Community Mapping

The Water for Life watershed management project is well underway. My team and I are very busy now visiting villages in the study area. Last week we started our vists to seven villages and will continue for the next two months to conduct a variety of participatory research methods including community mapping.

The idea behind community mapping is to work with the villagers and have them draw out the concept of their village and the local environment. This will hopefully give us some insight into how they view their local environment and their understanding of watershed management. It's a good tool for getting the government staff to sit down and listen to the village residents and see things a bit more from their perspective. It will also, hopefully, give us an idea of some of the environmental impact on local watershed services from the villagers perspective.

Last week we started out by visiting Homxai village, about 10km north of Oudomxay town. On a Friday evening and Saturday morning, we did the community mapping exercise. If nothing else, it was a lot of fun and it's great to watch the village residents and my staff get into the exercise and draw up some great looking maps.

Tomorrow we are headed out to another village, Konoy, for another round. Should be fun.