International Development and Community Education
I am the founder and director of the nonprofit organisation, Sustainable Laos Education Initiatives (www.sustainablelaos.org). I spent a decade in Southeast Asia working on community education projects. Our most significant project to date is the Sai Nyai Eco-School, a placed-based nonformal education centre with that marries social and environmental justice, and seeks to foster a bottom up vision of community-led science. I co-developed the school program and curricula, and taught (or facilitated learning in) critical environmental thought, women and development, community leadership, globalization and community resilience, green building, natural resource management, and agro-ecology to (and with) adults and youth from diverse, yet vulnerable, ethnic minority communities. My experience on these projects taught me that cultural diversity is an asset and I learned to strive to bring about intercultural dialogue and compassion in my pedagogy. As the founder and executive director of the organization, I was also responsible for coordinating multiple stakeholders including villagers, government officials, and funding agencies. As a result, I learned to engage respectfully and effectively with diverse partners to build innovative educational public programs that serve critical social and ecological needs. Click on the video below to learn a little bit about what we do: