A News of Livelihood Enhancement of Batch1 Target Villages, Sepon District, Savannakhet Province in May 2026
Sepon is a district located in the central-southern part of the Lao PDR and still remains poor that has been continuously improved and developed. In this regard, CLEAR is one project that has contributed to eradicate the poverty of the peoples.
The target villages of CLEAR Project in Sepon district in batch-1 has 21 villages and divided into 2 types of poor villages such as type-I has 20 villages and type-II has 1 village only. There is total 1,108 families SHG members including 995 women involving with the livelihood enhancement.
The progress of the component2, the livelihood team established the Self-Help Group (80 SHG), with total 1,108 SHG members including 995 women. After the SHG formation, 140 Village Self-help Group Management Committees (VSMC) including 80 women, and 21 village facilitators (VF) including 8 women were selected. Later, the VSMC received the financial literacy training (bookkeeping and recording) by the livelihood team. The last training module for Income Generating Activities (IGAs) and Family Plan Investment (FIP) were delivered to SHG members. The training topic of IGA are poultry, pig, goat and fish raising, cassava, banana and broom grass growing. During the technical training, the livelihood team assisted also SHG members in developing their family investment plan (FIP). Finally, the team released the seed grant in total of 2,464,942,000 Lak to all SHG members to do their IGAs on the ground.
After IGAs implementation, cassava (381fms) produced 7,120 tons in worth of 7,12 billion LAK; banana (28fms) produced 8 tons in worth of 48 million LAK; the broom grass (64fms) harvested 5.4 tons and sold in worth 182 million LAK; goat (331fms) produced 1,490 kgs in worth of 149 million LAK; chicken (49fms) produced 350 kgs in worth of 29,750,00 million LAK, ducks (35fms) produced 120 kgs in worth of 22,500,00 million LAK; pig (204fms) produced 300 kgs in worth of 30,000,00 million LAK and fish (28fms) produced 80 kgs in worth of 8 million LAK.
For the cassava produce was sold both fresh and dried cassava chips at the collection points in the region. The broom grass was made the brooms in Kevin and Houay Ngeung villages and sold locally, and the unripe banana from five villages, Kaleng, Chieng, Palay and Torheua was sold to the Vietnamese traders.
In general, all most of SHG members earned their annual incomes of selling their produce and pad the loan and interest back to the SHGs and request the seed grant for the second cycle to continue their IGAs. We can say that the SHG members of batch-1 target villages have a better live, supported by the CLEAR project.
