Breastfeeding: a winning goal for life

It’s now World Breastfeeding Week and UNICEF Laos and the Lao Government continue to promote the life-saving benefits of breastfeeding.

Coming together to #END Violence against Children

See what Saykoson Sanoubane, our communication officer, had to say about a recent creative workshop for UNICEF's #END Violence campaign which took place in Vientiane, Lao PDR:



A participant explains some group ideas

Ideas have the power to change, but finding that one idea that can inspire thousands, or even millions, to think differently is a big challenge. We began a process in Lao PDR to find this bright idea for a campaign to help stop violence against children, working with Government and civil society.

Like everywhere else in the world, violence against children is a real problem in Lao PDR where we recently discovered that three out of every four children experience a method of violent discipline. So our challenge was to find the idea that could help make people throughout the country understand that violence against children need not be the social norm and can and should be stopped.

Toilets for all

World Toilet Day, 2013 (c) UNICEF/2013

Weaving his way through a menagerie of chickens, ducks, dogs and pigs, past his family’s wooden stilt house and a dirt playground, fifth-grader Somkhan, 14, points at two small concrete outhouses at the side of the school grounds.

“This is where we go to the toilet now,” he says.

Two taps for hand washing stand close to the basic latrines, which serve the primary school in Don Xai village, a remote community of 50 households nestled in the dramatic landscape of mountainous Phongsaly province – one of the poorest in land-locked Lao PDR.