UNICEF partnership with Lao animator flourishes as pioneering early learning clay-mation series enters third season

Animator Souliya Phoumivong sets up a new scene in season 3 of “My Village”

Picture a small road sidling along the Mekong River just outside Vientiane. Thailand visible just across the water. On both sides line row after row of family homes with motorbikes and pick-up trucks clustered outside. Most offer some kind of homemade business opportunity – a shop, food stall, a mechanic. Behind one of the houses, tucked away almost out of sight, sits an unassuming building. The faintly turquoise, washed exterior walls, pretty potted plants and ordinary appearance disguise the hive of creative activity within. Meet the world’s most unlikely Claymation studio.

Coconut Creativity and ECD TV

Saysomboun is a newly established province in the north of Lao PDR. It is an area rich in ethnic groups who still speak their own language and also the Lao language. One of the new provincial authority's priorities is to work to improve the education of children in the area with limited funding and human resources. But the impact of UNICEF’s ECD TV “My Village” project is being seen in unexpected ways with children of the region...