The Public Information and Awareness Services for Vulnerable Communities in Lao PDR Project (PIASVC) – is a project funded by the Japanese Social Development Fund (JSDF) and administered by the World Bank (WB). It is co-financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and aims to improve public access to information on natural resource rights and obligations, by providing awareness raising and enhanced legal counseling services to poor and most vulnerable communities. Increased awareness and improved capacity of local paralegals to deliver legal counseling will help these communities to prepare and address challenges and livelihood impacts linked to land and natural resources management.

The Development Objective is to improve access to legal information and counseling services for 30,000 poor and vulnerable persons (60% women and 85% ethnic groups) in selected rural districts to enhance protection and fulfillment of their natural resources and livelihood prerogatives. The project aims to improve public knowledge on natural resource related legislations by providing awareness raising and by enhancing legal counseling services for the poorest and most vulnerable communities with approaches tailored to their unique conditions, with a strong focus on women and members of ethnic groups. Increased awareness and improved capacity of village mediation committees, village volunteers and community leaders to deliver legal counseling will help the communities to address challenges and livelihood impacts linked to land and natural resources management related projects. .

• Component 1 Capacity Building: This Component supports capacity building for Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) members of the Land Information Working Group (LIWG) to deliver awareness raising and/or counseling service trainings for village-level facilitators and legal volunteers who will disseminate public information and/or provide counseling services for the vulnerable and poorest rural communities, including women, persons with disabilities, ethnic groups and communities located in remote geographical locations.
• Component 2 Small Grants: This component focuses on the delivery of the small grant support. The Sub-Grants will be used to cascade the CSO capacity building, and the training of trainer inputs provided under the Component 1 to implement in the project target areas the awareness raising (Sub- component 2.1) and/or the capacity building for enhancing counseling service at community level (Sub- component 2.2).
• Component 3: This component relates to Project Management, Monitoring and Evaluation and Knowledge Dissemination.

The project is managed and implemented by Helvetas in Lao PDR. Helvetas will work closely with the Department of Land (DoL) of MoNRE to ensure coherence and synergies with the department’s own efforts on legal information and dissemination. CSO members which will get involved with the implementation of project activities will also engage with Mass-Organizations like the Lao Women’s Union (LWU) and Lao Front for National Development (LFND) to ensure that the project activities are properly directed towards women and ethnic communities.