This is one of Dala’s dreams too. Dala, 8, grade 1, says her favorite subject in school is Lao language. Her family doesn’t speak Lao, but a local ethnic language called Lao Tueng.

Her family is afraid Dala’s dreams won't be realized; they can’t grow enough food to eat, they don't have enough money to support her education.

“The harvest only provides enough rice for six months of the year. The rest of the time we depend on what we can harvest from nature, like foraging for bamboo shoots and wild vegetables. Sometimes we find small crabs and during the rainy season, we can go fishing,” said Dala’s mother Keo, 25.

Many families across rural Laos struggle with malnutrition and poor harvests of rice, their main food staple.

“We earn only 5,000-10,000kip (about USD$1) per day. We save-up each week until we have enough to buy a bag of rice. One kilogramme of rice is around 5,000 kip (about US 63 cents). The good rice is even more expensive,” Keo continues.

“When my wife was pregnant with my daughter Dala, I worried so much about our future. How will we feed our children when they open their eyes to see the world around them? How will we support their education? Will they able going to school or not? Many times these thoughts gave me headaches,” remembers Thongkhoun, 30.

A World Vision food security programme is working in their community to help them find a way to overcome food insecurity and hunger. Dala’s family received help from this project.

Each family received food in relation to how much they expanded their farm land as part of a food-for-work programme. Dala’s family received 45kg of food for expanding their farm an additional 30m x 30m.

“I was happy that we could extend our farm land. Our harvest increased almost 50 per cent because of new rice seed that we received during the food for work! We harvested 25 sacks of rice last year, but this year increased by 17 sacks. And it was enough to feed our family for the entire year. We even had some left to sell to increase our family income,” said Keo.

“Our plan is to expand the farm land again because our children started going to school and we need more income to support their education. If we have another good harvest, then we can sell the extra rice,” she continued.

Besides planting rice, Dala’s parents are now also raising 18 goats and 4 cows. They bought the animals with the income from selling rice.

“These animals are for when our family has an urgent need, like when a family member gets sick,” she adds.

Like a living bank!

Dala’s parents dream is to see their children get a good education and eventually get a good job in the future.

“That is why we work so hard today because we want to be able to support our children to have a better future. A better future than we did,” said Thongkhoun.