localized poverty reduction in vietnam: building...

Localized Poverty Reduction in Vietnam: Building Capacity for Policy Assessment and Project

Planning

1998-2003

Final Report CIDA File No. S053280001

Submitted to Canadian International Development Agency

by

Centre for Human Settlements The University of British Columbia

June 2004

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CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY............................................................................................................... V

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................................VI

CONTACT INFORMATION .........................................................................................................VI

1. PROJECT CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES .............................................................................. 1 1.1. CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF POVERTY AND POVERTY REDUCTION ROLES ......................1

Box 1: Poverty lines and poverty measures in Vietnam .......................................................... 4 1.2. RENOVATION, POVERTY REDUCTION, AND UNIVERSITY CHANGE IN VIETNAM ................5

Table 1: Poverty achievements in Vietnam ............................................................................. 6 Box 2: Grassroots Democracy.................................................................................................. 7

1.3. THE LPRV PROGRAM...................................................................................................8 1.3.1. Origins ............................................................................................................................... 8 1.3.2. Goal and Objectives ........................................................................................................... 9 1.3.3. Key Terms........................................................................................................................... 9

Figure 1: LPRV Participating Institutions.............................................................................. 10 1.3.4. The Centres for Poverty Reduction .................................................................................. 11 1.3.5. The Network ..................................................................................................................... 13 1.3.6. The Learn-by-Doing Projects........................................................................................... 14 1.3.7. Dissemination of Lessons Learned................................................................................... 15 1.3.8. Strengthening Vietnam-Canada Relations ....................................................................... 16 1.3.9. Program Management ..................................................................................................... 16 1.3.10. Levels of Learning.......................................................................................................... 17

2. OUTPUTS: FACILITATING EFFECTIVE PARTICIPATORY POVERTY REDUCTION ON THE GROUND.......................................................................................................................... 18 2.1. STRENGTHENING SUPPORT FOR PARTICIPATORY APPROACHES .......................................19 2.2. MODELLING UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY RELATIONS........................................................20

Figure 2: Ladders of participation.......................................................................................... 21 Box 3: Four modes of participatory research ......................................................................... 22

2.3. GETTING TO 'D': BRINGING LOCAL GOVERNMENT INTO UNIVERSITY- COMMUNITY COLLABORATIONS ...........................................................................................................22

Figure 3: Getting to ‘D’.......................................................................................................... 23 2.4. DEVELOPING PROJECT PARTNERSHIPS.............................................................................23 2.5. PLANNING AND ANALYZING THE COMMUNE PROJECTS...................................................26

Table 2: Learning from Project Diversity .............................................................................. 27 Figure 3: The 7 Step Planning Model .................................................................................... 28

2.6. PROFILING COMMUNITIES................................................................................................28 Box 4: Community profiling.................................................................................................. 29 Box 5: Crushed with debt: Mrs. H ......................................................................................... 31 Table 3: Commune Profile Matrix ......................................................................................... 32

2.7. ANALYZING POVERTY CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES......................................................36 2.8. THE ROLE OF THE RESEARCHER ......................................................................................37

Box 6: The Role of the Researcher ........................................................................................ 37 Box 7: Poor and vulnerable in Bien Hoa City........................................................................ 39

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2.9. DEVELOPING AND FUNDING PROJECTS ............................................................................41

Box 8: Poverty Reduction Management Boards .................................................................... 43 Box 9: An Argument for seed money .................................................................................... 44

2.10. MANAGING PROJECTS....................................................................................................44 2.11. GENERATING AND TESTING NEW IDEAS..........................................................................46 2.12. PRODUCING PROJECT RESULTS......................................................................................46

Table 4: CPR self-evaluations of achievements and challenges ............................................ 47 2.13. LEARNING ABOUT POLICY IMPACTS ...............................................................................48

Box 10: Vocational education and community capacity building.......................................... 49 2.14. DEFINING LPRV’S OWN POLICIES ON ASSISTANCE.......................................................50

Box 11: A local beekeeping technical extension network ..................................................... 51 2.15. FORMING AND STRENGTHENING LOCAL GROUPS............................................................52 2.16. WORKING WITH GOVERNMENT ......................................................................................53 2.17. CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................54 3. OUTCOMES: BUILDING THE CAPACITIES OF UNIVERSITIES TO CONTRIBUTE TO POVERTY REDUCTION ........................................................................................................ 57 3.1. DEFINING THE NATURE OF CAPACITY-BUILDING ............................................................57

Figure 6: LPRV capacity building matrix .............................................................................. 58 3.2. INVENTING CPRS ............................................................................................................59 3.3. ENHANCING KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS............................................................................61 3.4. ENCOURAGING MULTI-DISCIPLINARY WORK..................................................................63 3.5. DEVELOPING CURRICULA ................................................................................................64

Box 12: Curriculum development .......................................................................................... 65 3.5.1. Supporting curriculum development ................................................................................ 66

Figure 7: Relationships between coursebooks ...................................................................... 67 3.5.2. Developing a Training Manual for Practitioners ............................................................ 68 3.5.3. Learning about Capacity-Building from the Curriculum Development Processes.......... 70

3.6. DEVELOPING AND SUSTAINING CPR CAPACITY .............................................................71 3.6.1. Resourcing the CPRs........................................................................................................ 72 3.6.2. Creating Incentives .......................................................................................................... 74 3.6.3. Managing Time ................................................................................................................ 76

3.7. CONCLUSION: OPPORTUNITIES FOR BUILDING UNIVERSITY CAPACITY FOR POVERTY REDUCTION WORK .........................................................................................................77 4. FUTURE OF PROJECT LINKAGES: INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION FOR CAPACITY-BUILDING ................................................................................................................. 80 4.1. BUILDING AN INTERNATIONAL KNOWLEDGE NETWORK.................................................80

4.1.1. Creating Physical Infrastructure ..................................................................................... 81 4.1.2. Resourcing Libraries with International Materials ......................................................... 83 4.1.3. Managing network programs: following Model 'C' ......................................................... 84 4.1.4. Creating a New Coordinating Unit: the CCPR................................................................ 86

4.2. STRUCTURING CANADIAN PARTICIPATION ......................................................................88 4.2.1. Involving Young Canadians ............................................................................................. 89

Box 13: Student comments from WUSC International Seminar held in cooperation with LPRV Universities ................................................................................................................. 89

4.3. ADDRESSING CULTURALLY SENSITIVE THEMATIC ISSUES...............................................90 4.3.1. Gender.............................................................................................................................. 91 4.3.2. Ethnicity ........................................................................................................................... 92 4.3.3. Policy Assessment ............................................................................................................ 94

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Box 12: Policy assessment ..................................................................................................... 95 4.3.4. Commonalties Among the Three Themes ......................................................................... 97

4.4. CONCLUSION: LESSONS FOR INTERNATIONAL CAPACITY-BUILDING, AND RECOMMENDATIONS TO CIDA........................................................................................97 5. CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................... 100 5.1. ASSUMPTIONS...........................................................................................................100 5.2. CHRONOLOGY ..........................................................................................................100 5.3. REDUCING POVERTY AT THE LOCAL LEVEL ...................................................101 5.4. BUILDING UNIVERSITY CAPACITY.....................................................................102 5.5. INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION.........................................................................103 REFERENCES............................................................................................................................... 105

SELECTED LPRV REPORTS AND COMMUNICATIONS USED TO COMPILE THIS REPORT ......................................................................................................................................... 110

LIST OF APPENDICES................................................................................................................ 122 APPENDIX 1: LPRV'S ACHIEVEMENTS , EXPERIENCES AND SUSTAINABILITY APPENDIX 2: AN ASSESSMENT OF LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE PROGRAM LOCALIZED

POVERTY REDUCTION IN VIETNAM (LPRV): BUILDING CAPACITY FOR POLICY ASSESSMENT AND PROJECT PLANNING APPENDIX 3: NETWORK OF POVERTY REDUCTION RESEARCH AND TRAINING INSTITUTIONS APPENDIX 4: FINANCIAL REPORT


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LIST OF ACRONYMS

CIDA Canadian International Development Agency

CPR Centre for Poverty Reduction

DARD Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development

DOLISA Provincial Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs

HCMC Ho Chi Minh City

HEPR Hunger Elimination and Poverty Reduction

LPRV Program for Localized Poverty Reduction in Vietnam

MARD Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development

MOLISA Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs

NCSSH National Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities

PRA Participatory Rural Appraisal

PRMB Poverty Reduction Management Board

RRA Rapid Rural Appraisal

VBARD Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development

WUSC World University Services of Canada

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This final report describes the challenges and opportunities encountered by the Localized Poverty Reduction in Vietnam (LPRV) Program partners over the course of the program; the strategies formulated in response; and the lessons learned for development work at three levels: participatory poverty reduction in the field, building university capacities, and international cooperation among academic institutions. The LPRV Program began in 1998 with significant funding of $4,885,000 provided by the Educational Institutions Program of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) through its University Partnerships in Co-operation and Development Program (UPCD). The University of British Columbia (Lead Institution) implemented the LPRV Program in cooperation with Université Laval, Quebec City, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and World University Service of Canada (WUSC), and with the participation of the following the partner institutions: The National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities of Vietnam (NCSSH), Hanoi, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, the University of Dalat, Hue University, Vinh University, and Thai Nguyen University. The LPRV Program’s goal was to build self-sustaining capacity in the partner institutions to work with communities and governments to develop and teach low-cost, participatory policy assessment and project planning methods that are effective in generating appropriate solutions to localized poverty, and suited to Vietnamese cultures and administrative conditions. The objectives of the Program have consistently been focused on the formation of well resourced, self-sustaining Centres for Poverty Reduction (CPRs) at each of the five partner universities in Vietnam, linked to various regional and international networks. Each CPR, in cooperation with local government officials and commune residents, and assisted by students and an interdisciplinary team of academic researchers, designed three local projects to identify appropriate methods for poverty reduction at the local level, and distributed the lessons learned within the region and, more broadly, through incorporation into university curricula and engagement in policy debates. Effective participatory planning methods and tools for poverty reduction were produced and disseminated to other communes, government agencies, NGOs, and other educational institutions in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, primarily through mutual learning in conferences and workshops that led to the writing of seven university course books and a number of training manuals and other documents focusing on: participatory action research, participatory community profiling, participatory project planning and management, participatory policy assessment and the LPRV Program’s cross-cutting themes on the significance of ethnicity and gender analysis in poverty reduction. The LPRV Program showed that universities have the potential to contribute significantly to poverty reduction in Vietnam. Its experiences provided lessons on the opportunities, weaknesses, strengths and limitations of the roles that universities can play in poverty reduction—from capacity-building at the international, national and local knowledge network levels, to providing support to government in technical assistance and policy assessment, to university curriculum development, pedagogical improvements and student training. Its major and continuing impact is its contribution to mutual learning by universities and research institutions dedicated to engaging with poor communities and local governments to identify and solve pressing problems faced by the poor.


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We take this occasion to thank the Canadian International Development Agency for its generous support. We would like to thank all of the university lecturers and administrators, local farmers and businesspeople and government officials of all levels who have made the learning described in this report possible.

The UBC LPRV Program Team Vancouver, June 2004

CONTACT INFORMATION The English-language web-site address for LPRV is www.chs.ubc.ca\lprv\ The Vietnamese-language web-site address for LPRV is www.lprv.gov.vn Communications to Vietnamese partners can be addressed to [email protected].

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1. PROJECT CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES For nations, universities are important sources of the innovation and knowledge transfers needed to generate wealth in the modern world. For those individuals able to access higher learning, universities are routes to prosperity and power. For the poor, however, the benefits of universities are not so clear. The wealth of nations is not automatically distributed to them, and the academy is difficult to access. Attending university is almost unthinkable for the poor; research is a mysterious process that they often encounter as objects of study rather than as direct beneficiaries. What changes are needed to make the university more relevant to the poor, and what changes can in fact be made? This volume will address these questions by reporting on a program that over five years has attempted to make universities and research institutes more relevant to the lives of the poor. The program has joined Vietnamese and Canadian institutions. Its aim has been to build university capacities for working with communities and government on poverty reduction at and from the local level. The program’s title is “Localized Poverty Reduction in Vietnam: Building Capacity for Policy Assessment and Project Planning (LPRV).” It was funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) from 1998 through 2003, and implemented by the National Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities of Vietnam and the University of British Columbia, in cooperation with Université Laval, Thai Nguyen University, Vinh University, Hue University, Dalat University, and the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City.

1.1. Changing Conceptions of Poverty and Poverty Reduction Roles Many different definitions of poverty can be, and are, employed to identify the poor and to measure the extent of poverty. In the first place, there are simple monometric indicators that establish “a poverty line” based on personal or household income or expenditures or on calorie intake. Through use of very simple income criteria, the World Bank has recently estimated that of the World’s 6 billion people, 2.8 billion live on less than US$2 per day and 1.2 billion live on less than $1 per day (World Bank 2002). In Vietnam, definitions of poverty and the means used to measure poverty have changed frequently over the years (see Box 1) in response to changing conditions, information, and concepts. Secondly, there are simple measures of relative poverty. Wolfensohn (2000), for example, says that 80% of the global population enjoys only 20% of global GDP. In Vietnam, while inequality and relative poverty as measured by the Gini-coefficient are comparatively low by international standards, there is evidence of rapidly growing inequality, particularly between


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the major cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and remote mountainous provinces such as Lai Chau and Ha Gaing (NCSSH 2001, 37). Thirdly, there are measures of absolute or relative poverty that are based on an index that combines indicators. The best known of these is the Human Development Index and the related Human Poverty Index that are calculated annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The Human Development Index relies on indicators such as nutritional status, education and health status. The Human Poverty Index, which was introduced by the 1997 Human Development Report, measures deprivation by looking at “five real-life attributes of poverty: illiteracy, malnutrition among children, early death, poor health care, and poor access to safe water” (UNDP 2002: http://www.undp.org/poverty/overview/). This complex and multifaceted nature of poverty is reflected in Amartya Sen’s consideration of poverty in terms of capabilities, which are substantive freedoms that people enjoy to lead the kind of life they have reason to value, such as healthcare, education and social support. From this perspective, income is only instrumentally significant, while capabilities are intrinsically important (Sen 1999, 87-88). Fourthly, and relatively new to international development circles and aid agencies, are the broader, often non-measurable, conceptions of poverty that consider not only individual capabilities and relative advantages, but also the less tangible aspects of being a human being such as freedom of choice and opportunity to participate in society as a citizen. Narayan (2000) points out that not only is material poverty caused by a lack of power, but that disempowerment is part and parcel of being poor itself. This has been reinforced time and time again, she says, when the poor are themselves consulted on the meanings and conditions of poverty:

From poor people’s perspectives, ill-being or bad quality of life is much more than just material poverty. It has multiple, interlocking dimensions. The dimensions combine to create and sustain powerlessness, a lack of freedom of choice and action. Each dimension can cause or compound the others. Not all apply all the time or in every case, but many apply much of the time. For those caught in multiple deprivations, escape is a struggle. To describe this trap poor people use the metaphor of bondage, of slavery, of being tied like bundles of straw.

International studies have shown that different measures of poverty can lead to vastly divergent targeting, and different understanding of the dynamics of poverty (Ellis 2001). In Vietnam, for example, measures of poverty taken by provincial departments, district agencies, and communities themselves can show wide gaps (Institute of Sociology, forthcoming). The way in which poverty is understood has profound implications for the design of poverty reduction work. Kanbur and Squire (2001, 216) note that when the definition of poverty was narrowly confined to income and expenditures, the key issue for development agencies to consider was the relation “between [economic] growth in the mean and changes in equality.”

http://www.undp.org/poverty/overview/)

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The poverty reduction questions were how to grow the economy and how to distribute the fruits of growth. Now the questions are becoming: how to work with the poor to help them free themselves from poverty in all its complex aspects and how to support them in developing their human capacity. Poverty reduction is increasingly becoming a process that involves building the capacities not only of poor individuals but also of the communities they are part of and the agencies that serve them. The program on Localized Poverty Reduction in Vietnam was founded on the hypothesis that institutions of higher learning can play a significant role in building individual, community and agency capacities, if they build their own capacity to do so. Building university capacity to respond to the complex dynamics of poverty creation and reduction entails a change in the way most universities are usually regarded by outsiders and academics themselves. It entails thinking of universities not only as centres of culture, science, technology, and professional training, where specialized experts pass on knowledge and advance their fields, but also as centres of social learning where intellectuals struggle with government and civil society to find the solutions to difficult social problems. Without dedication on the part of universities to collaborative social problem-solving, the poor may not enjoy the fruits of university teaching and research. Technology-led economic growth fuelled by university learning does not automatically trickle down to the poor. Growth-focused development-projects can even exacerbate poverty by destroying or polluting settlements and natural resources. If technology and growth are going to serve the poor, then universities—the designated institutions for educating professionals, officials, and active citizens, and for investigating complex problems—will need to devote much more attention to deepening their understanding of poverty and its solutions, not only by sociologists, social workers, and community developers, but across the campus and in the professions, agencies, communities, and citizenry at large. Without such attention, the poor will continue to receive few of the dividends from society’s major investment in universities. Unfortunately, the roles that universities can and need to play in reducing poverty are given as little attention by governments, aid agencies, and development theorists, as they are by universities themselves. Universities are on the periphery of development thought in part because they have not shown themselves relevant to meeting the needs of the poor and marginalized. Social development and poverty reduction have seldom been seen, in and of themselves, as among the mandates of universities. Indeed, on the face of it, the rationale for avoiding universities’ involvement in poverty reduction efforts would seem to be well founded. Analysts have shown that those nations that have directed their efforts to providing universal primary education (such as South Korea and Taiwan) have seen impressive rates of growth. Those that have spent disproportionately on the creation of elite universities, however, have been plagued by stunted growth and rising income inequality (Watkins 1998). As a means of direct poverty reduction and social development, there is little that can compare with promoting universal primary education, which ensures the access and advancement of all the population and, in particular, women and ethnic communities.


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Box 1: Poverty lines and poverty measures in Vietnam

Vietnam uses a definition of poverty as agreed upon in The Asia-Pacific Conference on Poverty Reduction organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in 1993: “Poverty is a situation in which a proportion of the population does not enjoy the satisfaction of basic human needs that have been recognized by the society depending on the level of economic and social development and local customs and practices” (SRV 2002, 16). International Poverty Line: The international poverty line was jointly developed by the General Statistics Office and the World Bank in the conduct of Vietnam’s two Living Standards Surveys (VLSS) in 1992/93 and 1998/99. The total expenditure-based poverty line was 1.16 million VND per annum in 1993 and 1.79 million VND per annum in 1998. National Poverty Line: The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) uses its own poverty line to aid planning and targeting in the national Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction (HEPR) program. MOLISA developed a new poverty line in 2001 to reflect socio-economic advances in the country and bring the line closer to that of the international standard. This line sets the minimum expenditures for an urban resident at 1,800,000 VND per annum; for a rural resident at 1,200,000 VND per annum; and for a resident of mountainous or island areas at 960,000 VND per annum. Participatory Poverty Assessments: Vietnam has also experimented widely with participatory analysis of poverty through both individual government programs (often in cooperation with NGOs and bilateral donors) and national Participatory Policy Assessments conducted in 1997 and 2003. These analyses have proven invaluable to government planners in understanding the poor’s perceptions of poverty, and the means through which they cope with poverty and ill-being on a day-to-day basis (see Turk 1999, ActionAid 1999).

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However, to suggest that universities on the whole are irrelevant to the poor is to make the false assumption that their mandates and methods cannot evolve. They can evolve by making a conscious effort to apply their creativity to this task, by learning from those institutions that have applied themselves to poverty reduction, such as St. Francis Xavier University in Canada or Colombia’s Rural University1 and by building on the willingness in some academic quarters to engage with communities, collaborate with government and civil society, change curricula, and learn through action-oriented research.

1.2. Renovation, Poverty Reduction, and University Change in Vietnam

Since the mid 1980s, Vietnam has undergone a vast shift from a centrally planned economy to one based on market principles. The scope and pace of this transformation––termed Doi Moi, or renovation, by the Vietnamese––has spurred many observers to declare Vietnam the next ‘Asian Tiger.’ The Vietnamese Party, State and Government has found itself faced with the need to build institutions that simultaneously stimulate and regulate the nascent market forces that contribute to Vietnam’s, at times bumpy, economic “take off.” Doi Moi has had a profound impact on both rural poverty and higher education. The liberalization of Vietnam’s rural economy has proceeded with, and in many ways led, the reforms that are taking place at more general levels of the Vietnamese economy. The early 1980s saw the formal introduction of household contracting systems for agricultural production, which effectively eliminated the state-organized cooperative as a mode of production on a mass scale. Later, the 1993 land law gave de facto land rights to peasant farmers, who were offered long-term leases on their plots, creating a land market of sorts. The allocation of limited land rights to peasants has contributed to the major successes of poverty reduction over the past decade in Vietnam. Vietnam's major achievements in this regard have led to Vietnam being recognized by the World Bank and UNDP as a model for achieving poverty reduction with growth and social stability. Despite the achievements to date, there is concern that meeting the challenges of continued improvement in the lives of the poor will be difficult. The challenges posed by remote, mountainous areas with large and diverse ethnic minority populations and deteriorating natural environments are becoming more acute, and there is evidence that the quality of life in some mountainous areas may be deteriorating rather than improving (Rambo and Cuc 2000). Likewise, the large scale and largely unavoidable migration of peasants to the booming urban areas of Vietnam provides major challenges for the provision of social services and for planning urban communities so that unserviced slums do not become the norm.

1 The Antigonish movement in the early 1920s brought St. Francis Xavier University into the centre

of the cooperative movement and created a school of adult education based on social justice and community control. Colombia's Rural University founded by the Fundación para la Aplicación y Enseñanza de las Ciencias (FUNDAEC) in 1980 works with poor farmers to deliver relevant education on-site that meets the needs of poor rural populations (Arbab 1998).


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Table 1: Poverty achievements in Vietnam 2 1993 Whole Country Urban Areas Rural Areas

Food poverty 24.9% 7.9% 29.1%

Poverty 58.1% 25.1% 66.4%

1998 Whole Country Urban Areas Rural Areas

Food poverty 15.0% 2.3% 18.3%

Poverty 37.4% 9.0% 44.9%

Initiatives such as Vietnam’s 1998-2000 Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction (HEPR) program (Program 133) and the recently completed 2002 Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS) confirm the commitment of the Party and the State to encouraging poverty reduction and equitable growth. These programs also recognize the need for local capacity building so as to enable communities and citizens to have increased control in the poverty reduction process. A critical policy to support these changes and provide an enabling environment for bottom-up poverty reduction is Decree no. 29/1998/ND-CP Promulgating the Regulation on the Exercise of Democracy in the Communes, which has strengthened the concept and the practice of grassroots democracy (dan chu tai co so) in Vietnam. According to the decree, the people (nhan dan) must be informed of laws, policies and plans that affect them including budgetary information and allocations. Their voices and opinions must be considered by local People’s Councils and People’s Committees. This decree and subsequent decrees and government decisions lay out a clear system for consultation with local people on state planning and mechanisms for citizens to lodge complaints at the local level. One major bottleneck to implementing grassroots democracy and providing an enabling environment for localized poverty reduction has been a lack of skills and human resources at the local level to develop plans and engage local people in deliberation on planning issues. The newly completed Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Framework strategy calls for enhanced training for local authorities, extension agents, and others who work closely with the rural poor (SRV 2002). However, there is also a need for improving capacity at the provincial and national level, particularly in the co-ordination with the local level.

2 Data from the 1992/3 and 1997/9 Vietnam Living Standards Survey. See also (Poverty Working

Group, 1999)

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Box 2: Grassroots Democracy

Doi Moi has significantly affected the education sector. First, demand for higher education has dramatically increased. In 2002, there were almost 800,000 students enrolled in public, private and semi-private universities across the country (MOET 2002). This expansion has been met with considerable reorganization within the higher education system, as specialized colleges have been gradually reorganized into comprehensive national universities and regional institutions with a multi-disciplinary focus and structure. Secondly, Doi Moi has permitted the establishment of private (most often called Dan Lap, or people’s-founded) and semi-private universities. Third, there has been a shift of some of the financial responsibility for higher education to students themselves, a process referred to as ‘socialization’ (xa hoi hoa). Fourth, new mandates have emerged for universities. The traditional division between teaching and research, whereby universities conducted teaching and government research institutes were responsible for research, has eroded, leaving a major demand for building research capacity in the university sector. Fifth, universities are being given increased control over their finances, which brings with it more autonomy in developing curricula and research programs (Vietnam Financial Times, March 3, 2002). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Vietnamese educational and state leaders are increasingly calling for a revision to traditional teaching methods, which, inspired by a combination of Confucian, French and Russian influences, stress didactic learning and minimize student control:

One major shortcoming in the recent past has been a lack of measures to reform the teaching method, which is still quite conservative—the teacher reads, the pupil takes notes; the main reliance is upon memory instead of

No. 29/1998/ND-CP, Promulgating the Regulation on the Exercise of acy in the Communes, lays out in detail the issues (a) that local people

be informed of (chapter 2); (b) that should be discussed and decided upon by ple (chapter 3); (c) in which people should be consulted, for which Commune s Committees and Councils should decide (Chapter 4); and (d) that should be sed and inspected by the people (Chapter 5). A new decree, titled Decree no. issued on July 7, 1993 and offers more details on the implementation of the at the local level. Other government decrees and directives that have ed grassroots democracy include:

Prime Minister’s Directive no. 24/1998/CT-TTg of 19 June 1998 on ding and implementation of customary laws of villages.

Circular no. 03/1998/TT-TCCP of 6 July 1998 of the Government ttee on Organization and Personnel guiding the implementation of grassroots acy in communes, wards, and district towns.

Plan No. 145-TT/TCCP of 6 July 1998 of the Government Committee nization and Personnel on the implementation of grassroots democracy in

nes, wards, and district towns. Government Decree No. 71/1998ND-CP of 8 September 1998 on the

gation of the regulations to realize grassroots democracy in government s.


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thinking, study is passive. There is a serious shortage of…equipment to renovate the new method of teaching and learning. (Tran and Nguyen, 2000, 235).

Vietnamese institutions have therefore begun to experiment and look for appropriate models to revise higher education. But rather than use ‘half-copied models’ from outside of Vietnam, there is a recognized need to develop approaches to higher education that at once learn from good practices and apply these lessons in a manner that is relevant to Vietnam (Giao Duc & Thoi Dai, Education & Times, 13 October 2002, 6). The spirit of change and experimentation being induced in Vietnam’s education sector by Doi Moi may provide an opportunity to develop new university programs that actively engage education and research with real-world problems in the field, including the pressing problem of poverty. Such programs would not only serve Vietnam’s pre-eminent development goal by applying the vast human and intellectual resources of universities to poverty reduction, they would also put the universities on the leading edge of pedagogy and applied research.

1.3. THE LPRV PROGRAM The program entitled “Localized Poverty Reduction in Vietnam: Building Capacity for Policy Assessment and Project Planning (LPRV)” was designed as an overall participatory action-research program, with the research oriented to investigating the potential of Vietnamese universities to contribute to sustainable poverty reduction, the action focusing on field projects and curriculum design, and the participation involving a diverse group of universities, social science research units, and selected local governments and communities.

1.3.1. Origins Although the LPRV program began in 1998, the concept was initially formulated in 1995 by UBC and NCSSH and built on the knowledge gained from the previous successful capacity-building linkages between these two institutions. These previous linkages had been funded by CIDA and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) from the early 1990s. In 1995, Laval, and the five Vietnamese universities — Thai Nguyen, Vinh, Hue, Dalat, and Ho Chi Minh City — were invited by NCSSH and UBC to become partners with them in what was to become the LPRV program. Together, the seven partners developed the full LPRV proposal through seventeen joint meetings. World University Service of Canada (WUSC) and IDRC agreed to collaborate as associated institutions. A first proposal for a program like LPRV was submitted by UBC on behalf of the partnership in CIDA’s 1996 Tier 1 competition. Rejected, it became the basis for the successful proposal submitted in 1997. In the 1997 proposal, the LPRV partners focused on the special challenges of poverty reduction in areas “defined by special conditions of ethnicity, physical inaccessibility, resource scarcity, or environmental degradation,” arguing that "Vietnam’s successful market liberalization is not sufficient to reduce poverty in these disadvantaged areas. Distinct, locally appropriate policies and projects are needed.”

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The proposal noted that “Vietnam’s new National Programme on Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction (HEPR) calls for planning and policy making to become more decentralized and integrative, with more self-help, and above all, more participation of the poor,” and that therefore the Vietnamese LPRV partners “seek to enhance their capacities to teach, develop, and apply suitable bottom-up planning methods for generating policy and project solutions to localized poverty” and “to develop a permanent self-sustaining network of Vietnamese institutions dedicated to mutual learning about such methods.”

The core of the proposed program was to be “a series of action-learning poverty reduction projects at each of the Vietnamese partner universities. In each project, local officials, community and non-governmental leaders, and entrepreneurs will practise collaborative problem solving amongst the poor with university faculty and students. This will include testing methods for ensuring women, ethnic minorities, and the poorest of the poor are meaningfully included in planning and institution building that affects them.”

Lessons learned from the local projects were to be shared through workshops, student and faculty exchanges, and published teaching materials.

1.3.2. Goal and Objectives

The LPRV goal, as stated in the proposal, and as referred to throughout the program, has been: to build self-sustaining capacity in the partner institutions to develop and teach low-cost participatory policy assessment and project planning methods that are effective in generating appropriate solutions to localized poverty, and suited to Vietnamese cultures and administrative conditions.

1.3.3. Key Terms “Appropriate solutions” refers to policies and projects that address local environmental and cultural conditions in order to reduce poverty sustainably, equitably, and with respect for human rights. They are administratively and technically feasible. They acknowledge gender relations and inequalities, produce net economic benefits, and enjoy the support of the people they affect. To meet these criteria, local solutions must be designed with the participation of the people they are to serve and the people who will implement them. “Policy assessment” refers to the prediction, evaluation, and monitoring of government policy and program outcomes, tradeoffs, and synergies, as the basis for making sound recommendations to decision-makers at all levels. Major methods include: cost-benefit analysis, environmental and social impact assessment, and multiple-accounts evaluation. These can all be applied in participatory as well as technical forms. “Project planning” refers to systematic processes for involving relevant parties in clarifying problems and objectives, analyzing opportunities and constraints, creating frameworks and designs, comparing options, and ensuring implementation of sound projects.


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Figure 1: The LPRV Program’s Participating Institutions

University of Thai Nguyen

National Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (Hanoi) - lead

University of Vinh

University of Hue

University of Dalat

National University at Ho Chi Minh City

Canadian partners: University of British Columbia - lead Université Laval

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“Low-cost methods” refers to methods for organizing readily available information and ideas in order to aid assessment and planning by people and agencies dealing with complex issues. They include tools to aid thinking, communication, collective analysis, and reaching agreement. They may use, but do not depend on, quantitative data. They include methods for using indigenous knowledge in non-exploitative ways, and for encouraging various modes of communication. “Locally suitable methods” refers to approaches and tools that respond respectfully and with integrity to cultural (minority, rural, urban, official) values and protocols, e.g. those which affect the participation of women in meetings, and that take into account varying opportunities and constraints posed by different administrative levels, procedures, and resources. The LPRV objectives have consistently been to work toward the following five results:

1. Formation of a well-resourced, self-sustaining Centre for Poverty Reduction (CPR) at each Vietnamese partner institution.

2. Formation of an internationally associated, self-sustaining Vietnamese network of CPRs.

3. Reduction of poverty in fifteen representative communes through specific learn-by-doing policy assessment and planning projects related to livelihood protection, income generation and service accessibility.

4. Production of knowledge about effective participatory methods, and dissemination of this knowledge to other communes, government agencies, NGOs, and educational institutions.

5. Broadened and deepened relations between Canadian and Vietnamese institutions and people.

1.3.4. The Centres for Poverty Reduction

When the concept for LPRV was being formulated in the mid-1990s, the university system in Vietnam, like many other sectors, was undergoing a process of reform. The previous plethora of autonomous colleges, each representing a particular discipline, were being consolidated into an administratively streamlined system of national and regional universities offering more promise for interdisciplinary cooperation. These comprehensive universities were themselves gaining increasing autonomy to develop their own programs. As well, the universities were also being asked to provide policy advice, and to collaborate with national research centres such as NCSSH. A number of universities were indicating their commitment to poverty reduction by providing special support for students from poor or remote areas (e.g., exempting them from fees, or supplying them with accommodation, tutoring, and distance education), and by paying attention to HEPR in new research programs. The time was propitious for meeting The LPRV Program’s first objective: to establish at each of the Vietnamese partner universities a Centre for Poverty Reduction (CPR) to promote cross-disciplinary research, teaching, and extension on participatory methods for poverty reduction. In each case, the CPRs were established with the active support, and often direct


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leadership, from the university’s most senior levels. Rectors and vice-rectors played significant roles in the operation of most of the CPRs. At the inaugural meeting of LPRV in August 1998, after funding had been secured from CIDA and the program approved by Vietnam’s government, a general model for each CPR was designed and agreed to by some 50 participants from all partners. Each CPR and NCSSH would consist of a core of eight scholars. There would be a similar division of labour in each CPR. In each case, there would be one person responsible for leading the capacity-building and intra-LPRV linkages related to gender analysis. A second person would have similar responsibilities for capacity building in the realm of working on poverty reduction with ethnic minorities. A third person would take the lead in the area of policy assessment, a fourth in the area of participatory project planning methods, a fifth in the area of network-building. In this way, not only was a division of labour effected in each CPR, but as well a pan-LPRV team, or “cross-cutting theme team” was thus defined for each program theme area—gender, ethnicity, etc. For example the cross-cutting LPRV “gender team” comprised a representative from each CPR, from NCSSH, and from each of the Canadian partners. This division of labour was more or less adopted and followed throughout the five-year program by each CPR. The CPRs were intended to play major roles in linking their respective universities with external agencies and poor communities, to coordinate learn-by-doing projects in the field by teams of professors and junior scholars from different disciplines and departments, to promote development of new and enriched curricula related to poverty reduction, and to facilitate capacity-building basics such as English or French language-training and training in relevant computer skills such as Internet searching and materials cataloguing. The decision to establish the CPRs as new institutions, rather than to work through existing departments, was made to ensure that the universities could engage with the many dimensions of poverty by applying the resources of diverse faculties and departments. With resources from its university and the CIDA funding for LPRV, each CPR established an office with computer facilities and a small resource library. The capacities of individual scholars at the CPRs were to be enriched through a number of mutually reinforcing mechanisms: field experience in the learn-by-doing projects, participation in training and lessons-learned workshops organized for LPRV as a whole or for individual CPRs, short study tours to learn from poverty reduction work in other Southeast countries, longer-term studies at UBC or Laval, books on poverty reduction provided through LPRV, and access to materials available on the Internet. All such activities were organized by and for each CPR during the course of the LPRV program. In Year 2 of the program, it was decided that each CPR should be aided in the multifarious aspects of its capacity-building by one UBC scholar, one UBC support person, and one NCSSH scholar. Such “appointments” were made with some shifts in responsibility over the

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course of the program. The approach provided for a helpful division of labour within UBC and within NCSSH. Chapter Three of this volume discusses in more depth the processes by which the CPRs built the capacity of their universities and individuals to develop and teach participatory planning and policy assessment methods, and the capacity-building lessons to be learned from these experiences.

1.3.5. The Network The second LPRV objective, to create an internationally associated, self-sustaining Vietnamese network of CPRs, was partially met just by the process of creating the consortium of institutions that put together the plan for LPRV and the proposal to CIDA to fund it. Once funding was approved, this consortium began to build itself into a network operating through frequent inter-university workshops as well as an information technology infrastructure of computers with internet and e-mail connections. From the beginning, NCSSH has played a pivotal role in building the network. Under the leadership of its President, it has led the network intellectually, was interlocutor with national agencies, coordinated all of the major workshops, organized and sponsored visits to Vietnam by Canadian faculty, students and interns on LPRV assignments, administered on behalf of UBC the CIDA funds for LPRV that were spent in Vietnam, developed and maintained The LPRV Program’s Vietnamese-language website and network server, helped the CPRs to build their libraries, oversaw the preparation and editing of curriculum materials, initiated training programs for officials based on the learning from LPRV, published The LPRV Program’s reports, and gave exposure to LPRV through Vietnam’s national media. The importance of NCSSH’s networking role became increasingly apparent as the LPRV program progressed. In the third year, it was recognized that the role necessitated the formation by NCSSH of a Coordinating Centre for Poverty Reduction. The CCPR was duly established in Hanoi with its own office and meeting space, equipment, staff and professional leadership drawn from the ranks of senior and mid-level NCSSH scholars, and budget. The CCPR built up its own library staffed by a part-time librarian specializing in poverty reduction and development with support from Canadian interns. The CCPR has organized training programs for local government officials and sought grants from various sources to continue its work. After the CCPR was established, the most senior level of NCSSH––the president, a vice-president, and another senior scholar––continued to guide the overall direction of the network, and took responsibility in the final years for building the basis for the network’s sustainability after the term of the Tier 1 CIDA grant expired. This work has culminated in the rectors of the Vietnamese LPRV universities committing to work with NCSSH in establishing a new Network of Universities and Research Institutions Dedicated to Poverty Reduction. This Network holds promise for significantly extending the poverty reduction work of each member university beyond the CPRs.


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The Vietnamese staff coordinator for LPRV worked directly with these leaders, but also maintained close relations with the CCPR. Division of labour within the network was effected along three major programming axes. First, the “cross-cutting theme” teams, all of which included a member from each of the Vietnamese and Canadian partner institutions, led by a member of NCSSH, provided for an intellectual division of labour. All of these teams benefited from and contributed significantly to the networking. Some of these teams had more coherence and continuity than others. The information networking team provided carefully planned support to each CPR and the Network as a whole. The “gender” team was a very strong team from the beginning, at certain critical junctures providing intellectual leadership on participatory planning and learning processes that went beyond the gender focus. The “ethnicity” team was also a strong team throughout the program, organizing workshops to enable all CPRs to wrestle with thorny issues relating to cross-cultural poverty reduction work in Vietnam. The policy assessment team got off to a late start because of the conceptual and political difficulties posed by the topic and by the leading Vietnamese member being seriously ill early in the program. In the program’s latter years, the team organized a significant workshop and follow-up round table. The gender, ethnicity and policy assessment teams have each produced a major publication for continuous capacity-building in their respective areas. Secondly, there was the division of labour within UBC and NCSSH with regard to responsibilities for liaising with the CPRs, as described above. A third division of labour emerged mid-way in the program. Each of the CPRs took on responsibility for developing curriculum in one topic area, as explained below.Chapter Four expands on these various aspects of The LPRV Program’s network-building and explores the lessons to be learned from the experience.

1.3.6. The Learn-by-Doing Projects The third LPRV objective was to build participatory planning capacity in and through the CPRs through small “learn-by-doing” projects in selected communes. The projects were to be designed in collaboration with government officials and communities, responding to local needs and opportunities as identified by local people. Project initiations were to be, and generally were, staged such that each CPR would initiate project planning in one commune (or urban ward) in the first year of LPRV, then continue with that commune throughout the program; work in a second commune would begin sometime in the second year, and in a third commune sometime in the third or fourth year. The projects were seen as valuable in their own right, as serious attempts to reduce poverty in the host commune, but were also seen as the central means to capacity-building. Learning from the experience of collaborating with communities and government, from engaging in planning that included participation by the poor themselves, and from the results achieved, or not, was seen as the best means to heighten understanding first among faculty, and secondly among students, about the nature of poverty, the challenges to reducing it, and opportunities for doing so through inter-institutional collaboration and the participation of people with local knowledge and stakes in the outcomes.

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The projects involved building irrigation and sanitation system improvements, co-operative livestock raising, specialty garden crops, vocational training and credit provision. Lessons learned from the projects about participation and community development were to be compared in workshops bringing people from the various LPRV partners together, and then incorporated into curricula for students and short courses for officials. Soon after the LPRV program got underway, a regular cycle of workshops was designed and implemented throughout the five years. The cycle, which reflected the nature of the Vietnamese and Canadian academic years was: a meeting of the full LPRV Steering Committee every May, at which progress was evaluated and work plans with associated budgets were set for the following year; a “National Workshop” every August where the Vietnamese participants met alone and worked in Vietnamese only; an “International Workshop” every December where Canadian and Vietnamese participants discussed the lessons being learned and drafted general directions for future work. The Steering Committee meetings were combined with study tours in Canada (Year 2), Thailand (Years 3 and 5) and Malaysia (Year 4). Other meetings were held in various locations around Vietnam with NCSSH and one of the CPRs making the necessary arrangements. In addition to the regular cycle of workshops, there were a number of workshops bringing people from the various LPRV institutions together to focus on specific issues related to poverty reduction, e.g. poverty definitions, commune profiling, participatory planning, gender analysis and inclusivity, working cross-culturally with ethnic minorities, urban issues, micro credit management, and bottom-up policy assessment. As well, each CPR organized workshops, on topics such as the above, at its own institution. The projects and the lessons-learned workshops were generally conducted as planned, though not without some difficulties in making the projects as participatory as had been intended and in having the learning be systematic and shared. Chapter 2 of this volume discusses in depth the projects and related learning processes.

1.3.7. Dissemination of Lessons Learned The fourth LPRV objective has been to disseminate the lessons learned through the program. Originally, the focus of learning was on lessons to be learned from the commune projects about effective participatory planning and assessment methods. These lessons were to be analyzed through workshops and electronic communications, then documented in publications of various types: curriculum outlines, training manuals, etc. In practice, communication difficulties and lack of time reduced the amount of systematic inter-institutional learning about participatory planning from what had been envisaged. Instead, the learnings evolved more organically through presentations and discussions at workshops focusing on specific topics with theorizing related in various ways to LPRV experience but never in a linear, positivistic process of hypothesis generation, testing in the field, theory refinement, new hypothesis generation, and new testing.


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The major product emerging from the organic learning has been the production of a course text or training manual by each of the CPRs. In the third year, a division of labour for these products, reflecting each CPR’s primary interest, was agreed upon. Thai Nguyen took responsibility for producing a publication on participatory project planning, Vinh for one on participatory action-research, Hue for commune profiling, Dalat for policy assessment, and Ho Chi Minh, for urban poverty reduction. These publications are supplemented by publications that have been prepared by the cross-cutting theme teams, by a collection of commune-project case studies prepared by Canadians, and by a publication on poverty reduction issues prepared by Laval. It has become clear as the program progressed that the lessons being learned pertain not only to effective methods in commune work, i.e., to the ways that universities can contribute to community and government capacity-building. The LPRV Program’s lessons also pertain to building the capacity of universities to contribute to local capacity building for poverty reduction work, and to building the capacity of international networks to support university capacity-building of this kind.

1.3.8. Strengthening Vietnam-Canada Relations The fifth LPRV objective was not related to specific activities or programming. Strengthening ties between Vietnam and Canada was seen as an outcome that would occur naturally through interactions between the Vietnamese and Canadian participants in LPRV and from other international connections these interactions facilitated. What has emerged at the end of LPRV is a recognition that the learning from LPRV can enrich Canada as much as Vietnam. Concretely, this recognition has resulted in a decision by UBC to explore a long-term partnership with the LPRV institutions in Vietnam; a relationship not dependent on CIDA grants, and one which could be a model for UBC’s relationships with universities in other countries.

1.3.9. Program Management The LPRV program has attempted to manage itself in a style that reflected its commitment to participatory and inclusive planning. The programming and budgets were the final responsibility of the program Steering Committee that consisted of two members from each of the eight partner institutions. It was agreed in the design of the proposal that at least one representative from each institution must be a woman. The Steering Committee was co-chaired by the President of NCSSH and a senior UBC scholar. UBC has been the institution responsible to CIDA for administering all funds allocated by CIDA to LPRV, but from the beginning it was agreed that UBC would allocate portions of the funds to the other partners for them to spend as they saw fit so long as these expenditures were within the work plan and budgetary guidelines established annually by the Steering Committee. For example, in several years an amount was allocated to each Vietnamese

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institution for travel costs related to three-month studies in Canada by Vietnamese scholars, but it was left up to each institution to determine who to send to Canada and in which year. The general formula agreed to at the inaugural meeting of the Steering Committee in 1998 was that the two Canadian institutions would be allocated 50% of the funds over the life of the program, and the Vietnamese institutions the other 50%. Within the Vietnamese share, each CPR would have responsibility for one-seventh of the funds, NCSSH for the other two-sevenths. When the CCPR was established within NCSSH, it received half of the NCSSH share (i.e., one-seventh of the Vietnamese total) for its programming. UBC had responsibility for three-quarters of the Canadian portion, Laval had one-quarter. NCSSH was responsible for ensuring proper management of all funds allocated to the Vietnamese institutions. The LPRV Program Director, a UBC faculty member aided by staff, managed the overall LPRV activities, scheduling, reporting, budgets, and finances within the parameters set by the Steering Committee, and the UBC-specific activities and finances. An LPRV co-director at Laval managed activities and finances there, while a co-director appointed by NCSSH did the same for all of the Vietnamese partners. More on the management approach taken by LPRV, and the lessons to be learned from it, is presented in Chapter 4 of this volume.

1.3.10. Levels of Learning This volume addresses three levels of learning that have occurred within LPRV: learning about participatory methods for planning poverty reduction projects and assessing policies from a poverty perspective, learning about building the capacity of universities to contribute to poverty reduction, and learning about the role international networks can play in helping universities to build their capacities to contribute to poverty reduction. These three levels are addressed respectively in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of this volume.


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2. OUTPUTS: Facilitating Effective Participatory Poverty Reduction on the Ground

While the primary goal of the LPRV was to initiate change in the participant universities, the key problem around which change would be initiated—and the key rationale for the change—was that of poverty at the local level in Vietnam. This chapter will examine the lessons learned from the CPRs’ collaborative project planning in poor localities. We should start by clearly stating what this chapter can and cannot cover. While there was a great deal of learning from the LPRV field experiences and workshop discussions about the causes of poverty at the local level, and the potential means to fight it, we do not address these matters in this report. Instead, we look inward to explore what we have learned about the potentials of universities to partner with poor communities and local government agencies involved in carrying out the anti-poverty agenda. The means through which LPRV participants engaged with poor communities was through local projects that would utilize the strengths of the community, the university, and local government to help identify and solve pressing problems faced by the poor. Each CPR worked to design three local projects, in which teams:

• selected a local community in which to confront a key poverty problem; • organized researchers, officials, local people and leaders into teams to devise

appropriate project solutions and assess related policy options; • held workshops to review, select, and adapt relevant planning and assessment

methods; • helped teams apply these methods to the planning of one or more major livelihood

protection, income generation, or service delivery projects; • drew on international experience to provide teams with relevant poverty reduction

models; • monitored the implementation of proposed projects and policies; • evaluated and refined appropriate applied planning and assessment methods; • identified lessons learned; • incorporated refined methods, enriched with cases from the program's work, into

practitioner manuals and curriculum materials for both extension and formal education.

The goal of these projects was to identify appropriate methods for poverty reduction at the local level and to distribute these lessons within the region and more broadly through incorporation into curricula and engagement in policy debates. For this reason, the projects were often referred to as “pilot projects.” It is important to note that from the very outset, the short-term goal of the projects was not to achieve a measurably significant reduction in poverty. While hopes were strong that some poor people would improve their lives as a result of the projects, and intense effort was applied to achieving this result, the major

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purpose of the projects was to enable learning that could lead to vastly improved capacity of communities, university and government to address the root causes and reduce poverty over the longer term.

2.1. Strengthening Support for Participatory Approaches The early workshops in the LPRV program reviewed the lessons learned internationally over recent decades about the benefits to be derived from involving the poor in development planning, and introduced some of the participatory tools developed by international NGOs and citizens’ groups. These tools included the participatory rural appraisal (PRA) techniques publicised by Chambers (1997), Slayter-Thomas, et al. (1997) and others, the participatory action research (PAR) perspectives advanced by socially engaged academics (see contributors in Reason and Bradbury 2003), the gender analysis lenses offered by Moser (1993) and Kabeer (1994), and the participatory processes promoted by planners (e.g., Boothroyd 1991). These workshops were intended to provide a basis for developing the action-research projects in the communes, but they did not promote a recipe for project design. Rather, they stressed the philosophy or concepts of participation that should be taken into account in planning, implementing and learning from participatory projects. One focus was on enhancing openness to participation and inclusiveness among experts and professionals, and on building relationships of trust and legitimacy between community insiders and outsiders such as academics. A second focus was on the complex issues involved in encouraging inclusiveness within the community––for example, the locality-specific cross-cultural issues related to gender equality that need to be carefully defined and considered when planning in a participatory manner for poverty reduction in each community. Method was seen as secondary to attitude in these introductory workshops. As it turned out, this perspective continued throughout the LPRV program When LPRV began, the Vietnamese context already offered a fertile bed for nurturing participatory approaches to poverty reduction. Many participants in the first workshop "Foundational Concepts, Methods and Tools in Poverty Reduction" held at each CPR in November-December 1998 pointed out that Vietnam, since the pre-colonial period, had a long history of people's participation, labour mobilization and other forms of collective action. The war interludes had, on the one hand, further engaged people's initiatives and participation in the war efforts, but on the other, necessitated centralized command and top-down directives. During the period of independence, development planning agencies of the government provided room for direct consultation with local people about projects and programs that had already been planned or developed from outside their communities. In the first place, while the idea of universities collaborating with communities on participatory initiatives may have been as new to Vietnam as to other countries, the idea of participation, broadly defined, was well grounded in Vietnam. President Ho Chi Minh’s maxim that “Dan biet, dan ban, dan lam, dan kiem tra” (“the people know, the people discuss, the people do, the people monitor”) has informed the practice of local governance in Vietnam to this day.


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In the second place, thanks to Doi Moi, Vietnam has been open, from The LPRV Program’s beginnings, to new ideas for strengthening both the growth and poverty reduction aspects of development. Indeed, it is hard to think of a country that has been more open than Vietnam in recent years to considering fundamental ideas about development, whether these ideas are generated from within or imported from abroad. Thus LPRV was able to explore with little inhibition any and all ideas for fostering participatory planning and policy assessment at local levels. It should be noted that, just as in English the word “participation” has a range of meanings, so too its translation into Vietnamese can produce different results. For example, two terms that are used to evoke participation are tham du and tham gia. The difference between them is at times minor, but at other times they may connote fundamentally different practices. Tham gia conjures up visions of individuals offering reports, giving ideas, and, by extension, controlling the process of participation in which they are involved. Tham du is more limited in its nature, and can involve listening to a lecture, or being in attendance at a meeting. One of the more recognizable forms of ‘participation’ to local people is known as tham gia dong gop through which community members are to provide 40 percent of the inputs in projects that benefit them, in either cash or kind, while the state provides the remaining 60 percent. Similar definition and translation issues arise with regard to other key terms in the LPRV vocabulary, such as “policy assessment,” or “community profile,” which translated into Vietnamese becomes community ‘files’ or ‘documentation.’ In many of these cases, translation issues reflected underlying conceptual issues that had to be tackled prior to agreeing on a common lexicon of participation and development in the project (see discussion of language issues in 2001 Curriculum Development Report, Hue University). Throughout the LPRV program, therefore, LPRV participants have therefore had to pay continuous attention to clarifying terminology and intents, with regard, for example, to the forms and levels of participation being strived for.

2.2. Modelling University-Community Relations Taking on the task of building university capacity to contribute to local poverty reduction work required all LPRV participants to consider the traditional natures of university education and research, especially in terms of the university’s relationship with poorer communities. In general, the traditional relationship can be described as didactic and extractive: university teachers provide information to the communities through extension courses; academic researchers study communities to enrich theoretical knowledge. The local knowledge of community members––knowledge of their environment, production patterns, and society––is not prized. Community members are treated as objects of study, not as designers of the research questions, let alone methods, and not as the intended direct beneficiaries of the results. The intent in the LPRV program was to explore possibilities for developing new forms of relationships between universities and poor communities––forms that would offer more to the communities by working with their strengths and addressing their immediate needs; forms that would offer more to the universities by enabling richer learning to take place through

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openness to new questions, alternative ways of thinking, and joint discovery with non-traditional research partners. The UBC program team found useful the following diagram, which is based on the work of three UBC students (Gillespie 2001, Adin and Chadwick 2000). The diagram suggests there is a parallel between the range of possible relationships that governments can have with citizens under the rubric of “participation” (as represented for example by Arnstein’s [1969] now famous ladder of citizen participation) and the range of possible relations that universities can have with communities under the rubric of “engagement.”

Figure 2: Ladders of participation

In a similar vein, Hoi (2003) has identified a range of possible relationships that can be established betweens scientists and farmers, as given in the following box.


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Box 3: Four modes of participatory research

2.3. Getting to 'D': Bringing Local Government into University- Community Collaborations In the early stages of planning for the commune projects, it quickly became evident to the CPRs, then through them to the Canadian partners, that a bilateral relationship between the university and a community was not only difficult to attain, but also liable to be undesirable. From the very outset of the projects, consultations and cooperation with government at the provincial, district and commune levels were required to accomplish even the simplest of tasks. In 1999, a group of Vietnamese and Canadian LPRV participants meeting at the Hue CPR imaged the desirable relationship among a university, a community it works with, and the relevant local government agencies, as three overlapping circles, with the bilateral overlaps labelled as A, B and C, and with D representing the trilateral overlap. D was seen as the most valuable and effective meeting point. Here, the knowledge, skills and interests of all three actors could be taken into account in designing effective participatory processes to find feasible solutions to poverty. This conception was presented to the LPRV International Workshop in December of that year, and found ready acceptance by all LPRV participants. “Getting to D” became the mantra in LPRV meetings, informed the project work of the CPRs, and structured the analysis of lessons learned.

During research, participation could be classified into 4 modes: 1) Contracting - scientists contract with farmers to supply land,

services or other resources;

2) Consultancy - scientists consult farmers about their issues and introduce some solutions;

3) Collaboration - scientists and farmers collaborate as project partners during the research;

4) Combination - scientists work toward improving unofficial research by the farmers and forming or developing a variety of rural development systems.

Hoi (2003) adapted from Pretty (1995)

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Figure 3: Getting to ‘D’

The image of 'getting to D' provided a constant visual reminder of the purpose and context for our capacity building in general, and for our attention to participatory methods in particular. It offered a surprisingly powerful and versatile framework through which to conceive and develop partnerships. It was at once robust and theoretically compelling enough to engage university leaders and academics, but also provided a clear visual model of partnership which was readily understood by community members and local government officials. The ability of the visual model to bridge language and cultural divides was an important resource for all of the LPRV work that followed. During the ensuing four years of interaction in meetings and workshops, awareness grew that the model had to be understood as simultaneously representing the comparative advantages each actor brought to D and the different modes of relationship, from information exchange to joint planning, that could occur there. As well, awareness grew that the differences within each circle were often as significant to poverty reduction work as those between communities, universities and governments.

2.4. Developing Project Partnerships The LPRV Program’s learn-by-doing projects were most often the result of a partnership between the officials and people of a commune, Vietnam's lowest form of government administration outside cities, and the university. For this reason, the projects were often simply referred to in LPRV meetings and reports as “commune projects” even though three of the projects were conducted in urban areas where wards or precincts are the names for the local level of administration (see following chart). This nomenclature will be followed here.


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Each CPR partnered with three “communes” to produce a total of fifteen projects. The focus on the commune ensured that learning and interventions were both localized and, as far as possible, controllable by local people themselves. Communes with different locations and characteristics were chosen in order to reflect the vast environmental, social and cultural diversity of Vietnam. In the initial LPRV design, each CPR was to be asked to work with: • One remote rural commune––for the most part such communes lie in highlands

(mountainous) areas and are populated by ethnic minority peoples • One rural commune that was accessible from urban areas • One city ward, the urban counterpart to the commune As the program unfolded, this distribution of commune types for project work was modified by some CPRs according to the nature of their regional location. For example, Ho Chi Minh City CPR selected two urban areas and one rural commune for its projects. Overall, the five CPRs developed projects in four urban areas, seven rural communes and four remote communes. It is important to underscore the spatial aspect of the projects in the LPRV model. In all cases, the projects were conceived as addressing the needs of the poor in impoverished localities (dia phuong ngheo, vung ngheo). This conception at times precluded working with groups dispersed throughout a city, such as poor in-migrants from a common origin, or people with similar disabilities, and precluded working with complete communities such as hill tribes who cross local political boundaries. It also, to a degree, limited the depth of systemic analysis of the economic and political factors that can exacerbate the marginalization and poverty of such vulnerable groups. For example, confining their urban projects to wards constrained the Ho Chi Minh City CPR's ability to tackle many of the profound urban changes that push poor people to the periphery of society. On the other hand, working closely with one unit of local government facilitated the university's involvement in a highly localized form of planning and reflection, and forged strong cooperation and interaction between local government, local units of mass organizations such as the Women’s Union, and the CPRs. The processes by which CPRs selected the precise communes to work with varied. Some members of CPRs had worked on development issues prior to the LPRV program and had long-standing research relationships with certain poor communities. Naturally, in these cases, their CPRs often chose to continue these relationships under the LPRV program. In other cases, the CPRs relied on personal connections, working in areas where CPR members knew relatives, students, or other acquaintances who could ease the development of a new project. When no appropriate relationships existed prior to the LPRV program, CPRs selected partner communes through meetings arranged with the Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs in a nearby province to solicit advice on the poorest and most appropriate communes in which to work. They then moved down the ladder of government, asking for district and then commune governments to introduce them to appropriate villages and groups to serve as the community partners. This allowed the CPRs to align their own work agenda with

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provincial investment strategies and policies, and to secure support from higher levels of government. Where CPRs developed relationships directly with communes without consulting a higher level of government first, they at times encountered difficulties in securing permission to carry out many activities. This experience showed the importance of engaging key stakeholders, including higher levels of government, in the process of developing community partnerships. The CPRs increasingly followed this lesson in later years of the program. Some participants within the LPRV program have expressed concern that the development of community partnerships through a hierarchical and often bureaucratic selection process might undermine the participatory ethos of community development. Such a process may exacerbate empowerment-related problems caused by the fact that the LPRV projects were in all cases initiated by the university rather than by the communities themselves. There would be value in exploring further such issues related to top-down vs. bottom-up project initiation and the implications for designing and funding university programs of community involvement. As can be seen from the project synopses in the chart below, the LPRV program tackled a wide variety of development problems at the local level. Poverty reduction tasks were identified in collaboration with villagers and implemented through various social, technical and financial instruments. The diversity of projects reflected the varying specific needs and opportunities of the host communities. They also reflected the varying approaches, expertise, and experiences of the CPR teams. For example, those CPRs whose members’ backgrounds were primarily in the professions, such as agriculture or medicine, tended to focus on technical interventions related to irrigation, sanitation, new crops, etc. CPRs whose members had fewer technical skills, but strong backgrounds in the social sciences, concentrated more on interventions related to financial credit and vocational education. The variety of approaches taken in the LPRV projects has offered rich opportunities for learning about the diversity of livelihood challenges facing the poor and about diverse project solutions. The variety has thus offered rich opportunities for meeting The LPRV Program’s central goal of building university capacity through experimentation and reflection. However, the variety has also limited the ability of the CPR members to provide sustained, in-depth support to the host communities on every aspect of every project. Such support was therefore at times sought outside the core CPR membership. The many differences in commune projects notwithstanding, there were some fundamental commonalities. First, there was the common focus on attempting to plan projects through government-community-university collaboration, through fostering inclusivity at the community level, and through paying particular attention to the needs and poverty reduction roles of women and ethnic minorities. Second, there was the common commitment to a process of continuos reflection-in-action such that lessons were identified locally then compared inter-regionally through LPRV workshops and reports.


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2.5. Planning and Analyzing the Commune Projects A “seven-step model” of planning (Boothroyd 1991), which had been found helpful in various community development contexts in Canada and other countries, was offered to the CPRs as a starting point for thinking about their own planning for structuring collaborations and for participatorily identifying and designing projects. The model was seen as generic, applicable not only to planning any type of project (sanitation, micro-credit, etc.) but also to the planning of planning processes. For example, if the task is to plan to deal with lack of clean water, then the goals identified at step 2 might be provision of clean water to all, minimize labour in collecting it, and minimize cost in providing it; the action possibilities generated at Step 4 might be dig more wells, protect existing wells, or build water pipes in. If the task is to plan a community planning process for identifying priority sectors for intervention, then the goals identified might be to include participation by women, elders, youth, marginalized families, and knowledgeable officials; the action possibilities generated might be to hold a community-wide meeting, or start the process by meeting in family groups, or start by holding meetings among representatives of the mass organizations. The model was not just offered as a set of categories for planning projects and planning processes, but also for structuring analysis of lessons learned from the planning. For example, project participants could ask themselves such questions as: were all parties’ goals considered in the project planning? were salient facts rigorously analyzed? was there as much creativity as there could have been in thinking about project possibilities? were the possibilities adequately assessed in terms of impacts on the environment, culture, gender relations, etc.? If an answer to any of these questions was ‘no’, then CPR members could then usefully ask: what were the reasons? what were the consequences? The seven-step model was found to be of some assistance by some of the CPRs in guiding their planning and their post-project analysis/evaluation. But it was also often thought to be too abstract and systematic to follow in the day-to-day processes of organically building relationships and projects. As well, it seemed to propose a different approach to initiating community work than some of the Canadian and Vietnamese scholars believed in, particularly in its relegation of the “appraise facts” step to the third step of the process. The difference in views on this matter centred on the question of what should be the nature, role, and timing of “community profiles” in community research and community development.

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Table 2: Learning from Project Diversity CPR Thai Nguyen CPR Vinh CPR Hue CPR Dalat CPR Ho Chi Minh City 1 Dong Lien commune, Thai

Nguyen province ♦♦ Goal: Improved irrigation ♦♦ Task: build pumping station ♦♦ Scale: 2 villages (46

households) ♦♦ Capital: partial grant

Nghi Phong commune, Nghe An province ♦♦ Goal: Household economic

development ♦♦ Task: give loans to the women

for livestock breeding ♦♦ Scale: 44 households ♦♦ Capital: loans

Phu Da commune, Thua Thien Hue province ♦♦ Field: household economic

development and environmental hygiene

♦♦ Task: growing vegetables, chicken raising, building latrines

♦♦ Scale: 35 households ♦♦ Capital: grants

Lat commune, Dalat city ♦♦ Goal: household economic

development ♦♦ Task: loans ♦♦ Scale: NA ♦♦ Capital: loans

Tan Thanh commune, Long An province ♦♦ Goal: household economic

development ♦♦ Task: Loans used for

livestock breeding ♦♦ Scale: 101 households ♦♦ Capital: loans

2 Trang Xa commune, Thai Nguyen province ♦♦ Goal: household economic

development ♦♦ Task: provide knowledge

and loans for animal husbandry and farming.

♦♦ Scale: 40 households ♦♦ Capital: loans and grants

Thanh Thinh commune, Nghe An province ♦♦ Field: household economy

development ♦♦ Task: economy development in

home gardens (grow pepper trees)

♦♦ Scale: 110 households ♦♦ Capital: combination of loan

and free capital

Thanh commune, Quang Tri province ♦♦ Goal: clean water supply and

household economy development

♦♦ Task: build clean water supply station and model of household economy

♦♦ Scale: 1 village (50 households) and 10 households

♦♦ Capital: grants

Loc Nam commune, Lam Dong province ♦♦ Goal: household economic

development ♦♦ Task: offer loans to women

for farming and livestock ♦♦ Scale: NA ♦♦ Capital: loans

Precinct 3, district 8, Ho Chi Minh city ♦♦ Goal: household economic

development ♦♦ Task: loans for micro-

enterprise ♦♦ Scale: 76 households ♦♦ Capital: loans

3 Quy Ky commune, Thai Nguyen province ♦♦ Goal: household economic

development ♦♦ Task: build a model of agro-

forestry ♦♦ Scale: 35 households ♦♦ Capital: loans and grants

Chau Khe commune, Nghe An province ♦♦ Field: household economic

development ♦♦ Task: Animal husbandry ♦♦ Scale: NA ♦♦ Capital: loans and grants

Phu Binh precinct, Hue city ♦♦ Goal: resettle “boat people” ♦♦ Task: health and job creation ♦♦ Scale: NA ♦♦ Capital: grants

Da Loan commune, Lam Dong province ♦♦ Field: resettle ethnic

minorities ♦♦ Task: move and stabilize

household economy of Chu Ru people

♦♦ Scale: 24 households ♦♦ Capital: grants

Long Binh Ward, Bien Hoa City ♦♦ Goal: vocational training ♦♦ Task: vocational training

for poor youth ♦♦ Scale: NA ♦♦ Capital: grants

Source: Vu Tuan Anh, Notes of the 5th LPRV National Workshop: Sessions 1 and 2, Nha Trang, September 19, 2002


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Figure 3: The 7 Step Planning Model

2.6. Profiling Communities LPRV was founded on the assumption that effective localized poverty reduction planning rests primarily on the knowledge, resources, and capacities of the local community. As the program progressed, there was increasing agreement that community profiling could become a participatory tool and provide a beginning for collaborative planning.

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Box 4: Community profiling

Though participatory action-research (PAR) methodologies have gained ground in recent years in many Vietnamese and Canadian academic settings, partly through involvement by university lecturers in projects funded by international donors, at the beginning of LPRV many of the Vietnamese participants were primarily experienced in conducting quantitative forms of survey research, and the Canadians, who as a group were more familiar with qualitative research including ethnographic studies, and in some cases with PAR epistemology and methods, did not have extensive experience in doing PAR in the field. Thus the debates and experiments in conducting community profiles were for all a learning process. The issue of what should constitute a commune profile—what data sets should be gathered and examined? who should conduct and ultimately control the process? what should the information be used for?—framed much discussion in workshops and international meetings during the program's first two years. The fundamental question raised was: what was the purpose of community profiling in LPRV? Was it to be part of an academic research exercise oriented, for example, to understanding the changing nature of poverty across regions in Vietnam? Or was it the means by which each CPR gathered baseline data to inform its poverty reduction discussions, project planning, and monitoring of poverty reduction over time? Or, perhaps, was it simply the process through which partnerships could be developed and co-learning enriched? For some LPRV participants, the range of regions, ethnicities, cultures, economies, and natural environments covered by the LPRV program pointed to the conclusion that profiles should contribute to research on the changing nature of poverty in Vietnam. The compilation of a geographical and statistical database based on community profiles was proposed as one means to ensure the long-term impact of the LPRV program, both on policy and on academic understanding of social, political and economic change. On the other hand, many participants focussed on the utility of community profiles in offering timely information for planning projects at the local level. Some participants thought that the questions addressed in the profile should be formulated by experienced researchers. Others, on the basis of the principle that

Community profiling is like a collective mirror for the people to look at themselves and be aware of the situation of their locality and family, and then to ascertain an escape path from poverty by participating in the process of building and implementing projects on hunger eradication and poverty reduction, and practicing learning by doing.

(Hue Lessons Learned Report from Commune Project 1, Phu Da)


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participatory planning and research should be subject to local control, thought that profile questions and categories should be determined by community members. Some proposed a standard set of questions for all CPRs and all communes, others proposed that questions reflect locally specific information needs. Still others thought there should be a mix of approaches. Similarly, a variety of data collection and analysis methods were proposed by various participants. Many participants saw profiling as a means of building partnerships between community members, government and the university — as a means of ‘getting to D'— and some saw profiling, within LPRV, as part of an ongoing learning process rather than as a process devoted to producing distinct research outputs. The varying and sometimes conflicting views expressed at pan-LPRV meetings about the functions and natures of commune profiles created some parallel confusion in the individual CPRs about the purpose and timing of profiling, the questions to be asked, and the data collection methods to be employed, in their own work. After much discussion toward the end of Year 1 of the program, a standardized survey instrument for community profiling was developed by NCSSH in response to requests from the CPRs for guidance. Besides assisting the CPRs, NCSSH perhaps also considered the prospect that the resulting data would be helpful for providing national policy advice. The survey instrument, known as the Commune Data Format (CDF), comprised questions about socio-economic conditions, and presented a sampling design that would yield statistically significant data. The survey was applied by all CPRs in the first communes they worked with. The data from this application were analyzed to varying degrees by the communes, but the primary output of the exercise was that the CPRs decided that a standardized survey could not always produce the information they needed, and conversely that it yielded some data that they did not know how to analyze or use in project planning. Accordingly, they developed their own instruments and methods in the later rounds of commune work. As well, after the CDF had been employed, a more qualitative Household-level Survey (HHS), which combined both household level interviews and interviews with commune officials, was developed by scholars from NCSSH, with inputs from CPR team leaders, and distributed to the CPRs. Information collected through the CDF and the HHS was intended to become the basis for what was called an (integrated) Commune Profile Matrix (see chart.). This matrix was seen by some as providing a middle ground between a standardized survey and the seeming free-for-all posed by researchers entering communes without any template. The matrix identified significant aspects of commune contexts that impinge on poverty, identified tools and sources useful for learning about these contexts, and suggested questions for commune profiling.

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Mrs. H lives in Tan Tanh Commune of Long An province, in Southern Vietnam. She has been a member of the Women's Union since 1998. Her husband is also a long-standing member of the Peasant's Union. Mrs. H was offered a loan from the CPR in 2002 at an interest rate of 4%, which she used to purchase 4 pigs. Prior to borrowing from the CPR, she and her husband already had had a good number of pigs, up to 11, which she had been raising since 1994, but some of these she had sold prior to 2002 in preparation for the annual floods.

Mrs. H has borrowed many times from Vietnam Agriculture Bank to invest in her farm and in other household activities. She has borrowed 8,000,000 VND from the Bank at 1% interest on a number of occasions. This is not enough to meet her needs, so she is often forced to go to moneylenders and borrow large amounts of money at interest rates at times over 7% per month. She is 15,000,000 VND in debt to moneylenders. In 1994, she had a debt of 80,000,000 VND because of a number of illnesses in her family, and has only recently managed to climb out of debt. She recently fell ill again and had to borrow 250,000 VND from a moneylender to go to HCMC to get cured. The interest rate is 10,000 VND (or 4%) per month. In order to overcome her rapidly escalating cycle of debt, Mrs. H has taken to playing Hui, which is the local form of an informal rotating savings and credit group (or ROSCA). She found herself in dire circumstances recently, and had to use the Hui to pay off a moneylender who was pressing to be repaid for a loan. She discounted 520,000 VND in the Hui to borrow 6,000,000 VND during the first cycle. This was the equivalent of an immediate interest rate of almost 9%! This was Mrs. H’s first time ever playing Hui, and she did so out of desperation. She said that "I would never have done it if I did not have to––the price was too high."

(HCMC CPR, Commune Profile of Tan Thanh Commune, Long An Province, 2000).

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ox 5: Crushed with debt: Mrs. H


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At a workshop held in Vung Tau in August 2000, Vietnamese and Canadian members of the LPRV gender team reviewed the CDF and HHS in terms of the degrees to which they respectively addressed ethnicity, gender, and other social concerns. This workshop, which generated the Commune Profile Matrix, clarified the complimentary character of qualitative and quantitative research methods. More importantly, it gave the LPRV gender team greater confidence and more effective skills in incorporating gender and ethnicity-related questions during the field interviews, as well as in assessing the gender-related impacts of the commune projects. Though the administration of quantitative surveys was not strongly supported by the program as a whole (and indeed was actively discouraged by some LPRV program members), many CPRs continued this approach well into their second and third commune projects. In order to avoid the prolongation of difficult methodological debates, it was implicitly agreed that the CPRs could use whatever methods they saw fit, so long as there was an attempt to engage local people in participatory decision-making.

Table 3: Commune Profile Matrix3

Topic Information Needs Tools and Methods/ Data Sources

Geographic and Environmental Context

♦♦ Location of the commune, boundaries

♦♦ Natural Resources: land use, crops planted, forest cover, water

♦♦ Common Property Resources: water, fuel wood, pasture lands, forests, and products from common lands

♦♦ Environmental Conditions: soil degradation, erosion, loss of biodiversity

♦♦ Well-scaled map ♦♦ Commune Data Format

(CDF) ♦♦ Transects ♦♦ Resource Mapping ♦♦ Gendered Resource

Mapping ♦♦ Historical Timelines

Demographic Context

♦♦ Population by gender, age group, ethnicity, and religion

♦♦ Population growth by year/ trend projections

♦♦ Migration (in-migration, out-migration, net migration), settlement, resettlement data

♦♦ CDF ♦♦ Population Census ♦♦ Household Level Survey

(HHS) ♦♦ Population and Migration

Trend Lines ♦♦ Family Portrait using

semi-structured 3 This chart was developed by Steffanie Scott and Nora Angeles based on an

original matrix from the International Fund for Agriculture and Development (IFAD).

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interviews ♦♦ Oral History/ Life History

using semi-structured interviews

Economic Context

♦♦ Local infrastructure: facilities available (e.g. roads and bridges, electricity, water supply, schools, clinics), quality of facilities

♦♦ Sources of livelihood and employment, e.g. agriculture, and forestry, manufacturing industries, services (formal and informal sector, paid and unpaid work, extent of hired labour) by gender and ethnic group

♦♦ Income levels and income sources (including remittances) by gender groups

♦♦ Poverty measurements ♦♦ Poverty causes and effects

♦♦ Walking tour ♦♦ Participant observation ♦♦ Key informant interviews♦♦ Focus Group Discussion ♦♦ Transects ♦♦ Employment statistics

from CDF and HHS ♦♦ Commodity Flows ♦♦ Seasonal Calendar ♦♦ Daily Activity Calendar ♦♦ Gendered Activity

Profile/ Gender Division of Labor

♦♦ Income Statistics from CDF, HSS

♦♦ Wealth Ranking ♦♦ Problem Identification

and Ranking ♦♦ Problem Trees and Web

Social Context

♦♦ Health and sanitation conditions

♦♦ Educational attainment by gender

♦♦ Community norms, cultural and religious beliefs

♦♦ Health, sanitation, and education data/statistics from CDF, HSS

♦♦ Social Network Mapping ♦♦ Oral social history using

key informant interviews and focus group discussions

Institutional Context

♦♦ Land ownership rights and land tenure patterns (% of households with land of various sizes)

♦♦ Agricultural extension services

♦♦ Credit institutions ♦♦ Mass organizations and

services provided by these organizations

♦♦ Poverty reduction programs

♦♦ CDF, HHS ♦♦ Venn Diagram/

Institutional Diagramming

♦♦ Who Decides in the Community?

♦♦ Matrices on Institutional Perceptions

♦♦ Key Informant Interviews♦♦ Focus Group Discussions♦♦ Assessing Organizational


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of government ♦♦ Village-level ‘institutions’,

e.g. labour sharing, informal savings and credit associations, funeral fund

♦♦ NGOs doing poverty reduction activities and community development work

Capacity Through Guided Self-Assessment

Policy Context

♦♦ National, provincial, and district policies, e.g. agricultural and forestry land allocation; user fees for health, education, and irrigation; subsidies for ethnic minorities, etc.

♦♦ Effects of policies on poverty

♦♦ CDF ♦♦ Key informant interviews ♦♦ Focus group discussions

Despite their increasingly recognized limitations, the surveys did benefit the CPRs. For lecturers and professionals, they provided experiences in socio-economic field research and increased understanding of methodological issues. Furthermore, the actual data collection was often carried out by students who spent varying amounts of time in the communes conducting interviews and collecting information from local officials. The students’ experiences in doing this work were seen as helping them to understand the nature of poverty and, particularly for undergraduates, such experiences were seen as easier to organize and supervise than would be involving them in more participatory forms of research. However, most of the CPRs found that the quantitative information gathered through survey research was of limited utility to project planning. Even after the data were compiled, analyses were carried on long into the project cycles, often following the implementation and completion of a given project. In project reviews toward the end of the LPRV program, many CPR members commented that they had considerable difficulty in making sense of the masses of empirical data. At times this was due to a lack of technical skill in computer-based data processing, and at times it was because the surveys themselves were not well implemented. While the use of software such as SPSS was not an official component of the LPRV program, there was considerable informal pressure among some members to show competency in such methods. Indeed, for some of the smaller universities, fluency in the use of such 'state of the art' tools was seen as a means to enter the world of contemporary social science research and to show progress and development in their own skill bases.

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These difficulties led some universities to request extra training support from LPRV in the areas of survey research and computer assisted data processing. These requests were met with resistance from some Canadian program members who were concerned that such training was not central to the LPRV focus on participatory methods, and that it would not directly benefit local communities. As a result, a workshop in Hue on skills-building for community profiling, which was initially intended by that CPR to be a quantitative data analysis training course presented by Canadians, was subsequently modified through international discussion to become a mutual learning event where community members and university professors would decide together about the best means to learn about poverty issues in local areas. The conflict between those favouring quantitative survey research and computer analysis on the one hand, and those on the other who favoured participatory, usually qualitative, research, revolved around an interesting paradox. While many CPRs professed an interest in learning about tools for quantitative data analysis—and computer software in particular —few of them actually used these tools in their planning work at the commune level. In many cases, as in those where attempts were made to use Geographic Information Systems, it was found that there were insufficient data available for social science analysis, and that the CPRs lacked the considerable time resources needed to collect and collate the data needed. After various attempts at conducting survey research, many in the CPRs concluded, or re-discovered, that some of the most valuable information for localized poverty reduction work can be gleaned by sitting down and discussing issues with local people. This simple approach could be supplemented by using some of the tools typically employed in participatory village research, such as transect walks, focus group interviews and participatory wealth ranking. Many of these tools were introduced to CPR members during two LPRV workshops held in Nui Coc,Thai Nguyen, and in Ho Chi Minh City in the first two years of LPRV. After experimenting with a number of PRA tools, most CPRs found that multi-stakeholder workshops involving key leaders and representatives of various groups were the best means to learn about the key needs and capacities of local people. What is most interesting about the development of this interest in participatory qualitative research is that it occurred primarily in the field. At the outset of the program, there was a belief that standardized, particularly quantitative, surveys were preferable to local participation in learning about local needs. However, as CPR members began to interact with the poor and found themselves in the situation of having to plan local projects, they found participatory methods increasingly useful. Many members were pleasantly surprised by what they learned when engaging in participatory research. Moreover, some were impressed by the efficiency of participatory methods. PRA tools were found to be quicker and simpler than traditional research methods. One CPR leader mentioned that the speed of profiling had increased dramatically with the increased experience of CPRs and the development of new methods. The surveys conducted in the early years of the LPRV program took up to a month to


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administer, with analysis of the results taking much longer–– if indeed such analysis was ever completed. The participatory profiling exercises undertaken later in the program took mere days. As a final contribution toward community profiling for the benefit of LPRV documentation and possible future policy-oriented research, the Laval team conducted a common geographic profile in all 15 communes at the end of the LPRV program. The results are available in an LPRV publication in print. Overall, the most important outcome from the many debates about commune profiling and from the rich experiences in undertaking diverse commune profiling exercises over the life of the program was the stimulation of CPR members to enhance both their quantitative or qualitative research skills and to gain a deeper understanding of the methodological, and indeed epistemological, issues associated with applied research design.

2.7. Analyzing Poverty Causes and Consequences LPRV participants worked with local communities to analyze the causes and consequences of poverty in order to develop appropriate interventions. Joint analysis, commonly held during multi-stakeholder workshops, helped all participants to delve underneath the immediate symptoms of poverty to investigate the linkages between livelihoods, health and social relations, and other root causes. Problem analysis served not only to develop ideas for potential interventions at the community level, but also raised awareness of social systems. CPRs reported that, when working with particularly poor and vulnerable groups such as ethnic minorities in mountainous areas, highly visual and stimulating methods were needed to raise and broaden the consciousness of local community members. The new appreciation of the possible linkages between their own deprivation and external trends motivated some to promote change in the local economy. In some cases, the focus on poverty as an over-riding problem and on the sources of impoverishment and deprivation may have obscured the capacities, resources and opportunities of communities to help themselves, particularly through collective effort.

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2.8. The Role of the Researcher

Box 6: The Role of the Researcher

CPR members testified in numerous LPRV workshops and informal gatherings that their field experiences confirmed the value of local knowledge. In some cases, simply asking local people about the local environment helped to avoid poor planning choices and to direct investment into more valuable sectors. For example, villagers in Nghe An told CPR members that previous NGO-sponsored projects in their area had pushed for the planting of inappropriate trees that had promptly died. When the CPR found a local farmer who had succeeded in growing a new form of pepper tree, they helped other villagers to draw on his knowledge of this plant and on the innovative techniques he had developed for cultivating it. The success of these new plantings has been captured in a documentary film and shown on the region’s television network. Drawing on local knowledge was also seen to be important in social research. The CPRs said that use of local leaders for this purpose ensured that the local people would not lie about their income, because the local leaders already had sound knowledge of the social and economic lives of those living in their area. While local knowledge was found to be valuable in analyzing poverty and finding solutions, it was not in itself sufficient for developing a comprehensive understanding of the systems that produce poverty. Local participatory research was unable to fully explore the impacts, for example, of changing global coffee prices and of national policies toward coffee production. This example is not just hypothetically relevant to LPRV: there were disastrous consequences for some people in the Dalat region when world coffee prices slumped shortly after farmers had planted coffee with the help of the CPR.

In communes such as Dong Lien, where most people are literate, in the group discussion we gave each participant pieces of paper and a pen and asked them to write down causes of poverty in their own families, using each sheet for only for one cause. Next, the researcher collects and classifies this information. In those communes where the majority were illiterate, such as Trang Xa, we chose a person who could write to be secretary for the group. Therefore, everyone could present their ideas concerning the causes of poverty and the secretary can write and classify these ideas on the board. CPR Thai Nguyen


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Moreover, reliance on direct observation in the field, or on interpretations by leaders, or on direct answers to survey questions, can, in the absence of systemic understanding easily lead to conclusions that are not supportive of effective and sustained poverty reduction. For example, there is a widespread assumption that many poor are deservedly so and therefore, until they change on their own, they will remain out of reach of poverty reduction programs. One CPR report expressed this assumption in this way: “The poor usually conceal the cause of poverty such as bad habits, laziness in working, etc. Consequently, interviewing their neighbours is necessary to gather correct information.” Indeed, some CPR members, schooled in the traditional social sciences and expecting to further develop their skills through the LPRV program, complained that the research component was not challenging enough nor did it fully utilize their skills. This 'dumbing down,' they argued, at times led to limited interest in the fieldwork, so that program participants did not benefit as much as they had in previous projects. The debate therefore led to the emerging lesson that, while universities can and should conduct more participatory action research that is at once immediately relevant to the poor and encourages ownership of research by the poor, it is also necessary for universities to take their roles as knowledge-generating institutions seriously. This means that some large-scale empirical research and meta-research on localized action research must proceed alongside local community partnerships, and that in-depth research on poverty causes, informed by and informing of social theory, be conducted. Research of these kinds need not be extractive or removed from community participation, but it requires building relationships where universities, communities, and government are prepared to be partners in developing policy-relevant and theoretical knowledge, not just knowledge, for example, about new production techniques, that has immediate local pay-offs. Indeed, integrating policy- and theory-oriented research with community-controlled action-oriented research on the ground might provide synergistic benefits at all levels. The CPRs’ experiences also led to the conclusion that universities could do more in transferring technologies to knowledge-hungry farmers. For example, there were a number of reports that one of the major sources of continuing or new poverty was inadequate knowledge about raising livestock. For example, Thai Nguyen CPR reported that

A person in Dong Lien believes that the causes of his family poverty are the many risks to production and a lack of capital. However, following an interview that is undertaken we understand that the family had a loan from the Bank for the Poor to raise pigs but they did not have knowledge of the techniques and skills needed to raise animals and prevent diseases, which resulted in the death of their pigs.

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Box 7: Poor and vulnerable in Bien Hoa City

In general, the various discussions that CPRs held at the commune and village levels drew a complex and multifaceted picture of poverty. CPRs worked closely with villagers to not only gather data about poverty, but also to analyse its causes and consequences. The diagram on the following page depicts one such exercise. In summary, the processes of community profiling and poverty analysis offered platforms on which relationships were built among CPRs, local governments, and community members that offered the potential to develop what Scott (2000) calls Metis knowledge—knowledge that draws on the best of the scientific tradition and from the life-worlds of the poor. Such knowledge is not only useful in problem-solving by local communities, and policy-making by government, but also, as we argue in the next chapter, can add to the knowledge base of the university itself. Some of the specific lessons learned by LPRV participants during the community profiling and poverty analysis processes were: • Of the many methods used for gathering data and analyzing options, the most

useful, by far, is the multi-stakeholder workshop, through which different members of the village come together to discuss issues and learn together.

• Time-consuming activities that require high levels of technical proficiency, such

as large-scale surveys and mapping, are of limited utility in developing local commune projects.

Poor and vulnerable in Bien Hoa City I started my family in 1990. At the time, my husband and I did not have anything at all and had to build a temporary house from trees and cartons. My family was allocated 2000 m2 of woodland to take care of. We planted crops along with animal raising, and also planted some trees and jackfruit. Life is getting more difficult. We built a house, but it is only brick walls and does not have any plaster, and the roof is made from tin and bamboo. Two years ago, I hurt my back from carrying too many heavy objects, and had to pay a lot of money to treat it. I did not have enough money and had to borrow from women in the area and from the Women’s Union. I still owe them 7 Million VND. My youngest child, who is still just a kid, is always sick. My grandson has a swollen lung. Every time that I buy medicine, it always comes to hundreds of thousands of Dong. But the highest income that my husband and I can hope to make is 600 thousand VND. If this is not enough, then we must borrow. -Ms. M, 37-year-old woman in Bien Hoa City.


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Figure 5. Mapping the Causes of Poverty, Hue CPR

LACKING OF UNDERWATER EXPLOITING FACILITIES

BAD IRRIGATION SYSTEM

LOW INCOME

LACK OF TECHNOLOGY

POOR SOIL

*SHRIMP RAISING * PIG RAISING * POULTRY * IRRIGATION * FERTILIZATION * AQUACULTURAL RAISING

BAD FAMILY PLAN

LACK OF CAPITAL

* BUYING SHRIMP BREEDING AND FERTILIZER

* BUILDING OF PIG STY * BUYING MATERIAL * DUCK, CHICKEN RAISING

LOW EDUCATION

TOO MANY CHILDREN

SENSE AND CONCEPT

POOR AND WRONG PERCEIVING

duck, chicken, pig, fish, shrimp breeding

RANDOM CATCHING

LACK OF JOB

POOR SEA PRODUCTS

MINE, ELECTRICITY, SMALL PIECE NET, BAMBOO COVER

BAD HEALTH

MANY DISEASES BECAUSE OF ENVIRONMENTAL

POLLUTION

LACK OF LATRINE

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• Allowing the poor to voice their concerns and share their knowledge requires many attitudinal and behavioural changes on the part of university personnel and government officials. Unlearning old perspectives is an on-going process, as is the development of new methods and value systems that are suitable and appropriate for the Vietnamese context.

• Sound commune profiling is a process rather than a product. Many of the better

profiling exercises do not result in written documents, but instead feed directly into robust action plans for community change.

• Academics can encounter difficulties in working with poor people because of status

differentials. Working with poor people in ethnic minority communities is especially hard because status differentials are compounded by linguistic and cultural differences.

• Working with poor women in Vietnam’s communes is facilitated for academics by the

strong presence of the Women's Union in the communes, • Academics can be aided in their work with local women by having a strong support team

of like-minded academics, such as the gender team of LPRV.

2.9. Developing and Funding Projects Where the CPRs began to delve into a completely new area of learning was in the practice of actually developing and implementing poverty reduction action projects on the ground. To move from research to planning was an ambitious and ambiguous task—one that was fraught with confusing challenges. One CPR noted in a project report that “after cooperating with the people in the three communes to determine a ‘priority solution’ (building the project idea), we understand that building a project idea is not an easy job” (CPR Thai Nguyen). PRA prescriptions often collapse profiling/research and project planning into a single process, to the point that it is difficult to see where one ends and the other begins. Many of the project development lessons identified below relate to the messy business of moving from analysis to planning and operationalizing change in complex systems such as communes. Initially, one of the major obstacles to developing effective commune projects was that the LPRV program had not been designed to provide financial resources for project implementation. The initial project model was that CPRs would facilitate multi-stakeholder learning and planning for poverty reduction at the local level, but would not play a donor role. The LPRV program would build 'soft' infrastructure in the forms of knowledge about planning and enhanced abilities to cooperate in solving problems. The 'hard' infrastructure needed to mobilize these new capacities, such as materials, technology and finances, was expected to be provided by the community itself, outside donors, or government. This approach was intended to move LPRV away from a ‘charity’ mode of interaction with the poor and toward a capacity-building mode. The assumptions underlying the initial approach were that the capacities built would include community capacities to show government and other funders the value of well-designed


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projects, that government involvement in project planning would lead to their committing financial resources to projects they helped design, and that community involvement in planning would lead to identification of local resources that might otherwise be overlooked, including the opportunities to organize for collective action and mutual aid. As well, there was initially concern that if projects were funded by LPRV then the results would not be broadly replicable given the lack of programs able to fund commune projects on a large scale. The first two assumptions were based on the observation that considerable resources seemed to be available to poor communities in Vietnam if these communities had the ability to discover them and to plan soundly for development and investment. Vietnam's own Program on Socio-economic Development in Especially Disadvantaged Communities in Mountainous, Isolated and Remote Areas (Decisions NO. 135/1998/QD-TTg) offers infrastructure support to poor communes that submit plausible technical plans for financing to central government agencies. Other donors, such as the World Bank, have responsive community-based infrastructure and development programs that meet the needs of those communes that are able to 'reach up' and grab resources from above. Building community planning capacity and social capital at the lowest level, it was thus thought, could address one of the key bottlenecks that hampers the disbursement of government and donor money already earmarked for localized poverty reduction. While the theory of focusing on social capital and community planning capacity in the communes seemed sound, most of the CPRs felt uneasy having no financial resources to bring to the poor as an inducement to participate. Entering communities with the goal of developing poverty reduction plans, but without the resources to bring these plans to fruition, seemed to many CPR members to be an academic, extractive and self-defeating process. The reasons for this unease were at once practical, pedagogical and moral. On a practical note, many CPRs explained that, as outsiders entering a poor village with little to give, they were not always greeted with open arms. Poor people and government officials alike did not immediately see the value of project planning in the absence of assured funding. In the absence of promised investment, many local officials saw the projects as purely extractive in nature; beneficial, perhaps, for the learning of the CPR members, but of little use to the poor families of the community or for the ‘front line’ poverty officials. At worst, the lack of funds was greeted with suspicion by local authorities, some of whom perceived that, for the CPRs, participating in a large international program no doubt brought with it various financial and non-financial personal benefits. In discussing the project-funding issue in early pan-LPRV meetings, some CPR members noted that even in traditional research projects, such as surveys, they would bring 'presents' to poor people in order to compensate them for the time and expense incurred in participating in the research. Such presents could be as small as a candy bar, or an envelope with money for lunch. Some argued that entering a poor community with nothing to give made them feel uneasy and guilty about their own position in relation to the poor. Indeed, the recognition that research and planning activities of the LPRV program drew community members away from their own livelihood activities also impressed upon LPRV participants the need to ensure that commune plans and projects would improve the lives and opportunities of the poor in as short a period as possible, and would be seen by local people in this light.

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Box 8: Poverty Reduction Management Boards

Sooffstrprothamapobecopowafin ThpotheSteusfinfunalluscreentratheun

Developing Poverty Reduction Management Boards University of Dalat in the Central Highlands is an important institution for training human resources in this region. Upon the development of the Dalat CPR’s first two commune projects, the CPR members discovered while each of these communes had pre-existing links with the national HEPR program, there were no local structures through which government officials and community leaders could plan for poverty reduction collaboratively, reflectively, and across sectors. In response to this finding, the CPR worked with local government to establish Poverty Reduction Planning Committees, which included representatives from the commune and district levels of government, and from selected villages and mass organizations. The CPR provided a supportive role to these committees and assisted them with research and analysis. The CPR also introduced the committees to private sector companies willing to initiate and expand pro-poor agribusiness.

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me Canadian and Vietnamese program members questioned whether local government icials would see and appreciate the value of the enhanced planning capacity and engthened social capital that was produced in the process of developing projects if those jects included LPRV funding, particularly if such funding was automatic. They worried t promises of funding would focus attention on projects that required 'hard inputs', such as terials for irrigation systems or capital for loans, and that the more difficult, but perhaps tentially ultimately more rewarding process of building capacity and social capital would overlooked. On the other hand, these same LPRV participants recognized that while many mmunity members and government officials in the early LPRV days were commenting in sitive ways on the methods and models being introduced into their communes by LPRV, it s unlikely that the CPRs would continue to be welcomed unless they offered some direct ancial incentives up front.

e funding issue raised many questions about the appropriate roles of outsiders working in orer communities, and the LPRV debates on the matter were instructive at many levels. In end, and following a great deal of deliberation, the decision was taken by the LPRV ering Committee in Year 3 to allow the CPRs to allocate 'seed money' which could be

ed to pilot parts of the plans created by each commune. The money would come from the ancial resources already allocated to each CPR under the LPRV formula for applying ds from the CIDA grant (see Ch.1). It was further decided that each CPR would be

owed to use up to $10,000 for each of its three commune projects. This money could be ed for the purchase of materials, hosting training sessions, or capitalizing a small micro-dit project. The amount of money, though small, was seen to be, and proved to be,

ough to finance effective small projects. Moreover, with the costs of the CPR members’ vel to the communes already covered by each CPR’s portion of the CIDA grant, and with ir willingness to donate their time to the projects as part of their own and their iversities’ in-kind contributions to LPRV, the seed money was able to be completely spent


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on direct project costs without having to fund consulting or other expenses incurred by outsiders. The decision to allow the CPRs to provide seed funding turned fieldwork into a richer learning exercise than would otherwise have been possible. It enabled participants to learn not only about research and planning, but also about varied operational aspects of managing an actual and ‘living’ project. For example, many lessons learned about the difficulty of targeting benefits to the poor, and the means to design projects within a given budget, would have been unattainable without involvement in an actual development intervention. Box 9: An Argument for seed money

2.10. Managing Projects Management models for the commune projects followed the LPRV Program’s focus on 'getting to D'. Various groups were involved in co-managing projects and co-learning from them. Most CPRs developed for each project a local Project Management Board with the mandate to ensure that the project was implemented in an effective and efficient manner. The “Sub-project (tieu du an) Board” (i.e. Board of a project subsidiary to the overall LPRV program), reported to the CPR, and drew on the CPR’s resources, but responsibility for daily operation of the project was left to local officials. The Project Management Boards enabled the CPRs to empower people at local levels to manage their projects on their own behalf, and to keep the university at arms length when it came to issues of daily decision-making. In some ways, the Board-CPR relationships reflected the LPRV Program’s own decentralized management approach in which each LPRV partner was permitted to manage its own affairs within a framework of general accountability to the LPRV Steering Committee which represented the interests of the program as a whole.

…many local governments are not enthusiastic about the project because they do not receive any money from it. They hear about the theory, and are not very interested. People still think of us as only academic bodies, not as in knowledge transfer…. We need a small budget. If not what else can we do?.... Because our project is not funded it makes it more difficult to run. The biggest problem is to work with the local authorities. They think that we should have funds and means and work on the project for them, not just for ourselves.…. Source: Minutes of Hue Workshop: Planning for Poverty Reduction in the Commune Projects: Learning by Doing, March 11-13, 1999.

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At times, CPRs found themselves more responsible for project implementation than they had planned to be. In a small number of cases where local mismanagement seemed to be an issue, for example, CPRs were forced to step in to take over many of the key responsibilities of project management, even keeping detailed accounts and disbursing resources at the household level. At the same time, while project funding agreements were signed with local governments, it was often the actions of local community groups that guaranteed the success of local projects. The number of stakeholders involved in managing the projects often led to redundancy in responsibilities. In most projects, the number of officials at the commune and village levels who were given the tasks of monitoring and encouraging participating families was more than was really needed, and the specific tasks of many project members were often unclear and perhaps to some extent unfulfilling. The Management Boards sometimes could not easily ensure that the poor and the disadvantaged were adequately involved in managing the projects that were to benefit them––especially when working with members of ethnic minorities, some of whom are not literate in Vietnamese and many of whom lack skills in reporting and management. There were very few methods available to empower those who were not accustomed to working in bureaucratic systems or in preparing written reports which were often the major means of communication about and within projects. These challenges to involvement of the poor were met in various ways. The Hue CPR, for example, relied on educated Kinh volunteers in one commune to assist with project planning and management, and to provide translation services for minority people when necessary. Their knowledge, linguistic expertise and talent have been of great value to the project in that commune. The Vinh CPR simplified its own procedures for working with the project management boards, and established such boards at the village (sub-commune) level in order to empower those at the grassroots to plan and manage the project in the ways they preferred. The Ho Chi Minh City CPR learned when working with Khmer people, on a project that was not LPRV-funded, that it was advantageous to work with traditional institutions—in this Khmer case, Buddhist temple associations— on poverty reduction initiatives. Working with institutions not only gains the trust and cooperation of local people, but also develops the basis for long-term social development based on the culture of an area. In the same vein, Dalat CPR members found that traditional co-operation norms in an ethnic minority community could be drawn on by the people to organize a pig-raising program that included the poor and not-so-poor. Vinh CPR found that a co-operative organizational model developed decades ago in a commune by the Catholic Church could usefully be revived to provide the basis for organizing a livestock program. In these cases, the universities played a significant poverty reduction role simply by recognizing, then encouraging, traditional social strengths in the community which are latent and thus overlooked in programs sponsored by government or outsiders.


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2.11. Generating and testing new ideas By working together, the local people, government, and CPRs were able to generate and test more ideas for reducing poverty than either party would have been able to do on its own. For example, when working in Phu Da Commune, the Hue CPR initially felt that making professional medical interventions into the health system would be the most appropriate means to build a stronger and more confident community. However, following a commune profiling exercise and many hours of discussion with local people, the CPR was convinced that there were other high-priority needs, such as the need for income generation. Further, the many health problems in the community, especially those experienced by women, were seen to be attributable to the state of sanitation facilities. These understandings, developed jointly with the community, led to the development of a proposal for a composite project, in one village, which would address income needs by introducing improved breeds of chickens to villagers and would address sanitation needs by building latrines. Both aspects of the project would involve the participation of villagers, and be under their control. This project, which was successfully realized, helped local people to attack two causes of their poverty at once, and at the same time strengthened their skills to plan for further development. While the number of households who immediately benefited from the project was low, the project was extensively replicated in the areas surrounding the village. The initial project can thus be seen as having been a true pilot-project. The farmers who participated in the pilot-project have bred the new chickens and sold them to neighbours and relatives, also training them in vital breeding techniques. The Commune government has recommended the latrine model used by the CPR to an American NGO working in the area, which has greatly increased the scale of project impacts. What is perhaps most interesting about these spin-offs is that they were not formally planned by the LPRV. Instead, local community members, when enabled to develop new and innovative solutions for their problems, expanded the reach of these ideas in a spontaneous manner. New ideas are given the credit by some observers for the efficacy of many of the commune projects. For example, Ms. Truong Thi Binh, Chairperson of the People’s Committee of Long Binh Ward, Bien Hoa City, Long Binh Province, said that “the sub-project implemented in Long Binh Ward was not large in scale, and was short in duration, but for the poor households it was of very practical significance. In this same locality, with the same amount of capital and more time, we previously failed to produce the same results.” 2.12. Producing Project Results While there have been no comprehensive evaluations of the commune projects, the CPRs individually report that their own impact studies show the projects have had positive results. For example: • In Dong Lien Commune, Thai Nguyen Province, the construction of two water-pumping

stations helped to convert 5.2 ha of land from one rice crop and one non-rice crop per year to one rice crop and two non-rice crops. It also provided water for 5 ha of land and increased production of rice from 40,600 kgs in 1999 to 81,220 kgs in 2002.

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• In Phu Da Commune, Thua Tien-Hue Province, CPR Hue has found that the incomes of households participating in their project has increased by an average of 300,000 VND per month due to new crops and new forms of animal husbandry.

• In Tan Thanh Commune of Long An Province, 101 households were able to borrow

from a revolving loan program. Forty-seven of the 101 households participating in the project have been moved off the Commune’s list of poor families.

• In Lat Commune of Lam Dong Province, 14 out of 36 households participating in Dalat

University’s project have been removed from the Commune’s list of poor families. It is notable that 11 of these households are of the K’ho ethnic minority group.

The reasons for concluding that these results can, in large part, be attributed to the innovative, participatory research, planning, and management methods that guided the projects have been presented in the previous sections of this chapter. More important than the immediate and direct results of the projects is the contribution they have made to learning by universities, government and communities. Some of that learning was captured in a mid-program review of the commune projects in which members from all CPRs listed their respective achievements, and the challenges they encountered, in working with the communes. The Chart below was created by an LPRV program consultant (Morris 2001) to consolidate and summarize their lists. Such learning holds promise for supporting long term development and poverty reduction within, and beyond, the fifteen communes that hosted the CPR projects.

Table 4: CPR self-evaluations of achievements and challenges Achievements Challenges

♦♦ Mobilized contributions of local

people ♦♦ Enacted participatory processes

♦♦ Established village-level structures ♦♦ Enhanced solidarity and built

confidence ♦♦ Effected a multi-partner

collaboration ♦♦ Provided a flexible approach ♦♦ Carried out “participatory action

research”

♦♦ Funds were insufficient ♦♦ Sense of complacency (in

locality) ♦♦ Excessive individuality ♦♦ Some operational difficulties ♦♦ Unable yet to discern results ♦♦ Lack of research (on various

items) ♦♦ Effectiveness not yet confirmed ♦♦ Impacts on women are unclear


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Achievements Challenges ♦♦ Built capacity of all partners

♦♦ Produced teaching materials ♦♦ Established links among community,

researchers and policy makers ♦♦ Attracted participation of local

people ♦♦ Increased awareness of local people ♦♦ Established demonstration models ♦♦ Increased understanding about the

role of health ♦♦ Built capacity of local people and

local leaders ♦♦ Established a relationship between

local people and the university ♦♦ Integrated gender concerns ♦♦ Participated in a poverty reduction

network ♦♦ Established linkages ♦♦ Acted as facilitators ♦♦ Built capacity in locality ♦♦ Built capacity of CPR members ♦♦ Provided alternatives to poor people

♦♦ Natural conditions are extremely

difficult ♦♦ Local people are backwards ♦♦ Budget was limited ♦♦ Selection of poor households

was not fair ♦♦ Limited technical abilities ♦♦ Lack of previous experience

among CPR members ♦♦ Lack of time among CPR

members ♦♦ Local people were afraid to

engage ♦♦ Local leaders are still not pro-

active enough ♦♦ Insufficient time and salaries for

local people in project management structures

Source: (Morris 2003) complied from various CPR reports.

2.13. Learning about policy impacts

Working within the context of Doi Moi and the shifts in state support for the poor, the LPRV participants have learned much about the relationships between government and the poor,

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and between individual enterprise and collective action. Early in the LPRV program, one of the senior Vietnamese leaders of LPRV summarized some of the lessons learned in the early years of Doi Moi. The shift from a subsidy-based system, in which the social needs of the poor were the sole responsibility of the state, to one in which the enterprise of the poor was seen as the prime means for livelihood generation, provided a shock to many communities and families. Instead of being guaranteed jobs, for example, people were offered loans to expand household production activities.

Box 10: Vocational education and community capacity building

When the CPRs began to develop projects at the local level, the financial models to be followed were often the subject of debate. Would the CPR’s project offer loans for household level development, or would it offer grants? Would local people and the local community be made responsible for contributing to the project in cash or in kind? When reviewing the results of a microcredit and agroforestry development program in Nghe An province, one local leader proclaimed that the LPRV had shown that the poor did not need subsidies, but instead merely needed capital and the opportunities to better their own lives. For many project members who had lived through decades of collectivization and state sponsored programs, this was seen as a significant lesson.

The majority of commune projects within the LPRV program have focused on rural development. As such, they have worked to support agriculture at the household level by introducing new breeds and cultivation techniques, offering credit, and building small-scale rural infrastructure. After its initial commune project, which was in a truly rural area, the HCMC CPR decided to concentrate on urban issues. In 2002, the CPR began to work in Long Binh Ward, Bien Hoa City. This ward, composed largely of immigrants from the central province of Vietnam, is under severe pressure from the ever-expanding reach of the City. Following participatory work with the residents of the Ward, the CPR learned that the major worry of local people was that they would soon be relocated, for they lacked full residency status and their land was planned for redevelopment. Furthermore, they feared that their children were not benefiting from the industrial boom in Bien Hoa City. Without the skills to enter into new urban trades, they would be forced to follow their parents by relying on agriculture, an occupational area that was simply not feasible for them in the long term. Following these discussions, it was decided to develop a project that would support vocational education in the Ward through supporting three local vocational training schools and offering scholarships to poor students from the Ward. As well, these students have been offered assistance with their study habits from young CPR scholars who also hope to assist the students later by teaching job-hunting skills.


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That said, even in the early days of LPRV, there was a growing recognition that individual enterprise could not alone eliminate poverty any more than could a complete system of subsidies. At Dalat, for example, credit provided by the CPR to poor farmers to grow coffee was expected to result in an immediate and sustainable financial gain for the families involved. However, the sharp fall in coffee prices in 2001 caused many of the borrowers to become poorer than they were prior to the project's inception. The lesson was clear: merely providing capital for individual business was not enough. Without concrete planning at the household, the community and the regional level, household level enterprise could not weather the external shocks to which the poor are particularly vulnerable. Furthermore, without collective systems to deal with the shocks brought on by naturally unstable markets, poor families would be left vulnerable and isolated. Instead, a middle road between state and market was needed.

2.14. Defining the LPRV Program’s Own Policies on Assistance The issue at the heart of the LPRV Program discussions on the relationship between local poverty and external factors, including government policy, was seen once again as relating to the appropriate role of the outsider (state, university or NGO) in providing assistance to the poor. The question of subsidies vs. capacity-based development was one facet of this issue. For the LPRV Program, it was not just an academic question of what should be government’s answer to this question. It was also a question that the LPRV Program was dealing with when deciding, as discussed above, whether to provide project funding, for what purposes, under what terms, and with what relationship to the LPRV Program’s central mission of capacity building. The debates about the appropriate modes of assistance that should be provided by the CPRs were particularly pronounced when CPRs were working with especially vulnerable populations such as ethnic minorities or urban communities facing relocation. Many in the CPRs felt that in terms of working with highly vulnerable ethnic minority populations, the slow building of local capacities might be compelling in theory, but offering subsidies was usually a more immediately viable solution. Following many frustrating years of developing microcredit projects with ethnic minorities, for example, some CPR members felt that credit was not appropriate in mountainous areas with their especially vulnerable populations. In workshops, CPRs complained that families in these areas would rather not invest borrowed money and would instead save it in order to be certain to repay. In other cases, where money was invested, it remained difficult to recoup. One LPRV member concluded that a popular maxim be changed to read that while, yes, it is good to teach a man to fish, it is better in very hungry communities to give people fish so that they might survive until tomorrow. Similarly, when working in urban areas scheduled for resettlement, the HCMC CPR feared that developing community-based enterprise models, offering loans, or building long term community capacity would be ill-conceived, for there was a reasonable chance that the community would soon be dispersed to different parts of the city. Rather than concentrate on building the collective capacities of the community, the CPR instead offered scholarships

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to young people for vocational training in nearby schools and subsidized free health check-ups at a local hospital. These interventions would offer improved skills and health which people could bring with them to new locations should they be forced to move, and would in general strengthen the ability of the individual household to adapt to a changing labour market and uncertain environment. Overall, the LPRV Program’s challenge has been to determine what, in each particular locality, is the best way for universities to offer assistance so that the capacities of poor people are enhanced over time, while in the present they are helped to survive and adapt. LPRV learning on this matter needs to be continued, for conditions of vulnerability, exclusion, and poverty are complex, and suitable assistance responses are not easily found. Box 11: A local beekeeping technical extension network

When Mr. L retired from the army, he came back to his village without a profession. And so he decided to take up beekeeping. It seemed a suitable activity because income potential was high, labour was light, and it did not require much land. Some books published by the government helped him learn about beekeeping, but most of his learning was by doing. In the first year, he was able to produce 5-6 litres of honey, which was worth around 500,000 VND. Each year his production increased by about 10-20 litres. Twenty years later, he currently has 30 hives, producing as much as 100 litres and worth 8-9 million VND per year. Since this time, Mr. L has become a key person for assisting other farmers in his village and neighbouring districts cultivate honey. He is the hub of an informal technical network in the sense that people from around the locality seek his technical assistance. They often come during critical periods, such as the winter when flowers are scarce. Mr. L estimated that nearly 100 people had consulted him over the past year. They are often older persons and retired officials and teachers, elderly people with limited income options. Sometimes they come to buy hives, so that Mr. L also has a role of supplier to the community. Last year he sold 6-7 hives. Mr. L has played this role for the past 4-5 years, as news has spread by word of mouth that he is a knowledgeable person on beekeeping, willing and available to assist others. Mr. L said he is happy to volunteer his time to help others in this way. Mr. L provides an example of technical extension through social networks in the locality. Although no formalized group was established and no regular meetings were held, Mr. L sustained a network of people interested in improving their knowledge of beekeeping. People in that network had a source for retrieving information, which they could further share with others according to their own experiences, cross-pollinating, we might say, each other’s knowledge as they went.


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2.15. Forming and strengthening local groups The strongest lessons learned from the commune projects have been organizational rather than technical. While the projects certainly generated some technical knowledge related to improvements in irrigation, plant breeding and veterinary services, for example, this learning pales in comparison with the knowledge gained about the organization and institutional aspects of community development. In regard to these aspects, the major lessons learned through the LPRV Program have been about the existing and potential capacities of poor communities to collaboratively take initiatives that improve incomes and living conditions in the short term while strengthening community solidarity for taking collective action over the long term. The mass organizations in Vietnam, which are linked to the Communist Party of Vietnam and enjoy networks that span national to village levels, have been of central importance to The LPRV Program’s work with local groups. In some projects, the Women's Union acted as a key partner. For example, the Ho Chi Minh City CPR’s loan fund for poor women in a rural commune drew on models of savings and credit circles internationally popularized by NGOs over the years to assist the local chapter of the Women's Union to build on its current programming by offering new services to program members. Participation in the frequent meetings to manage the fund, and in designing innovations such as a special savings fund for lending to members in emergencies, empowered some of the loan program members to play a stronger role in the Women’s Union as a whole. Group discussions on issues that were relevant to the Women’s Union led the HCMC CPR to imagine a broader role for these savings and credit groups. Group meetings slowly began to provide a forum for discussing issues and even provided a venue for trading women’s magazines from the city. In this case, and in others like it, the LPRV CPRs worked to strengthen local groups by supporting their ongoing initiatives. In other cases, the CPRs worked to develop structures that were new but still based on tradition. Hue CPR, for example, when working in one commune, discovered local groups and mechanisms for cooperation that dated back to systems established under the French colonial period. Reinvigorating these older mechanisms provided a means to support cooperative groups that were already relevant to the community. Other CPRs have worked with groups on an even more traditional level. In Nghe An, Vinh University has developed poverty reduction management boards at the village (Ban) level rather than the commune level. These boards enjoy strong input from village elders and others who are important in village-level governance. At the same time, the university has worked to help villagers reform traditional structures to achieve new goals, such as the inclusion of women in formal decision-making. Other examples of CPRs working to reinvigorate and revamp traditional organizational models are provided in the previous section of this chapter. Some Canadians were at times worried that the CPRs would only work with formal (chinh thuc) groups in consultation, planning and project implementation. However, in practice, the CPRs found considerable room for supporting and strengthening informal (khong chinh thuc) groups that lie outside, without being disconnected from, official state structures. They found, for example, that women’s discussion groups are often organized and facilitated by

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the Woman’s Union, as are youth discussion groups by the Youth Union, and that these groups can be readily supported by outsiders such as a CPR. This opportunity results from the strength of local government organization in Vietnam relative to that of other developing countries. By the same token, it was found that it is relatively harder to address the concerns and needs of groups that are not at least recognized by Vietnam’s formal political system. As a result, some CPRs such as Vinh are exploring new possibilities for working with informal interest groups, for example, with groups of beekeepers who have come together to learn more about their trade and to exchange lessons from their experiences. Finally, it is important to note that the CPRs often attempted to work with a cross-section of people when developing or supporting groups at the local level. Several CPR members have noted that one must not overlook the important role of the non-poor when working with generally poor communities. They pointed out that it is useful to include in research and planning groups, and in groups charged with implementing the resulting projects, richer families who can offer their ideas to the poor, provide good examples for them to follow, and generate wage-earning opportunities with local multiplier effects. Further, they argue, offering benefits and financial resources to ‘average’ and ‘above average’ families along with the poor allows the establishment of effective models that can be later replicated by poor families alone.

2.16. Working with government In many countries, community developers may overlook the important role of government agencies, local politicians and government-sponsored service organizations, or may see the community’s relationship with the state as necessarily antagonistic. In Vietnam, community development cannot be undertaken without the active support of local government officials. Universities undertaking community development, can, we have found, successfully take initiatives to help local officials to assist communities. Gaining the full support of local government officials in all of the LPRV Program’s commune projects was attempted not only for pragmatic reasons (i.e. to ensure that CPRs would be allowed to carry out their work), but also to assist these officials in their local poverty reduction work. The Thai Nguyen CPR discovered, for example, that commune level authorities and village leaders themselves had had limited previous opportunity to influence and participate in local development planning by higher authorities on the one hand, and to engage in participatory processes with poor people, on the other hand. They were grateful for the chance to increase their opportunities by working with the CPR. The development by CPRs of local project management boards with broad representation from local government and mass organizations provided a viable mechanism for local officials and leaders to collaborate with the CPRs in designing systems for local participation. CPR attempts to work with the commune level of authority did not always go smoothly. In one case, a CPR encountered many organizational difficulties in its initial attempts to work directly with mass organizations in one commune because the local officials and leaders lacked some of the administrative capacities required for project management. In another


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case, while implementing its first pilot project, a CPR quickly learned that its provision of “external subsidies” (LPRV project grant) could create conflict both within the commune and between commune-level agencies and officials at the district level. In some cases, it was found that when membership groups such as mass organizations are brought into project planning, controls must be developed to ensure that resources flow to the needy rather than to those who are merely politically and socially connected. Partly because of experiences such as these at the commune level, some of the CPRs chose to start at the district level in developing and implementing their later projects. Working with traditional forms of governance at the village level, i.e., forms that pre-date the modern Vietnamese state but which continue to play important governance roles, were often found by the CPRs to be as important to project viability as were official authorities at the commune and higher levels. The Vinh CPR found that when working in mountainous ethnic minority (Thai) communes of Nghe An Province, projects were best administered at the village level. Relying on traditional forms of village governance, for example by working with elders at all stages, increased local ownership and efficacy of Vinh’s microcredit and animal husbandry projects.

2.17. Conclusion When talking about their role in community-level poverty reduction work, many CPR members referred to themselves as 'advisors.' They recognized that when local government manages a project, and community members carry out the important decision-making tasks, the university must take a back seat and allow local development to happen. However, while CPR members have taken a rather modest view of their role in advising poor communities, this view is often not shared by community members themselves. One CPR put it this way to a UBC delegation:

While the learning by doing approach has been enthusiastically taken up by most of us at the universities, many local people have shown themselves to be slightly uncomfortable with the concept. University lecturers are welcomed as teachers, rather than as learners, when they enter communities. As such, many local people have asked us to share our knowledge by teaching them new methods and techniques. This has brought about the paradoxical problem that, while we have come to accept that the knowledge of local people must play a central role in solving local problems, the locals themselves often have more respect for our own roles as experts.

One of the more difficult challenges that CPRs have faced is that they are often met with mixed and at times overwhelming expectations from local people. These expectations for the universities go far beyond a demand for them to share their knowledge and expertise. Knowledge that universities are comparatively rich and well endowed institutions, and that involvement in a foreign assisted project brings with it a good deal of financial resources, has led local people and local governments to hope that the CPRs will be able to offer continuing funding for local level projects. For some local government officials, it was The LPRV Program’s financial support to their commune's poverty reduction efforts that was most valued. In Long An province in the South of Vietnam, one local official noted, in regard to the HCMC CPR’s micro-credit project, that:

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The role of the CPR was first to bring the project to the commune and offer the needed investment to get it started. The CPR has worked to give the project good results--everybody must play a role. The CPR is responsible for gathering the funds, training, monitoring and ensuring that the money is returned. Local people appreciate the amount of work that the CPR has put into the project.

Not surprisingly, some local officials have referred to the CPRs as “investment agencies.” Some have been so blunt as to claim that many of the models employed by CPRs were not necessarily new and were well known in the area prior to the intervention of the university. In the HCMC projects, for example, many local officials not only had an equivalent or superior university education, they also felt themselves to have more practical experience and to be better acquainted with models of poverty reduction—such as management of credit programs—than were the professors, students and lecturers who made up the CPR team. What, then, was the role for these outsiders, aside from providing much needed financial resources for the community? While this view of the university as primarily a conduit for capital may have been held by some officials, local people themselves seemed to have a more appreciative view of the intellectual resources that university lecturers can share with communities. The involvement of students and junior lecturers in local project planning presented some challenges to ensuring local control and empowerment. Participatory action-research, in its ideal form, is understood as empowering local people to carry out research by themselves with, for example, interviews being conducted by local people for local people. However, involvement of the university in PAR often leads, as it did in LPRV, to university staff and students playing a stronger role in research than local people. This chapter has reviewed many of the lessons learned in the LPRV program about the potential of the university to contribute to localized, participatory poverty reduction and community development. At the most general level we have learned that while mobilizing the resources of the university to support localized poverty reduction is fraught with difficulties, universities can indeed do much to improve the lives of the poor while at the same time strengthening the universities themselves. More specifically, we have learned that (1) the usefulness of university intellectual resources to the poor is dependent on the resources being mobilized in a manner that is consistent with the poor's own knowledge, needs and aspirations; (2) without financial resources for poor communities to draw on while tapping the intellectual resources of the university, it is difficult to develop partnerships with communities and government; (3) very little money is needed to catalyze partnerships; (4) a broad approach to participation that brings university, community and government partners together leads to broadening experience, perceptions, and mutual understanding, in addition to many practical and innovative solutions to poverty at the local level, and enhanced knowledge for university staff and students; (5) more limited partnerships between universities and local government can at times put the community members themselves at a disadvantage; (6) when people are not challenged and introduced to new ideas, it is easy for them to fall back on ideas that have not worked in the past; (7) participatory development provides opportunities to initiate change which are based on local knowledge and local control, but also on innovations from further afield.


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The following chapter turns our focus from university work in communities to the university as an institution. We will examine the LPRV lessons for building the capacities of universities to institutionalize development work for localized poverty reduction.

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3. OUTCOMES: Building the Capacities of Universities to Contribute to Poverty Reduction

If the intended output of the CPR projects was reduction of poverty at particular sites through the participation of community, local government and universities, then the intended outcome of the whole LPRV program was the enhancement of the capacity of the LPRV member institutions. The expected ultimate impact is that LPRV members and other teaching and research institutions will contribute to poverty reduction throughout Vietnam, and over the long term, by drawing on knowledge generated by LPRV. The previous chapter reviewed lessons learned through LPRV about the role universities can play in community development and poverty reduction, lessons that will be of little use if research and teaching institutions do not build their capacity to apply them. This chapter discusses the lessons learned through LPRV about building such capacity.

3.1. Defining the Nature of Capacity-Building Capacity building has been called a “process by which individuals, groups, institutions, organizations and societies enhance their abilities to identify and meet development challenges in a sustainable manner” (CIDA 1996). To build capacity for universities to work on community development and poverty issues in an applied manner requires the simultaneous development of both individual and institutional capacities. Individual capacities relate to the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that university researchers, teachers, and administrators need in order to work effectively on participatory poverty reduction. Institutional capacities relate to the structures, processes, and resources that universities need to support their individual members and to manage relationships with communities and local government. The following chart was developed over a period of three years of discussion and practice in order to clarify the full range of individual and institutional capacities that LPRV found itself taking on the responsibility of addressing, if not building. At the most general level, the capacity-building lesson learned by the LPRV Program was that building university capacities to engage in participatory poverty reduction work is a major undertaking. Development of new mandates for the university, new partnerships with poor communities, and new methods for developing curriculum all require capacities that go beyond those needed for the day-to-day activities of managing pilot projects and preparing courses. Such profound change cannot be accomplished within the span of a major five-year capacity building program such as the LPRV Program. It has to be an ongoing process. Accordingly, the LPRV Program’s members found themselves learning that the most important university capacity needing to be built, at both the individual and institutional level, is the capacity to learn continuously from experience as universities apply themselves to external poverty reduction tasks and to making related internal changes.


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Figure 6: The LPRV Program’s Capacity-Building Matrix

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The LPRV Program’s approach to building the capacity of its CPRs and their host universities was to engage members in whole-systems thinking and to encourage wide participation. From the systems perspective, universities are sub-systems of the broader society and also have their own sub-sub systems (such as CPRs) to manage. This implies that the capacities needing to be enhanced are relational, such as capacities to develop equal partnerships and plan effectively with communities on the outside, and to do the same among units on the inside. The participatory approach to university capacity-building treats all individuals— professors, junior staff, and students—as potential contributors both to their own development and to that of their institution. In other words, it encourages respect for existing knowledge held by staff and students, and for their potential to learn by doing, just as the participatory approach to poverty reduction in the community encourages respect for the knowledge and learning abilities of community members. Perhaps the most important decision that shaped capacity building within the LPRV program was the early rejection of any capacity-building approach that would privilege the knowledge of any one group over others. Instead of employing the common 'train the trainers' model of institutional capacity building — by which Canadian scholars and senior Vietnamese researchers would transfer knowledge and technology to their Vietnamese counterparts — the LPRV Program formulated a model of learning-by-doing and co-learning (or mutual learning). The co-learning aspect recognized that Canadian counterparts did not themselves have immediate answers for the challenges posed by the LPRV Program’s goals. It further recognized that Canadians, regardless of their coming from a position of power and privilege, had a lot to learn through the LPRV Program themselves. This included learning about local poverty reduction, and the changing role of universities in Vietnam, and also about international cooperation itself. A typical training model was also insufficient because much of the change required in the early stages of building university capacity for doing poverty reduction work needed to be at the institutional as well as the individual level. In addition to developing skills and abilities among individual lecturers and researchers, it was necessary to develop the CPRs’ capacities, and that of their institutional hosts, to use their human and financial resources to achieve poverty reduction goals. This included development of an institutional will to initiate community development activities outside mainstream academic practice.

3.2. Inventing CPRs Had the LPRV Program limited itself to building knowledge and skills of individuals, then it would have been a relatively simple project. However, the need for institutional development was as critical as the need for development of the knowledge of individual members. In Vietnam in the 1990’s, universities, like other institutions, found themselves operating in the context of a fast changing society. In order to respond effectively to the poverty-related


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opportunities and conditions created by Doi Moi, Vietnamese universities needed to explore new possibilities for structuring teaching, research, and outreach in a manner that promoted both academic rigor and practical relevance. The organizational innovation that lay at the heart of the LPRV Program approach was the university-based Centre for Poverty Reduction (CPR). There were some precedents among the LPRV Program’s partners for such a structure. Hue University already had an active centre for education, research and extension related to rural development. However, at the outset of the LPRV Program, the universities for the most part tended to look at their role in localized poverty reduction as being, in the words of one rector, “a teaching role,” i.e., the role of transferring technology and skills to farmers and government officials. For example, Thai Nguyen University offered a range of extension courses for farmers on agricultural techniques, as well as courses for local officials on agricultural economics and rural development. Many of the LPRV Program’s participants felt that they were unable to engage with the more pernicious and systemic aspects of poverty and inequality. What distinguished the LPRV Program from most previous attempts to link universities with local development was its focus on building long-term co-learning relationships with communities and local governments. Specific innovations introduced by the LPRV Program with regard to the manner universities worked on poverty issues included: • Approaching poverty issues in a cross-disciplinary manner that integrates the social

sciences, humanities, and natural science traditions; • Institutionalizing outreach at the universities by gaining the support of senior university

leaders; • Basing university-community relationships on an iterative process that is long term and

program-based rather than being based on a project or consulting mode; • Integrating extension and research with teaching and learning at the university. At each university, a CPR was established to develop both university outreach services, involving participation in community projects and extension services, and university inreach services, involving incorporation of poverty reduction and community participation topics into courses for regular students. Both tasks required university-community connections: effective outreach could only be facilitated with the aid of appropriate expertise from the university; ‘inreach’ in the form of course development needed to be based on in-depth knowledge from the field about the needs of poor communities and effective methods for meeting those needs.

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3.3. Enhancing Knowledge and Skills At the heart of any institution lie the knowledge, skills and attitudes of the individual people who make up that institution. Unfortunately, it is difficult (impossible, perhaps) to identify all the individuals’ capacities that are required to understand and act upon poverty. At a minimum, they range from an understanding of economic systems to group-planning facilitation skills. Not surprisingly, in retrospect, a few attempts at the beginning of the LPRV Program to identify what specific knowledge and skills would be required by CPR members soon became seen as an exercise in futility. Much of the knowledge and skills that are required by poverty workers—as with social workers and planners—are gained over years of experience. The LPRV Program, therefore, soon decided to focus on creating learning processes through which knowledge and skills would be enhanced inductively, by individual and interactive reflection on lessons from fieldwork, rather than through didactic training courses delivered by Canadians, for example. The inductive, open-ended learning in the LPRV Program was not completely unstructured. It was recognized that learning-by-doing is not enough to internalize lessons and acquire new skills. The LPRV Program therefore provided a number of mechanisms to reinforce field learning through dialogue and theoretical study. These mechanisms included:

• Workshops: Every year (as explained in Chapter 1) three pan-LPRV Program workshops were held to enable CPR members to share lessons learned from their projects with each other, to examine common issues related to participation, gender, ethnicity, and policy assessment, and to explore various topics with LPRV Program participants from NCSSH and the Canadian universities, plus occasionally, guests from other countries. The workshops were designed so that they were not stand-alone events. Their timings and agendas were integrated into the cycle of CPR planning for community projects and curriculum change. The frequency of the workshops was intended to ensure that CPRs received feedback at all stages of their work: commune profiling, project planning, project implementation, analysis of field work results, and documentation of lessons being learned. While these national and international workshops provided too little time for significant dialogue about the individual projects, they did help to maintain coherence in LPRV perspective and in activities across the partner institutions.

In addition to the regularly scheduled workshops, dozens of special workshops were held. Some of these brought people together from all LPRV Program partner institutions to build capacity in special topic areas, particularly gender, ethnicity, policy assessment, urban poverty, and participatory research. Other workshops focused on planning and learning from the activities of one, or sometimes two, of the CPRs. The regular and special workshops provided the intellectual core of the LPRV Program. Besides assisting the CPRs to place their pilot projects in a broader academic and policy context, they assisted the curriculum design teams (see below) to identify materials and explore concepts relevant to their respective topics.


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Study in Canada: In Years 3 and 4 of the program, the CPRs were invited to each send one member to spend a semester studying at the University of British Columbia in the School of Community and Regional Planning or in the Department of Geography at Université Laval in specially designed programs. These programs included participation in regular graduate courses of the Canadian universities and in courses specially designed for the Vietnamese scholars. These short periods of study and reflection served to familiarize Vietnamese scholars with theory and concepts relevant to their fieldwork, and allowed them to upgrade their knowledge of planning techniques and research methodologies.

The idea of the Canadian universities hosting scholars for longer periods was rejected because of the cost in time to the scholars, and because of the special nature of the topic, participatory poverty reduction, that was the focus of the LPRV Program. Further, many of the LPRV Vietnamese scholars would not have met the formal university entrance requirements to the Canadian universities, especially the English language requirements. The opportunity to spend a semester at the University of British Columbia was welcomed by many of the Vietnamese LPRV Program participants. It was incumbent on the CPR and NCSSH Directors, and the UBC faculty active in the LPRV Program, to ensure that those who attended the courses would be able to use their new knowledge upon return to Vietnam. The challenge was to identify candidates for study in Canada who had both adequate knowledge and interest in community development and poverty reduction and the ability to attend intensive classes in English or French.

• Study Tours: Four study tours for CPR and NCSSH members were conducted by Canadians in the Philippines, Thailand (3), and Malaysia. Three of these were combined with Steering Committee Meetings. These tours introduced LPRV Program participants to academics in Southeast Asia who shared their interest in applying universities to the cause of poverty reduction, and allowed them to see firsthand the contexts for, the institutional partners participating in, and the outcomes of, participatory poverty reduction programs in these other countries.

In some cases, these short visits led to the development of longer-term relationships between institutions. For example, the study tour to the Philippines in 2000 resulted in an LPRV Program participant from HCMC visiting the Philippines for a research fellowship the following year. Later, the University of Social Sciences and Humanities agreed to host a Filipino graduate student to study poverty issues in Vietnam. Similarly, relations between LPRV Program members and several universities in Thailand were initiated or strengthened as a result of the study tours; as a result, community development scholars from Thammasat University and Walalailak University participated in several of the LPRV Program’s special-topics workshops in Vietnam.

Reflecting the academic nature of the LPRV Program, considerable attention was paid in workshops to discussing models of planning and development. Practical skills and specific techniques for working and researching with the poor received less attention.

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One of the difficult challenges facing the LPRV program was the necessity for workshops to accommodate a diversity of LPRV participants. Diversity reflected different backgrounds in the social sciences, natural sciences and technical professions, and the combination of university teachers, administrators and, at times, students who were active in CPRs. As well, officials from all levels and community leaders often participated in the workshops.

3.4. Encouraging Multi-Disciplinary Work The LPRV Program’s need for multi-disciplinary research and extension activities that straddled the divide between technological, social scientific and natural scientific approaches meant that each CPR had to be a nexus where different perspectives were exchanged and synthesized. The challenges faced in creating such units varied from university to university. The HCMC CPR, for example, which was located in a social science university, was from the beginning limited to members with relatively similar academic research backgrounds in geography, sociology and ethnology. When needed, complementary expertise was often found outside the CPR. Other CPRs, such as Thai Nguyen, comprised members from many colleges, including people with backgrounds in medicine, agriculture and economics. The varied compositions of the CPRs led to their taking on different roles in the communities and in promoting projects that reflected their respective strengths. While intellectual disciplinary differences within CPRs did not seem to hinder their work, there were logistical and administrative barriers to working across disciplines. In some cases, individuals from different departments, located in different parts of the campus, had little time to meet together. The CPR Coordinators (who, unlike the CPR Directors, were relatively junior scholars) had minimal influence over members whose administrative home was in another department. The result was that CPR work at times lacked coherence, and more time than normal was required for filling in the gaps between individuals’ work. Many CPR members felt most comfortable working with junior staff members and students from their own department. This allowed for better coordination between their teaching and learning schedules and the work of the CPR, and naturally allowed for closer communication between senior members and those junior people who did much of the CPR work. This also reflected the Vietnamese tradition of teachers developing close reciprocal relationships with students. In cases where working across disciplines in an official manner was difficult, CPRs developed a number of strategies to reduce problems. These included:

• Splitting work into teams that were discipline-based—for example, staff from one department would be responsible for much of the work at one phase or component of the LPRV Program, while staff from other departments would take on work at other components or phases;

• Distributing key staff among pilot projects, allowing one senior member to lead one

‘team’ for one project;


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• Working within pre-existing networks of friends and colleagues within and outside of the university;

• Keeping the group small and cohesive— this increased the workload of individuals,

but allowed for closer cooperation. Solid leadership was also an important factor in encouraging cooperation among CPR members from different departments or colleges of the university. Being led by senior leaders of the whole university, who were able to exercise university-wide authority and influence, greatly aided each CPR’s ability to mobilize specialists from disparate faculties and units. Three of the CPRs were led by their university’s Rector and/or a Vice-Rector. In the other two cases, the CPRs were led by senior scholars and administrators in other positions. One of the LPRV Program’s lessons learned about organizing multi-disciplinary poverty reduction work is that divisions among departments can be as much organizational as expressions of fundamental intellectual differences. CPR leadership from higher levels of a university can help manage these divisions. In a few cases, the placement of Canadian interns at CPRs also served to facilitate communication and cooperation among CPR members. (The role of these interns will be discussed in the next chapter.)

3.5. Developing Curricula The final output of the CPR activities was to be a set of new curriculum units for the LPRV Program’s partner universities and others to use in teaching participatory approaches to poverty reduction. The units were intended to bring the lessons from practice (particularly the LPRV Program’s practice reviewed in the previous chapter) into the classroom and, in so doing, to provide a link between the teaching of the university and the project work of the CPRs in the field. On the assumption that Vietnamese instructors know best how to put together teaching materials that are appropriate to their context, the process for developing curricula was led, and largely undertaken by, the Vietnamese participants in the LPRV Program. The Canadians only provided advice at certain stages. Besides being seen as a sound approach to developing appropriate curricula, the Vietnamese-led approach was seen as the most effective for building the individual capacities of CPR members; this rationale was based on the assumption that the best way to learn is to teach, or in this case, that the best way to learn is by developing curricula for teaching. The curriculum development process was seen as a vehicle for enabling the LPRV Program’s participants to engage with theoretical concepts, and to reflect on the connections between theory and practice. In other words, it provided for learning by the curriculum developers themselves. It was not merely an attempt to create new textbooks over the short term. Indeed, the production of curricula materials did take a long time because the process was incremental and iterative. In the LPRV Program’s third year, one of the participants

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expressed fear at a workshop that at the then-current rate of production it would take at least five years to produce one text. In the later stages of the curriculum development process, the concept of “problem-based learning“ and “participatory learning” as a pedagogical approach was introduced to the Vietnamese universities by UBC’s Faculty of Medicine. Some of the universities, such as Vinh, determined that the approach offered considerable promise in its potential to link their classroom teaching and scientific learning with their outreach related to participatory poverty reduction. Vinh and UBC agreed to continue exploring together this potential even after the LPRV Program’s CIDA grant expired. Naturally, CPRs did not begin developing curricula from a blank slate. Topic areas in which curricula were required were identified in a 1999 workshop. During this workshop, individual CPRs and pan-LPRV Program groups agreed to prepare specific units (see box) for which they had some expertise and interest. Each unit was to be a comprehensive treatment of its topic area, and was to draw on lessons learned in the field, perhaps with the aid of local people.

Box 12: Curriculum development

From the beginning there was some confusion over the question of whether the agreement was to produce curriculum units for teaching front-line practitioners—officials, professionals and community members—or for teaching regular undergraduate students on campus.

Curriculum Development Teams and Topics HCMC University – Participatory Action Research in Urban Poverty

Reduction Dalat University – Participatory Methods for Policy Assessment Hue University – Participatory Commune Profiling for Learning by Doing

Project Development Vinh University – Participatory Research in Poverty Reduction and Rural

Development Thai Nguyen University – Participatory Design and Management of Projects Gender Group – Gender and Poverty Reduction Ethnic Minorities Group – Poverty Reduction and Ethnic Minorities in

Vietnam Policy Group – Policy Assessment Methods for Poverty Reduction Coordinating Center for Poverty Reduction – Training Manual for Local

Officials on Participatory Planning for Poverty Reduction


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Regardless, as the process unfolded, most of the curriculum development teams increasingly focused on preparing materials for undergraduate courses rather than for extension courses and training of local officials and community members.

3.5.1. Supporting curriculum development Canadian and NCSSH scholars in the LPRV Program assisted the curriculum teams by contributing expert advice, but control of the process and draft contents was left to the teams themselves. In some cases, advisors from Canada and Hanoi contributed early through working with CPRs to draft tables of contents for the books. In other cases, those advisors who were more pedagogically-inclined assisted the CPRs by encouraging them to define overall learning goals for courses and specific learning goals for course components. An editorial board composed of senior scholars from NCSSH and some of the CPRs reviewed drafts. Curriculum team members were available to draw on ideas and information presented and generated at the LPRV Program’s various workshops. The early workshops preceded the formation of curriculum teams but were nonetheless relevant to many of the teams’ mandates, and many of the teams’ members had participated in those workshops. These workshops included the initial set held in late 1998 on “Foundational Concepts, Methods and Tools for Poverty Reduction, ” where the LPRV Program’s theoretical and methodological assumptions were reviewed by lecturers, staff and students at each of the newly formed CPRs, and an international workshop in 2000 on “Governmental, Quasi-Governmental, Non-Government Organization and Community Responses to Poverty in Five Southeast Asian Countries.” Curriculum teams were also able to draw on international concepts and Vietnamese experiences that were explored in the more specialized workshops — on topics of urban poverty, gender, ethnicity, policy assessment, profiling, micro-credit, etc. — held in later years of the LPRV Program. As well, each team organized its own workshops for the specific purpose of developing the contents of its curriculum unit. The workshops were themselves participatory to varying degrees, and to varying degrees drew on the commune project experiences. To help it develop a text on its selected topic of “Participatory Community Profiling for Learn-By-Doing Project Development,” the Hue CPR, for example, held a workshop to find out from local authorities, community members, and academics what they felt were the kinds of information that should be included in a community profile. Workshop participants discussed the learning objectives that would be relevant for a curriculum on this topic, and established a number of ‘task groups’ to develop different parts of the text. The task groups included academics from Hue University and UBC, and local villagers. In other cases, drafts of curricula were presented to local authorities and community members to solicit input.

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Provision was also made for CPRs to review each other’s drafts. An editorial board comprising senior scholars from NCSSH and some of the CPRs was struck to vet the final drafts with the assistance of well-qualified advisors. It was often difficult for people to be frank in their criticisms. Comments about spelling errors and use of language often overshadowed major issues in the structure and coherence of early drafts. However, there was sometimes lively discussion over content and presentation of the books—a novelty in a context where curriculum officially flows from the top down through specialized channels. The curriculum development process not only served the end of producing texts, it also assisted participants to further conceptualize issues associated with participatory research, planning, and evaluation. Participants learned by writing together. Figure 7: Relationships between coursebooks

Conceptualization of the curriculum topics extended to identifying the relationships among the various topics. For example, in the third year of curriculum development, Canadian and Vietnamese participants at a Vinh workshop structured the relationships in the manner presented in the diagram above. The participatory nature of the curriculum development process produced debates about process philosophy similar to those that arose around participatory commune profiling. Some thought the editorial board should be more directive in managing the process, that it should proactively set guidelines for text contents, identify major theories, and define key terms. To make up for the lack of such centralized instruction from the LPRV Program as a whole, some CPRs solicited input from renowned Vietnamese specialists early on in their curriculum development process, and later passed curriculum drafts through a local editorial board consisting of leaders from their own university and other local specialists, before finally presenting the curriculum to the editorial board for review.


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The curriculum development process allowed for a variety of approaches among the CPRs and flexibility within each approach. Such a process also created uncertainty in relation to:

• Audience: As late as the third year of the project, the audience of the final textbooks was rather uncertain. Some LPRV Program leaders thought that the curricula were to be designed for front-line development professionals, but, for the most part, the first and second drafts of the course books were clearly written for a student audience.

• Content: The iterative nature of the curriculum development generated confusion

about the main concepts that were to be conveyed. Because many of the texts were compiled from sections written by individuals, they sometimes contained contradictory statements. As well, there was a continuing tension between those who thought the texts should emphasize the theoretical foundations of practice and those who thought they should be more like manuals for practice.

• Uptake: Because, in general, university curricula must be approved by the Ministry

of Education and Training (MOET), there was uncertainty about when, and in which departments, each of the curriculum units might be used in formal classroom settings.

The curriculum development process also had to deal with the fact that many of the curriculum writers had limited practice experience themselves and yet were preparing materials that were to inform practice, regardless of the degree to which practice prescriptions were to be theoretically grounded. Curriculum development could perhaps have benefited from more examination of what courses were already being taught in Vietnamese universities. While there were some efforts to review the existing curricular programs and specific courses related to participatory research, community development, gender, and ethnicity, it was sometimes difficult to discern from sketchy course outlines actual course contents and how they were taught. Nevertheless, more attention to building on existing courses might have been beneficial. Limitations in language abilities prevented the Vietnamese curriculum developers from gaining full value from the international literature. Likewise, the inability of Canadians to read Vietnamese prevented the Canadians from commenting on curriculum drafts. Some suggested that significant iterations should be translated into English, but in the end all agreed that such an undertaking would be too time-consuming and expensive, and that in any event there would always be questions about translation quality. At times, CPRs would develop short abstracts of chapters that would communicate basic ideas to Canadian colleagues. That said, some of these drafts were quite detailed in their exploration of the key ideas presented in the texts, and often neared the length of the full Vietnamese text.

3.5.2. Developing a Training Manual for Practitioners As noted above, while the LPRV Program’s curricula were initially seen by some as intended for front-line development workers, the Program’s university focus led to the

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curricula being increasingly oriented to students in the classroom. Following completion by the seven curriculum teams of their draft texts for students, the LPRV Program returned to the idea of producing materials for local work, particularly materials for the use of local officials. In recognition of the fact that students and officials had diverse learning needs, the Coordinating Centre for Poverty Reduction at NCSSH produced a separate manual, or trainers’ guide, for local officials. This was to be provided to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA ) for use as a text in the training of officials managing Vietnam’s Hunger Eradication and Poverty Alleviation (HEPR) program at the local level. The orientation to training of officials required a renewed focus on adult education and participatory forms of learning. At the outset, the LPRV Program tended to blur the distinctions among classroom learning by students and training programs for local officials and community members. The reasoning was that if students were to contribute to poverty reduction after graduation, as technical professionals or government managers, then what they needed to know is similar to what current professionals and managers need to know. When the LPRV Program started, some of the partner universities, such as Thai Nguyen, were already actively offering short courses on agricultural techniques for local officials and extension officers. What the LPRV Program introduced was the idea of augmenting technical knowledge transfers to local people with the provision of opportunities for local people to learn about social-economic systems and participatory planning methods. The evolution of activities in the LPRV Program, whereby development of training manuals for poverty reduction work came at a late stage in the LPRV programming, allowed for lessons learned from the earlier curriculum development process to inform the manual preparation process. Characteristics of the latter process were that it:

• Began with a needs assessment conducted in CPR partner Communes with front-line poverty reduction staff;

• Used a series of pilot training sessions with practitioners to test training components

and to gain valuable input from the field;

• Explicated learning objectives for every section of the text;

• Adapted many of the materials on practice tools that had been identified or prepared during the textbook development process;

• Addressed teaching methods as well as training manual content.

Two pilot training workshops were held in Thai Nguyen and in Ha Tinh provinces in 2002 and 2003. They were led by scholars and staff from the CCPR, and some of the CPRs, who worked with district and commune officials to test training materials on participatory planning issues and practices. Interaction with practitioners in these sessions offered the CCPR, and those CPRs that cooperated with it, an ‘insiders view’ of the learning needs and capacities of front-line poverty workers. Comments from evaluations and from meetings of trainers were used to refine the training manual.


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3.5.3. Learning about Capacity-Building from the Curriculum Development Processes The major capacity-building lesson to be learned from the LPRV Program’s curriculum development experience is that curriculum development processes, oriented either to classroom texts for students or training manuals for practitioners, can provide significant opportunities and incentives for involving academics in poverty-reduction work. Unlike the pilot projects, for which some LPRV Program participants had difficulty finding time, the curriculum development processes enjoyed contributions from most CPR members. Some of us have noticed that, in fact, many members spent much more time on these processes than had been expected or required of them. They carefully refined their units, and took pride in presenting them to colleagues. The preparation of curricula promoted more intra- and inter-university collaboration than was possible in the commune projects. Whereas the commune projects required many days in the field, over a series of visits, and incurred sometimes considerable time and financial costs in getting to the field, co-operative processes for developing curricula could be effected through on-campus meetings, distribution of hardcopy drafts, electronic communication, and short intensive workshops. In one such intensive workshop, for example, the LPRV Program’s gender team tested its text and curriculum materials in a pilot course at Can Tho University. This pilot course involved teaching by a gender team representative from each of the CPRs and from the CCPR. Several of the LPRV Program’s universities have explored the possibility of replicating this course in their regular teaching programs. Development of textbooks is a task that fits well with the traditional mandate of universities and that provides career-relevant rewards. For academics, it is a less ambiguous activity than is developing field projects, especially projects involving inclusive, collaborative processes. At the same time, curriculum development processes complement poverty reduction work in the field. They provide incentives and contexts for reflecting on lessons to be learned from fieldwork, plus vehicles for documenting and disseminating those lessons. In turn, use of curriculum development products in classrooms and training courses can help students and practitioners become more effective in their own fieldwork. In the final years of the LPRV Program, as members began to think about follow-up to the program, considerable attention was given to institutionalizing the products of the textbook and training manual development teams. CPRs and their host universities looked for opportunities to extend or reform the contents and methods of teaching and extension programs to make them more relevant to poverty reduction. Dalat University, for example, decided to establish a new School of Social Work and Community Development. This school will use the curricula developed through the LPRV Program, will tap CPR members’ skills and knowledge gained through LPRV field projects and workshops, and will maintain contacts made through the LPRV Program with social work and community development schools in Canada, Thailand, and the U.S.A. As another example, Vinh is developing a new agricultural extension and rural development program that will provide an opportunity for teaching courses that have been developed by the LPRV Program’s curriculum teams. And

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Vinh and Hue Universities have both proposed initiatives to integrate problem-based learning and participatory teaching methodologies into student curricula.

3.6. Developing and Sustaining CPR Capacity Each CPR is composed of an inter-disciplinary group of researchers, lecturers and university administrators who share a common interest in poverty issues. Most CPRs have been led from the outset by a senior member of the university—Rectors, Vice Rectors or other high level administrators. The decision to engage senior personnel was taken both by the universities themselves and by the designers of the LPRV Program. For the program designers, there was no practical alternative to working through each Vietnamese partner’s most senior leaders. The alternative of seeking appropriately skilled and committed individuals at each Vietnamese partner institution was rejected as infeasible given the time and resources available to put a program proposal together. As well, such an approach, while understandably common in designing research projects, would have had serious shortcomings in an institutional capacity-building program such as LPRV Program. Without the mandate and support of senior officials, little organizational capacity, and perhaps little individual capacity, could be built. For Vietnamese partners, there was the additional practical consideration that CPR leadership by senior personnel was required in order to ensure that CPRs could have official status and access to institutional resources, as well as to ensure that the program as a whole gained ready approval by the Vietnamese government. In the later years of the LPRV Program, it was realized that institutional commitment to LPRV Program work from the top of each Vietnamese institution, in addition to the commitments of individual scholars at all ranks, facilitated the LPRV network’s continuance after the CIDA grant. Continuation, it is hoped, will be in the form of a robust network of whole universities and research centres such as NCSSH, not just as a network of grant-dependent CPRs. The leadership provided to the CPRs by rectors and other senior scholars meant that the CPRs were widely respected within their universities. This respect facilitated CPRs gaining the cooperation of various departments and attracting university-wide resources in support of CPR work. For example, senior CPR leadership could arrange for lecturers’ teaching hours to be reduced so that they could participate in commune projects and other CPR activities. As another example, the small core of active CPR members could attract specialized assistance from other university personnel when such assistance was needed for commune projects and curriculum development. However, high-level leadership also came with some disadvantages. The engagement of university leaders at times led to the perception that the management of the CPRs was rather top-down, with the directors playing dominant roles in setting priorities and communicating with LPRV Program partners without much input from the CPR membership. To the extent this perception was correct, the situation reflected both the traditional top-down management culture and the fact that CPR leaders were the members most closely connected, through


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meetings and formal correspondence, to other LPRV Program leaders at NCSSH, the Canadian partners, and the other CPRs. Moreover, it was soon found that since leadership of the CPRs was provided by senior university administrators, such people had little time for day-to-day CPR management. In response, it was agreed that a position of Coordinator would be established at each CPR. In each case, a lecturer of middle-to-senior rank, who was prepared to put significant time into supervising the functioning of the CPR and its staff on a daily basis, organizing activities, managing finances, preparing reports for LPRV Program meetings and CIDA, and liaising within the LPRV Program, was selected for this role.

3.6.1. Resourcing the CPRs As LPRV programming progressed, all CPRs were asked to take on responsibility for more and more activities. While in the early stages, CPR members were simply required to attend meetings and training workshops, they rapidly found themselves being burdened with collecting, cataloguing and managing books for their new modest libraries, planning for commune projects, and managing the complex networks of communication that connected the CPRs with the communities and the outside world. The time required for all of these multiple and overlapping duties—even before curriculum development was added to the list—was not insignificant. An added burden was that many CPR members could not speak English, and therefore had to have most documents, including even simple emails, translated before sending and receiving them from Canadian partners. The situation came to a head at the beginning of Year 2 (summer of 1999), when, following the assignment of one non-Vietnamese-speaking WUSC volunteer to each CPR for a three-month period of applied research— assignments which varied greatly in the degree to which they benefited the CPR and/or the intern, but which in all cases required much time to be spent by CPR members in supervising the volunteer— it was decided that there would have to be more careful planning of LPRV Program activities overall and more resources provided to the CPRs in the form of some paid staff and releases from teaching for very active CPR scholars. In addition to having to deal with the need for adequate resources in the form of personnel and time, the CPRs had to continuously consider the kinds personnel to be involved. For example, some CPRs included local officials or leaders in their core membership. Some CPRs found that not all members who signed up early in the program had the skills or incentives required for extension work. A few initial members may have been attracted by the opportunity to participate in an international linkage program of this sort with the travel and other benefits it might provide. It was soon realized, however, that the difficult work of poverty reduction required individuals who had not only relevant expertise but also the willingness to put a lot of time and effort into a program that in fact provided modest rewards since, as will be elaborated on below, CIDA rules prohibited the CPRs from paying staff. In response to this realization, some CPRs found they had to bring in new members and collaborators. Others hired as many as three to four full time junior staff or student assistants to take on certain activities, such as project field work, so that senior scholars could devote more time to other activities such as curriculum development.

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Some CPRs drew a distinction between CPR members and other collaborators—whether faculty, staff, or students. Members played more central roles in decision-making, attended pan-LPRV Program workshops, and represented the CPR to the broader community. The difficulty with this distinction was that it could reinforce the disjunction between theory and practice, with the members focusing on the former while collaborators, staff and students did the latter. Junior staff, who seldom attended major workshops, study tours, or training events, often found themselves ill-equipped when sent to the field to engage in participatory planning and community development. CPR members, whose theoretical understanding was being enriched through the LPRV Program, but who were often heavily burdened with teaching, research, and administration duties, generally lacked the time to devote much effort to mentoring the junior staff or closely supervising their work in the communes. There was some questioning of whether people from outside the university could be full members of a CPR, and, if so, how such membership would affect the role of the CPR in the process of ‘Getting to D.’ If it had non-university members, could a CPR consider itself a representative of the university in relating to local communities and governments? Furthermore, an independent Canadian researcher, Keith Inskster, who was interested in the LPRV Program as a capacity-building model, found, through interviews with some LPRV Program members in one CPR, that some who were conducting fieldwork and drafting reports for the LPRV Program knew little about the Program outside of their own specific tasks. This situation led to challenges (some dissatisfaction and communication problems) both in the field and in workshop environments. Workshop reports and discussions on lessons learned in the field when conducted by individuals who had spent limited time were perhaps less rich, instructive, and beneficial to all than the reports and discussions would have been had they been engaged in by junior members who had spent extended periods in the field and had learned important, but perhaps not yet well articulated, lessons from this experience. As the project progressed, some CPRs, such as Dalat and HCMC, increasingly sent junior staff to attend workshops and training events. It must also be admitted that junior staff did not often receive credit for the CPR’s outputs they produced, such as field reports, and did not in all cases benefit from LPRV Program workshops, study tours, etc., as much as their contributions might have warranted. Many CPRs did in fact rely on outsiders in carrying out their work, as lecturers often brought on former students or local consultants to assist with tasks. In the most systematic approach to involving outsiders, Thai Nguyen CPR strategically included three government staff — one each from MOLISA, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development— among its eight full members in order to fully engage the support of these departments in the commune projects. In the the LPRV Program’s final International Workshop, in December 2002, the CPR membership debate emerged once again. Now that the vast potential of CPRs was becoming more clearly seen, the general question of how to staff them adequately and appropriately warranted some discussion.


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The key issue at this point was whether, after the CIDA grant was finished, continuing CPRs or new CPR-like units should engage full time staff to manage and carry out development projects; or whether, in accord with the LPRV Program model, university lecturers should continue to do much of the work on field projects and ‘inreach’ activities with their time being released from other university duties to do so. One CPR Director argued forcefully that “there is a new role for universities” and that this role could encompass offering social services to the poor. To play this role would require a maturing of the CPR, and the engagement of full time professional staff, who “have the knowledge and time to carry out efficient projects.” This Director and his supporters felt that community development work requires intensive commitment, and that CPR members who are drawn from the ranks of university faculty, and who therefore can only spend a little time in the field, cannot realistically make such a commitment. Other workshop participants argued that, in order to better integrate CPR work with teaching, university professors must be core members of field project teams. CPRs should hire one or two secretaries, but the rest of the work must be carried out by scientists with technical knowledge and by students who have the energy and willingness to learn. No general principle was agreed on. Instead, each CPR has continued to develop its own approach to structuring and staffing CPRs in response to its own unique institutional opportunities and constraints.

3.6.2. Creating Incentives A constant concern for the CPRs and the LPRV Program as a whole was whether and how to provide incentives to individuals to participate in Program activities and, in at least some cases, to maintain high levels of involvement. Given the meagre salaries of university personnel in Vietnam, and their already overloaded schedules, it could not be assumed that personal commitments to poverty reduction would be sufficient to sustain enthusiasm. The terms of CIDA’s grant did not allow funding of staff at the CPRs, nor did it allow salary top-ups for CPR members who worked on field projects. CIDA’s argument, which applies to most of its grants, not just the LPRV Program, is that universities, both Canadian and Vietnamese, should show their commitments to CIDA-funded projects by providing their personnel with the time to work on them. Canadian universities are, in fact, required to keep track of such “in-kind contributions” to CIDA projects. On the Canadian side, this approach to resourcing projects is viable, in the short term, because Canadian professors are paid generally well and have considerable amounts of flexible time for research, which they can choose to allocate to international capacity-building projects. They get little recognition for such project work because it produces few traditional research outputs, i.e., refereed articles, and they incur opportunity costs in giving up what could be remunerative time acting as consultants; but, Canadian professors involved in CIDA projects do get adequately and regularly paid by their universities while doing what they believe in and find satisfying.

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The situation for Vietnamese professors is quite different. Their basic pay is at a low level and is usually provided on a course-by-course basis. They do not have abundant, paid, self-managed time for research because the universities do not have the resources to pay for such time. Nor do the universities have the resources to readily pay personnel to work on projects that do not fall within the universities’ core teaching and, secondarily, research mandates. Increasingly, therefore, Vietnamese faculty derive significant income from consulting in their non-university time to the growing number of honoraria-paying foreign aid projects. When they give time to a program such as the LPRV Program, it comes at high personal financial cost. Understandably, they can feel burdened by a seemingly unfair system that expects them to take on major new responsibilities, and an added workload, with minimal rewards. Without being able to offer financial incentives, the LPRV Program was continuously challenged to find other ways to induce busy Vietnamese professors with heavy teaching and administrative schedules to participate in LPRV Program activities. Attracting them to the LPRV Program in the first place was easy because many Vietnamese faculty have a deep concern for the poor and were intrigued by the possibilities the LPRV Program offered for tying their university affiliations to poverty reduction work. Also, they could look forward to personal benefits, such as travel and skills enhancement, from being involved in a program such as this. But these attractions are not enough to sustain intensive effort when other international projects offer not only possibilities for involvement in meaningful work and skills enhancement, but also direct consulting fees. One material incentive that the LPRV Program could and did offer was per diem allowances for travel within Vietnam. These per diems were, under CIDA rules, generous relative to the expenses for meals that anyone needed to incur on the road. Even for Canadian travelers in Vietnam the per diems allowed were more than adequate (Accordingly, for most of the program, the Canadians took per diems much below the maximum allowed.) For the Vietnamese, the allowances were especially generous. Per diems for two to three days of field work, had they been paid to the maximum allowable, would have been equivalent to one month of income for most of the Vietnamese participants. In practice, the CPRs husbanded their travel budgets and like the Canadians paid lower per diems than were allowable under the rules. Nevertheless, even at levels that for Canadians would have been barely adequate, the per diems provided Vietnamese academics with significant incentives for participation in certain LPRV Program activities— unfortunately, not in all activities. Per diems encouraged CPR members to spend considerable time in the field, and to participate in workshops in nearby towns or at other CPRs, but they did nothing to encourage people to take the time needed to plan prior to fieldwork, to record lessons learned, to prepare CPR administrative reports, or to write curriculum drafts. Without documentation, it was difficult to reflect on experience and disseminate lessons learned to other groups and to the general academic and professional community. It seemed at times absurd that while translators could be well compensated by the LPRV Program for translating documents from Vietnamese to English, the initial authors of the documents could, under LPRV Program rules, receive no financial benefit for their work.


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Responding to this discrepancy, it was decided mid-way in the LPRV Program that CPRs would be allowed to treat as consultants those academics who drafted texts and major reports, and to pay them, from the CPRs’ existing allotments of CIDA funding, on a page-per-page basis. This decision, which required no additional funds to be sent to the CPRs, produced significant benefits in terms of quantity and quality of reports and texts produced.

3.6.3. Managing Time In all annual workshops, CPR members mentioned the heavy burdens on their time as ranking among the most difficult barriers they encountered in their work. This was often compounded by the fact that the leadership of each CPR was provided by senior administrators, from rectors to deans, of its whole university. Members complained that they often felt pulled in many directions, and could not pay as much attention to the LPRV Program as it deserved. Even junior members of CPRs, especially the more skilled individuals, found themselves pulled by the draw of teaching responsibilities, graduate study and consulting contracts. Some younger CPR members had the time and the interest to devote to fieldwork, but could not make long-term commitments to projects. CPRs’ inabilities to offer long-term job security, combined with the many other opportunities available to qualified junior staff for further study and advancement, made it difficult for some of the CPRs to maintain a stable cadre of young and energetic staff. The continually changing personnel at the junior levels brought new energy to the centres, but the changes also left gaps in learning, development, and institutional memory. Some CPRs faced similar challenges with their more senior staff, who found many opportunities for fellowships, consulting and further study both locally and abroad. English speakers—who were particularly valuable for the LPRV Program—continuously found themselves drawn in conflicting directions. Senior scholars and administrators from NCSSH were in especially high demand, within and outside LPRV, not only for their academic expertise, but also for their knowledge of national government policy branches and the international donor community. Women members of the CPRs experienced gender-specific multiple burdens. These were posed by their taking on community fieldwork, teaching, LPRV Program writing tasks, and in some cases graduate study, on top of their domestic responsibilities. Nevertheless, most CPRs relied heavily upon the administrative and project implementation skills of their women members. Time constraints and the general nature of academic life also constrained Canadian contributions to the LPRV Program. Like their Vietnamese counterparts, the Canadian faculty members had to juggle teaching, research, graduate supervision, and administrative responsibilities with their LPRV Program work. Accordingly, LPRV Program meetings in Vietnam requiring attendance by Canadians had to be scheduled during semester breaks and holidays to accommodate long-distance travel and prolonged absences from home universities.

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However, the LPRV Program demands put on most Canadian participants were modest compared to the demands on the Vietnamese: only the Vietnamese participants were active in field projects; most of the curriculum development was in the Vietnamese language and hence could only be done by the Vietnamese LPRV Program participants; most workshops were organized in Vietnam and held in Vietnam locations; and only the Vietnamese could lead organizational development of their own institutions. One means employed by some CPRs to deal with the challenge of busy schedules was to hold working meetings off-campus in a nearby town. This had a number of advantages: CPR members often appreciated the opportunity to travel outside their city; plus taking them away from day-today administration and teaching duties allowed them to concentrate on joint LPRV Program planning and writing without interruption. The fact that CPR activities were not in practice well integrated into the CPR members’ overall university duties exacerbated problems of time management. The commune projects, networking, and even curriculum development activities were seen as additional responsibilities— responsibilities connected to, yet distinct from, the CPR members’ main roles as teachers, researchers, and administrators. CPRs uniformly found it easier and more effective to work with communes that were close to their university. In all commune project reviews, the challenge of finding time for project work, including time for travel between CPRs and project sites, was cited as the biggest obstacle to building project partnerships. This challenge was greatest in the cases of those communes that were located in remote areas, to which travel was not only time-consuming but physically arduous. Projects in nearby communes, in contrast, allowed for closer supervision by CPR members, who could visit for a number of hours and return to teach classes on the same day. As well, the nearer the commune, the more likely that relationships could be sustained over time. HCMC CPR decided not to attempt to conduct a project in a remote commune, choosing instead to work in a second community in its urban region. The CPR simply found itself unable to schedule the minimum one to two weeks that each trip to a remote area would have required for travel and fieldwork. Moreover, the focus areas that were geographically close to HCMC helped to reinforce the CPR’s specialization in urban poverty and planning.

3.7. Conclusion: Opportunities For Building University Capacity For Poverty Reduction Work What have we learned from the LPRV Program about the opportunities for building university capacities to contribute to localized poverty reduction? Most generally, the LPRV Program experience suggests that a major opportunity exists in the fact that universities have the flexibility and human resources to permit units such as CPRs to be formed. Units such as CPRs can promote, pilot, catalyze and coordinate both university outreach (e.g. field projects) and ‘inreach’ (e.g., curriculum change) related to poverty reduction. Such units can help the university as a whole to build its capacity to undertake poverty reduction work. They can also gain support for university poverty reduction work from external institutions, for example by accessing financial resources from donors such as CIDA, and intellectual resources from communities, government, major research institutions such as NCSSH, and other universities.


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A second opportunity for building capacity is presented by the fact that universities enjoy great respect by outsiders for the knowledge they generate and transmit. As the LPRV Program has shown, they can also rapidly become respected for their potentials to contribute to collaborative and inclusive poverty reduction initiatives. This respect should earn the universities serious attention if they are able to develop capacity-building and project development proposals related to poverty reduction that can be submitted to funding agencies.\ A third opportunity lies in the fact that the universities have webs of relationships, which, while not always directed to poverty reduction, could in some cases be re-oriented in that direction. As well, relationships oriented to poverty reduction could be expanded by developing new kinds of linkages. The opportunities for mutual learning with other institutions, which are presented by the networking possibilities open to universities working through CPRs, deserves more attention. As the LPRV Program progressed, it was increasingly clear that CPRs could facilitate networking in the service of capacity-building at three levels:

International Networks: Internationally connected CPRs can help their universities and regions to learn about new ideas for undertaking poverty reduction work and building university capacity to do so. CPRs can work with like-minded people in other countries to help their universities stock libraries with foreign materials, organize international study tours and workshops, develop proposals for funding by international agencies, and help adapt poverty reduction methods and tools to the needs and conditions of Vietnam. The lessons to be learned from LRRV about networking at this level are addressed in the next chapter.

National Networks: Nationally connected CPRs can help their universities develop and maintain links with central government agencies, major research institutions such as NCSSH, and other universities. In this respect, the LPRV Network in Vietnam provided significant assistance to the individual CPRs. Particularly important was the role played by NCSSH and its Coordinating Centre for Poverty Reduction which organized national meetings of CPRs, provided scholarly advice, and brought to the attention of national Ministries the lessons learned by the CPRs about effective approaches to localized poverty reduction. Local networks: The independence of CPRs, and the respect they have built up for themselves, has allowed them to strengthen local networks within and among communities, local government agencies and, increasingly, NGOs and companies in the commercial sector. For example, the HCMC CPR invited to many of its workshops and training sessions a wide range of government representatives. It also invited donors, international NGOs and representatives from the evolving Vietnamese NGO community. Thus, an urban poverty workshop that the CPR organized in 2001

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brought together people from these diverse sectors to discuss pressing issues of urbanization and poverty, such as the difficulties faced by migrant populations, and strategic policy implications. This helped build the capacity not only of government and NGOs but also of the university itself. The workshop was so successful in raising the profile of urban poverty that the HCMC People's Committee hosted its own conference on that topic in the following year, inviting the CPR to assist in the conference design and to present an overview paper. Other CPRs reported that their work to encourage cooperation among public agencies (for example, between agriculture extension service departments and the Women's Union on initiatives to enhance training for farmers) was well received by the agencies. Some CPRs have noted that they would like to further develop the local networks and partnerships they helped to create. For example, Thai Nguyen CPR is now considering entering into a formal partnership with the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies. The partnership would link financing for household level projects with training and consultations provided by the CPR.

The final challenge now faced by the LPRV Program is to institutionalize CPRs and ensure their sustainability so that they can continue to help their universities build capacity to contribute to poverty reduction We have learned that while there is potential for CPR sustainability, there are also continuing obstacles, particularly in regards to funding for CPR operations, time availability to faculty for work in CPRs, and the nature of university incentive structures. Regrettably, the LPRV Program universities may not be able to overcome these obstacles, particularly the funding obstacle, and some CPRs may cease to operate under that name. However, it is not so important that the CPR name continue as that at each university some coherent unit committed to poverty reduction be mandated and resourced to lead its university’s capacity building in this area, and to link the university with other institutions dedicated to reducing poverty. Finally, if the capacity-building work of the LPRV Program is to maintain its pace, the LPRV network will need to be continued in some form, perhaps not just as a network of CPRs or CPR-like units, but as a network of whole universities and research centres that are prepared to put significant resources into continuous building of their capacity to contribute to poverty reduction.


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4. FUTURE OF PROJECT LINKAGES: International Cooperation for Capacity-Building

In this chapter, we reflect on what can be learned from the LPRV Program about ways international partnerships can help universities build their capacity to contribute to poverty reduction. We focus on the lessons to be learned from the LPRV Program’s networking approach to international development, paying special attention to networking issues of communications technology, information access, control, coordination, mutual learning, and culturally sensitive issues.

4.1. Building An International Knowledge Network The LPRV Program’s networking approach was based on the assumption that Canadian and Vietnamese institutions could best work together as equals in planning activities, managing program funds, and learning from experience. Networks differ from traditional hierarchical organizations in that power is decentralized. They are able to take advantage of new information and communications technologies. Networks reinforce the participatory ethos that inspired the LPRV Program. The ideal of equal partnership lay at the heart of the LPRV Program. It informed the design of the program and how it unfolded. It was, for example, reflected in the structure of the Steering Committee, which was the program’s highest level of authority, and in the early decision by the Steering Committee to allocate equal portions of the CIDA funding to the Canadian and Vietnamese sides of the partnership. (These matters are explained in Chapter 1.) The idea was that the LPRV Program partnership institutions would work together as a self-building network. The partners would build the network together, make decisions as a network, conduct activities as a network, and learn through the network. The LPRV Program can be seen as an example of what Stein and Stren (2001) now call a ‘knowledge network.’ Stein and Stren say that the knowledge network has emerged as one of the primary means for generating and sharing knowledge about critical social, economic and scientific issues. They examine one kind of knowledge network that is of particular relevance to the LPRV Program—a network that is based on “the complex, subtle, and synergistic relationships between institutions such as universities that generate knowledge in well-understood, well-established ways, and networks that produce knowledge through broader social processes” (2001, 3-4). They argue that knowledge networks are proving themselves to have potential not only for developing and disseminating knowledge, but also for helping to narrow the gaps between international partners in cooperative research and development projects.

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4.1.1. Creating Physical Infrastructure

In the first year of the LPRV Program, putting in place physical infrastructure for the network—the computers, telephone lines and software that enabled long distance communications—was seen as basic to enabling the network to function at the levels of planning, decision-making, acting, and learning. The LPRV Program had been designed at a time of great optimism for the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to bridge the growing 'knowledge divide' between the global North and South, and the rich and the poor. ICTs showed considerable promise to facilitate collaboration and collective learning within the LPRV network. Therefore, the deployment of appropriate computer and communications technology and training in its use was a major part of the LPRV Program’s start-up programming. Each CPR was provided with:

• Computers with Internet connections, • Internet and e-mail software;

• Electronic libraries of community planning and poverty reduction literature from

Canadian libraries and program websites;

• Software training. CPRs were also offered training in the use of computers for information management. Young computer specialists engaged through WUSC’s Netcorps program offered training and technical support in e-mail use, web searching, computer maintenance and website development. A central LPRV Program website developed and housed at the University of British Columbia served as a communications hub and a clearinghouse for information of interest to CPR members. The website contained a comprehensive list of outputs, reports, and technical documents produced by the LPRV Program. Even important e-mail conversations were archived and hosted on the website both for the interest of outside observers and the use of LPRV Program members. Also housed on the site were full text copies of journal articles, working papers and manuals relevant to the LPRV Program, as well as announcements of external courses, conferences and other training events. The website and associated information system facilitated storage, dissemination and retrieval of LPRV Program documents. It thus contributed to efficient program management and external communications. It has been emulated by other development projects. Unfortunately, because the website was developed in the English language, it was initially only marginally accessible by Vietnamese partners. A review of LPRV Program Internet resources conducted in 2001 indicated that few CPRs were directly using the website, and even fewer the electronic library and resources that it houses.


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While all of the CPRs requested computer training early in the project, the computer skills acquired prior to and during the project from other sources proved to be more than adequate in most cases. Some technical difficulties, such as the lack of a national standard for Vietnamese fonts, initially caused frustration in conducting electronic communications within the LPRV Program, but these were dealt with over time. Other initially-encountered technical barriers to computerized communication were also found not to be as formidable as first thought . The blindingly fast introduction of communication technology in Vietnam over the past decade had evident impacts on the use of computers in LPRV Program work. While the first year of the Program saw much confusion about the use of computers, with resulting communication difficulties, by the end of the Program, Vietnamese participants were offering most of their presentations in workshops with the aid of computer presentation programs such as PowerPoint. Further, while computer literacy was low in the early years of the LPRV Program, by the end most members had personal computers at home with easy Internet access, and many had notebook computers, which they regularly brought to project meetings. The LPRV Program collaborated with other development programs in Vietnam to develop and manage a number of e-mail lists for mutual benefit. The first of these collaborative lists, one established for people interested in both ICT and economic development in Vietnam was groundbreaking in its scope. Developed and initially maintained by two Canadian LPRV Program participants, the list has now grown and taken on new mandates. It is now maintained by Vern Weitzel, a United Nations Volunteer at the UNDP in Hanoi. A list developed to exchange current information on Vietnam’s Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction program was developed and supported by the LPRV Program in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program. This list, which is maintained by a current LPRV Program participant, has developed a large readership, and in latter years has begun to develop innovative e-conferencing in cooperation with other institutions, such as the Vietnam NGO Resource Centre's Ethnic Minorities Working Group (EMWG). E-mail communication and listservers, however, have not been well used by most Vietnamese participants in the LPRV Program. Perhaps, as is suggested by the limited use of the website, this is because of older academics’ unease with electronic media, or antipathy toward using it for communication on important matters. While all participants in the LPRV Program found e-mail communication very useful for simple transactions, such as making logistical arrangements related to workshops, it was not found to be helpful for exploring complex scholarly topics, for facilitating dialogue on lessons learned, or even for documenting and disseminating those lessons. The LPRV Program’s gender team reported that women, especially, often lacked the confidence needed to start using e-mail, Internet and computer programs. In response, organizers of the LPRV Program’s ICT training tried to ensure equal gender representation in all their workshops. The fact that the head of ICT group in Vietnam was female also helped to debunk the myth that men are naturally better than women in handling new technologies. In time, the gender gap in new ICT use within the LPRV Program was narrowed.

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4.1.2. Resourcing Libraries with International Materials While information resources based on the newest technologies were featured in the LPRV Program, there was also an attempt to ensure that CPRs had access to relevant print literature on development issues, including journals, textbooks, working papers and teaching manuals. Each CPR developed a small library to house such materials. Print materials were integrated into the electronic network through the creation of an interchangeable database of books and holdings that was linked to the central web page at UBC. Central LPRV Program libraries housed at UBC and the NCSSH served as clearing houses that distributed lists of their own holdings to CPRs. These holdings could be ordered by post. The use of a centralized web site to store resources allowed CPRs not only to access LPRV Program reports with ease, but also to access public domain literature on development topics through an electronic library. In accord with the bottom-up nature of LPRV Program, CPRs took responsibility for identifying their own information needs and for purchasing the materials they required. Information specialists at NCSSH and UBC were available to meet the requests of CPRs by helping them find information via the Internet or by ordering books from publishers. However, many CPRs were reluctant, particularly in the early years, to purchase materials for their libraries. The high costs of print material from North America and Europe, the paucity of information available in Vietnamese, and the lack of time that CPR members had to devote to reading were all offered as reasons. The high costs of resource materials and the difficulties in acquiring them also led to inadequate attention being paid to intellectual property rights early in the program. In the early years of the LPRV Program, many CPRs had difficulty identifying what information they might need to conduct the commune projects. Many of their members were newcomers to poverty research and participatory project planning, and were therefore unaware of what resources in these fields were available, and how they could be useful to them in conducting their work. The Vietnamese librarian seconded to the LPRV Program by NCSSH lamented that while the CPRs sometimes complained they were not being provided with adequate library resources, at the same time they were not responding to her own requests that they indicate information needs. The problem was that, without a budget of her own to purchase materials, she was forced to wait for requests from CPRs and then develop means for payment. From the early days of the LPRV Program, some of the Canadian scholars pro-actively provided the CPRs with materials that they thought would be helpful to CPR work, and responded to CPR requests for information about new literature relevant to participatory poverty reduction. In the final years of the LPRV Program, this support was significantly augmented by the services of full time Canadian volunteers who devoted themselves to aiding in the development of CPR library and information resources. The volunteers had the time and creativity to source materials for the libraries, and a general knowledge of what resources might be valuable. One lesson learned from the benefits created by this addition of human resources was that there might have been better alternatives originally to the demand-driven library-development approach.


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The demand-driven nature of library development also hindered the ability of CPRs to effectively exchange books and materials from their libraries. The lack of an efficient financial system for managing exchanges exacerbated this problem. Reimbursing a CPR for materials it sent to another could often be a complicated affair, requiring money to be exchanged via the post-office. To summarize, the LPRV Program’s experience provides the following lessons regarding development of ICTs and libraries in an international knowledge network.

• An overall focus on technology can undermine a much more necessary development

of awareness of the various kinds of information that are available. • Face-to-face interaction, and the development of social relationships that make

international and other long-distance cooperation possible, can be supplemented, but not replaced, by computer-aided communication.

• To be successful, demand-driven development of libraries needs proactive support

from advisors knowledgeable about the library’s subject matter.

4.1.3. Managing network programs: following Model 'C' Like the individual CPRs, the LPRV network as a whole required the development of management structures and operating mechanisms that could accommodate divergent views and interests while maintaining the overall structure and purpose of the organization. A central challenge for the LPRV Program was to devise a planning and management approach for the whole program that reflected the participatory ethos the LPRV Program was promoting in its commune work, or in other words, ‘to practice what we preach.’ The size and complexity of the LPRV Program added to the challenge. The network comprised disparate groups of individuals with different academic and cultural roots but also was made up of autonomous, yet linked, institutions. The solution that was worked out to meet the difficult requirements of the LPRV Program was called 'Model C.' This model contrasted, on the one hand, with a centralized model (‘Model A’) in which UBC and the NCSSH would direct the activities of CPRs, providing them with financial resources to carry-out specific tasks, and, on the other hand, a completely decentralized model (‘Model B’) that would permit individual CPRs to carry out any activities that they wished. Model 'C' was discussed at length then approved by the Steering Committee at the end of Year 1 (May 1999). The model emerged in part as a reaction to the concerns of some CPRs that if they were hobbled by too much central control, they would be unable to initiate activities appropriate to their universities’ particular strengths and regional needs. Model C provided each of the eight LPRV Program partners with considerable independence and room for initiative but within the bounds established by the LPRV Program’s overall

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goal, objectives, general strategy, and program cycles that were set in the agreement with CIDA, and by the LPRV Program’s annual work plans that were set annually by the Steering Committee. Model C meant that while overall program responsibility and financial accountability would necessarily rest with UBC, which was the institution responsible for implementing the funding agreement with CIDA, each of the eight LPRV Program partners would decide how best to work within those bounds. Model C was described in the LPRV Program’s 1999 Annual Report, as follows:

“each institution is be responsible for determining how its funds will be spent within each budget line item (activity area). Each institution is responsible for its own members' travel costs, for deciding who from its institution travels for program activities, and, within the rules established by CIDA, how they travel. It decides how to develop its Centre for Poverty Reduction, including what materials to purchase.”

Each of the partners was expected to set its own annual work plans and related budgets so that they aligned with the program-wide plans set by the Steering Committee, and to contribute to the formulation of those program-wide plans. The partners were encouraged to plan their work and budgets in a participatory manner which, ideally, would involve all of their CPR members. Model C was in contention until the end of the LPRV Program. Some in the LPRV Program leadership in Hanoi feared that the model would undermine their ability to effectively coordinate the program's activities and outputs. A more hierarchical program, they argued, would be more fitting with Vietnamese organizational cultures and governance norms. As well, they argued, because NCSSH is a separate Ministry from the Ministry of Education and Training under which the universities fall, NCSSH needed more control over CPR activities than Model C provided if NCSSH was to meet its responsibility as the Vietnamese lead institution for ensuring that LPRV Program objectives were met and funds well used. Other criticisms of Model C came from some CPR members who felt that in practice, the model empowered CPR Directors at the expense of other CPR members who might have been involved in more activities or in more effective activities, (for example, in the area of library development, as discussed above) had more control been exercised from UBC and NCSSH. While some in NCSSH, and others, continued to worry that Model C allowed a ‘free for all’ of sorts—perhaps all worried about this at one time or another—-on the whole it was seen as offering an optimal mix of flexibility and coherence. Coherence was maintained through common adherence to the overall LPRV Program strategy of building CPRs, conducting three commune projects at each, preparing curricula through a division of labour, and jointly participating in the regular cycle of workshops and other events. At the same time, institutionalized flexibility allowed partners to take initiative in responding to their particular opportunities and constraints. For example:


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• Ho Chi Minh City CPR, the only CPR located in a large metropolitan centre, decided to concentrate its intellectual energy and outreach work on urban poverty. Two out of its three projects were in urban areas. Likewise, its standing as a member of the National University and as a research-intensive university led the members to devise a curriculum and textbook that was much more academic than that of other CPRS, and that targeted a research rather than a professional audience.

• Dalat University, located in the central highlands, built on the skills acquired in

Commune projects and the curricula developed by all LPRV teams to establish a new Faculty of Social Work and Community Development

• Université Laval pursued several academic research projects that investigated

poverty conditions in Vietnam independently of the CPRs’ action- research projects.

By empowering each CPR to use the LPRV Program’s resources in ways that would best contribute to the LPRV Program’s activities and at the same time strengthen long-term capacity, Model C enabled the universities to develop a sense of ownership of their LPRV Program work and to strengthen their commitment to it. Model C can perhaps be credited with the decision taken by all Vietnamese partners at the end of the LPRV Program to institutionalize their participatory poverty reduction work by maintaining the CPRs or creating other poverty-focussed units, and to maintain the network to support such work. 4.1.4. Creating a New Coordinating Unit: the CCPR While ‘Model C’ provided CPRs with both the resources and the autonomy needed to develop their own institutional capacity, it did not initially incorporate a mechanism to provide systematic support to the CPRs’ by proactively planning strategically for pan-LPRV Program activities, such as curriculum development and lessons-learned workshops. Due to the ever-present limitations of time, distance and language, the Canadians were unable to provide on-going, intensive intellectual and logistical support to the CPRs in many of their activities. NCSSH had also been given the task of supporting CPRs, but at times had difficulty mobilizing staff and resources to do so. NCSSH scholars working with the LPRV Program were spread among six research institutes within NCSSH, each with its own priorities, time constraints, and limited resources. And although the Vietnamese Co-Chair of the LPRV Program Steering Committee was the NCSSH President, neither he nor his senior officials had the time to do much more than provide leadership at pan-LPRV Program meetings. They could not actively lead the day-to-day operations of the LPRV Program between those meetings. Furthermore, there was an understanding by many in the early years that Model C required NCSSH and the Canadian universities to take a back seat to the CPRs themselves in the building of CPR capacities. This understanding inhibited some in NCSSH from being more pro-active. In the LPRV Program’s third year, there emerged a counter-perception that something had to be done to ensure closer support to the CPRs, and better management of learning. The

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solution, developed over a number of consultations among partners in the third year, was to establish a new Coordinating Centre for Poverty Reduction (CCPR) at the NCSSH offices in Hanoi. The idea of a CCPR was welcomed by all for the needed services it could provide, and for the national profile it could give the LPRV Program by virtue of its being a constituent of NCSSH. NCSSH has a distinguished history, broad scope in research coverage, and also many qualified and internationally recognized scholars in its 25 or more member-institutes. The President of NCSSH holds Ministerial rank. The CCPR opened at the beginning of Year 4. The appointed director was very familiar with poverty issues and participatory planning, had an international reputation for her research in these fields, and was highly respected by all LPRV Program participants. Other members of the CCPR included directors, or former directors, of NCSSH member-institutes, a former vice-president of NCSSH, and other senior scholars. The Director was aided by highly capable professional assistants and support staff, and from time to time by Canadian interns. The CCPR immediately played a significant role in the LPRV Program through its final two-and-a-half years. The CCPR-coordinated inter-CPR activities and provided scholarly support to CPRs’ commune projects, curriculum development, and capacity-building work. It provided a core LPRV Program secretarial staff for managing much of the communications and translation work that had previously been the responsibility of various individuals within NCSSH. Later, the placement of a Canadian librarian and two interns at the CCPR added to its ability to contribute to ongoing learning and reflection in the LPRV Program by improving communications. The CCPR initiated publication of an LPRV Program Newsletter, for example, which circulated within and beyond the LPRV Program and contained summary information about the activities of all LPRV Program partners. The CCPR coordinated the editing to a national standard of the curricula developed by the CPRs, represented the LPRV Program at national and international meetings on poverty in Vietnam, and developed training modules on participatory planning for use by local government officials. Most importantly, the CCPR has assisted the NCSSH central leadership to develop strategies for sustaining the momentum of the LPRV network. The CCPR has brought members of the LPRV network closer together by operating in a facilitative rather than a directive manner. The CCPR did not have control over finances for projects, and received the same budgetary allocation as the individual CPRs. It could not dictate terms to the CPRs and functioned as a support agency. Experience with the CCPR has enabled LPRV Program participants to identify a number of linking roles that such a coordinating centre can usefully play in helping to strengthen poverty reduction work by networks of academics. These roles include continuously linking:

• Policy expertise to be found in various national research institutes, such as those of NCSSH, with issues of poverty;


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• Experts in various institutes to each other in order to facilitate multi-disciplinary policy research, action-research projects, curriculum development, and extension education related to poverty reduction;

• Scholars in national agencies such as NCSSH with teachers and researchers in

poverty-focussed units of regional universities;

• University researchers with national ministries to assist in ongoing poverty-focussed policy assessment;

• Universities and research institutions with their counterparts in other countries who

share commitments to poverty reduction work;

• All of the above with international donor agencies.

4.2. Structuring Canadian Participation The adoption of Model C affected the way the Canadians worked with the Vietnamese on LPRV Program activities. It had been originally envisioned that each CPR’s plans for its commune projects would be vetted by other CPRs and Canadian participants at the regularly scheduled pan-LPRV workshops and through electronic communications. Such a process soon proved to be difficult to implement, however, because workshops were large and took place over a few days, allowing time for discussion of only a few major topics, and because electronic communications on issues of substance rarely took place for reasons discussed above. In order to facilitate closer communication and better support to the CPRs, it was decided to designate one UBC professor and one NCSSH scholar as the principal contact for each CPR. Much attention was paid to choosing contact persons best suited to each CPR, with shared intellectual interests being one of the primary criteria. For example, a UBCer with strong interests in urban development was chosen to support the HCMC CPR, which was becoming increasingly involved in urban poverty issues. A medical doctor and professor in the UBC Medical School was chosen to support the CPR at Hue, which had a strong base in the Hue Faculty of Medicine. Forging contacts based on intellectual proximity and shared interest proved to be an effective approach to linking Canadians with Vietnamese partners, especially in the middle stages of the LPRV Program when fieldwork and intellectual ferment were most intensive; however, even this approach was unable to do much to overcome the deep-seated and continuing cultural and linguistic barriers to international electronic communication. Canada-Vietnam dialogue between faculty continued to depend heavily on short visits by Canadian professors to Vietnam and on large workshops.

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4.2.1. Involving Young Canadians

In order to supplement Canadian faculty interactions with Vietnam, the LPRV Program made a strong effort to involve young Canadians in its work by tapping into international volunteer-sending and internship programs organized by WUSC, the Canadian Institute of Planners, and other NGOs. (Some of these programs were separately funded by CIDA.) The young Canadians who participated in the LPRV Program through these institutions were university students (only a few of whom were from UBC or Laval) or recent graduates beginning their professional careers. In total, over 50 young Canadians were involved in the LPRV Program in one way or another. Their participation, ranging from a few months to years, took several forms.

• As students, conducting research, usually at the community level, for their Master’s or undergraduate degrees;

• As young professionals, working as interns to assist in documenting lessons learned

in the LPRV; • As English-language teachers, working directly with CPRs;

• As volunteer development workers, aiding a CPR or the CCPR to develop resources,

networks, or new training programs.

Box 13: Student comments from the WUSC International Seminar held in cooperation with LPRV Program Universities

•

•

•

•

It’s really different from the way we study in our university. We usually study andresearch from books and only theory. But now, I can see everything that isdescribed in books, I can apply everything that I learned in my university andbenefit from learning by doing.

This is the experience of a lifetime. Rarely do we get a chance to live the life ofpoverty and at the same time be sheltered with an endless amount of affection andadmiration. A great chance to see a little more about life and where one stands init.

This was the best way to ensure that both Canadians and Vietnamese students gotto know a part of Vietnam as more then just “tourists.” Living in a communityintegrated us right into a development environment where we were able to observelocal cultures and daily activities.

Thanks to the community-based learning, I have gained a lot of experiences. Forinstance, I have learnt how to adapt to a totally new environment.

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The value of the contributions of the young Canadians to the work of the LPRV Program ranged from modest (in those few cases where the Canadians’ interests and skills did not fit well with those of the Vietnam host), to significant and much appreciated (where the Canadians took the effort to learn Vietnamese and participate in the often rigorous CPR activities in the field), to going beyond all expectations (in those exceptional cases where the Canadians committed to working on poverty reduction in Vietnam over years, and made vital contributions to the work of the LPRV Program, including the production of this volume.) The young Canadians gained much individually from their LPRV Program experience. Whereas the LPRV Program offered few new professional development opportunities for most of the Canadian professors involved in the LPRV Program, most of whom had had years of experience in Vietnam and/or other areas of Southeast Asia, the LPRV Program did offer significant opportunities to students and recent graduates to enhance knowledge, skills and cross-cultural competencies. Some of the young Canadians involved in the LPRV Program are known to have gone on to establish professional careers in international development through various agencies or NGOs. WUSC played an important role in facilitating the involvement of young Canadians in the LPRV Program. In addition to sponsoring individual student placements and internships, WUSC also organized two summer research seminars for Canadian students in cooperation with the LPRV Program. The first placed Canadian graduate students with individual CPRs. Through applied research, these students collected information for their graduate degrees and provided various forms of assistance to the CPRs (assistance in the form of documentation, training, field research, international communications, literature searching, etc.) The second seminar involved a group of Vietnamese and Canadian undergraduate students learning together about community development issues through extended stays in communes that were partners of two CPRs. Experience from the two forms of seminars suggests there may be further rich possibilities for enhancing international learning through institutional partnerships and community collaboration.

4.3. Addressing Culturally Sensitive Thematic Issues One of the most important activities of the network was to reinforce knowledge on poverty issues related to ethnicity, gender, and policy assessment. Teams involving representatives from the Vietnamese and Canadian partners were organized to address each of these three themes. Each team was led by a senior scholar from NCSSH. The thematic teams functioned as sub-networks of the LPRV Program. They held their own sessions at the regular pan-LPRV Program workshops and organized a number of their own workshops. While they did not work directly on local projects, their inquiry did address issues facing the CPRs in their commune-level work. Thanks in part to their NCSSH leadership, the activities and outputs of the thematic teams were scholarly as well as being oriented to practice.

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4.3.1. Gender The team focussing on gender issues was the first thematic team to organize itself. It played a strong role throughout the LPRV Program in bringing gender-related poverty issues to the attention of all LPRV members, and can be credited with raising awareness of LPRV Program participants and collaborators about the importance of gender as a significant factor in the creation, maintenance, or reduction of poverty. The team provided a forum for women in the LPRV Program, and a few men, to explore and promote methods for increasing awareness of the way in which gender can affect the nature and extent of poverty, as well as methods for productively taking gender into account when analyzing local poverty dynamics or designing poverty reduction policies and projects. The team organized workshops for CPR members on the use of participatory methods for gender analysis, developed and piloted a university course on gendered aspects of poverty, and provided all participants in LPRV with analytical frameworks for use in project-based learning. The frameworks went beyond considerations of gender to considerations of more general issues related to inclusivity in local planning. The gender team benefited greatly from one particular initiative of a Laval scholar who, with colleagues at UBC and NCSSH, drew upon contacts developed within LPRV to successfully propose to IDRC a project that paralleled the work of the LPRV gender team. This IDRC project was designed to build the research and action-research skills of Vietnamese scholars who specialized in gender analysis. The project beneficiaries included one person from each of the CPRs. The work of the gender team had a high profile within the LPRV Program, not only because of the importance and quality of its work, but also as a consequence of the LPRV Program’s founding commitment to include at least one woman in every partner’s delegation (in most cases, a delegation of two or three persons) to the annual Steering Committee meetings. This rule was adhered to by all partners through the life of the program. In fact, it was extended to all three pan-LPRV Program meetings that were held every year to reflect, plan, and budget (see Chapter 1). Only occasionally was concern expressed about the difficulties the rule sometimes created. Some of these difficulties reflected the gender imbalance in the LPRV Program’s leadership at all partner institutions––would some male leaders not be able to attend major meetings because of the rule and budget constraints? Some difficulties related to the size and cost of meetings induced by the rule––the rule meant that pan-LPRV Program meetings had to have a minimum of 24 people when staff coordinators at each institution were included in each delegation; often, at the international meetings, the number of participants totaled more than 40. Finally, there was the difficulty, rarely expressed, that the rule added pressure to the already heavy workloads of leading women in the LPRV Program. Despite the difficulties, the requiring of gender-inclusivity in the highest-level meetings of the LPRV Program was seen by all as a sound approach to take, for a number of reasons. Although the rule did not necessarily lead to true gender equality in the deliberations of the pan-LPRV Program meetings (deliberations which were largely dominated by men, in part


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because men always headed every partner’s delegation by virtue of being CPR or equivalent Directors), the rule did ensure that:

1) women’s voices were heard in meetings of the Steering Committee and in other annual meetings;

2) all women and men at these meetings gained more insight into the valuable, and

sometimes unique, contributions that women have to offer when given the chance;

3) leading Vietnamese members of the gender team were able to get together at least twice a year with their Canadian counterparts, and an additional one time a year without the Canadians, during the regular cycle of the LPRV Program’s international and national meetings;

4) the spirit of gender balance reflected in the Steering Committee rule inspired

attention to gender balance in local and special-topics workshops and other CPR activities.

The general lesson learned from the formation of a pan-LPRV Program gender team, from the supporting of such a team through structuring gender-inclusivity into major pan-LPRV Program meetings, and through the work of the team itself, is that systematic attention to gender in all aspects and levels of an international program such as the LPRV Program can immensely enrich the outputs of activities (meetings, plans, projects, learnings, or curricula), and overall capacity-building outcomes (skills, knowledge, organization, and commitment).

4.3.2. Ethnicity The ethnicity team focused on the cross-cultural issues that need to be considered when members of a CPR, local government, or NGO, work on poverty reduction with a community of people whose ethnicity is distinct and who hold a minority status. The team brought together, from all CPRs and NCSSH, LPRV Program participants who had a special interest in the cross-cultural aspects of commune projects, and linked them with other specialists concerned with the development of minority communities in Vietnam. The team assisted CPRs to reflect on their work with ethnic minorities. The team also prepared a curriculum unit that was based on learnings from the development experiences of minorities in Vietnam and other countries, and on related theoretical reflection. CPR fieldwork with ethnic minority groups advanced respect for cultural differences and ideas of partnership. Members of the Vinh CPR, for example, said they have learned ways to work with local communities that take into account the indigenous structures of the ethnic Thai in Nghe An. The Dalat CPR has attempted to facilitate development of local sustainable and appropriate tourism projects in the Central Highlands by drawing on the local knowledge and cultural assets of ethnic minorities. One of the lessons learned through the LPRV Program in this regard was that cultural differences and misunderstandings can often be overcome through collaborative learning processes. The more that university elites work with ethnic minorities, the more respect and admiration they gain for the knowledge and capacities for self-help of these peoples.

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Other lessons learned through work of the LPRV Program’s team about ethnicity-related aspects of poverty reduction work were: • Attention to language, context and culture is important when working across cultures.

Working with local translators rather than only in the Vietnamese language is critical to gaining interest and cooperation.

• Isolated ethnic groups can lack an appreciation for the broader social and economic

contexts of their livelihoods. Facilitating their access to information can help them broaden their perspectives and opportunities, and plan for themselves more effectively.

• Ethnological and sociological studies, particularly if they involve local people in the

design and control of the studies, can help outsiders to gain an appreciation of local knowledge, values, and the intricate connections between culture and livelihood and, therefore, to work effectively with minority people in developing locally appropriate planning approaches.

Communication and mutual understanding between Canadian and Vietnamese academics in the LPRV Program on the topic of poverty reduction work with ethnic minorities was at times itself hampered by linguistic and cultural differences. As an example, the Vietnamese concept of Trinh Do Dan Tri, usually translated as ‘intellectual level’, was often raised as a reason for the persistent poverty and continued exclusion of many ethnic minorities in Vietnam. Increasingly, Canadians and Vietnamese in the LPRV Program became uncomfortable with terms such as this as they can appear to mask, or even denigrate, the importance of indigenous knowledge and cultural capital. In the final year of the LPRV Program, the ethnicity group organized a workshop to enable the exchange of experiences among Vietnamese experts who work on poverty reduction with ethnic minorities, Canadians who work closely with aboriginal peoples in North America, and a Thai professor knowledgeable about community development with Thailand’s hill tribes. The exchange indicated that there would be value in further dialogue of this kind, particularly if it included representatives of indigenous groups themselves. At the most general level, the lesson to be learned from the LPRV Program about addressing ethnicity in an international capacity-building program oriented to poverty reduction is that ethnicity is a complex, multi-layered, phenomenon which is itself apprehended in highly subjective, culture-bound ways. Canadian views of relations between Vietnamese Kinh and minorities, for example, are imbued with as many assumptions about other cultures and histories as are Kinh people’s views of minorities, or minority people’s views of themselves and outsiders. Add in the complexities posed by linguistic differences, and the usual communication challenges even among people ostensibly speaking the same language, and much room is created for misunderstanding, confusion, and conflict when an international team attempts to address ethnic minority poverty. The single response that kept coming up in the LPRV Program to ongoing challenges to communication and mutual understanding in addressing the ethnic dimension of poverty was that these challenges can only be dealt with through continuous dialogue: international and


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national dialogue among academics involved in international capacity-building programs such as the LPRV Program; dialogue between academics and local people; and dialogue, perhaps facilitated by academics, among officials, community leaders and community members, with special attention being paid to inclusion in the dialogue of people marginalized by virtue of their ethnicity or culturally defined gender roles.

4.3.3. Policy Assessment When the LPRV Program was formed, it was envisaged that one of the central poverty reduction roles it could play would be to provide academic support to bottom-up policy assessment as a complement to policy assessment processes at central levels. The nationwide reach of the LPRV network, and the involvement in it by senior policy analysts in NCSSH, provided an ideal structure for linking the knowledge and resources of universities, and their local government and community collaborators, with the need for sound poverty-focussed policy advice at national and provincial government levels. One role of the LPRV network was to assist individual scholars to strengthen their individual policy assessment skills, by learning about:

• the history and nature of Vietnam’s policy-making procedures; • international fields of assessment practice and associated tools (e.g., cost-benefit

analysis, environmental/social impact assessment, multiple accounts evaluation); • policy assessment methods appropriate to local conditions and the Vietnamese

policy-making context. The policy assessment team was established to assist the network as a whole to play this role. The team was slow to get started, in large part because of the conceptual and political difficulties posed by the topic. Early confusion revolved around the general meaning of the term “policy assessment” in the Vietnamese context, and its specific meaning in relation to the LPRV Program’s capacity building work. Attention needed to be paid to finding the proper Vietnamese translation for the English word “assessment” in describing the LPRV Program’s policy assessment role. LPRV Program participants were concerned that they not be perceived as focusing on simply negative criticism of current policies or policy-making practices when they talked of policy assessment, but rather that they be recognized for advancing methods that would strengthen the generation of information helpful to decision-makers in the complex realm of policy-making related to poverty. (This realm was seen as including the many kinds of policies that might indirectly impinge on poverty––for example, resource management or infrastructure policies––in addition to the more direct policies governing poverty reduction programs.)

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Box 12: Policy assessment

The Dalat CPR was given initial responsibility for the policy assessment field when the division of labour among CPRs was established for curriculum development. Dalat was selected for, and accepted, this area of responsibility because it had put considerable effort into helping local Peoples’ Committees establish poverty reduction committees. The Dalat CPR produced some early draft texts on policy assessment, with reference to international works in the field, and made significant headway in sorting out the connections between international and Vietnamese terminologies. But the topic was found to be too complex and sensitive to be the responsibility of a single CPR: policy assessment needed to be addressed by a thematic team similar to the gender and ethnicity pan-LPRV Program teams, but with particularly strong involvement by NCSSH. The policy assessment team that emerged as a result (mid-way through the LPRV Program) was headed and actively led by a retired Vice-President of NCSSH. It involved other senior members of the CCPR, as well as a UBC leader of the LPRV Program. In late 2001, the Dalat CPR and the emerging policy assessment team organized a large, pan-LPRV Program capacity-building workshop, with guests from Thailand and Australia. The workshop was followed by a smaller roundtable in 2002 for the most active team members to continue their reflective inquiry on the meaning of policy assessment in the Vietnamese context, and on the opportunities for a program such as the LPRV Program to build capacity to promote participatory policy assessment. By the end of the LPRV Program, the policy assessment team was able to publish a book, with English and Vietnamese versions, containing papers by Canadians and Vietnamese based on presentations made at the 2001 workshop and refined in the 2002 roundtable (Nam and Boothroyd 2003). Taken together, the papers in the policy assessment team’s book showed the ways in which policy assessment processes could contribute to poverty reduction through many sectors and at all government levels, and identified measures for strengthening these processes––for example, by taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the Grassroots Democracy Regulations of 1998 and the experience gained through the formulation in 2001-02 of Vietnam’s “Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy,” a major policy document which drew on innovative policy assessment processes supported by international donors. The book also provided case studies of university involvement with policy assess-ment, both community-based and international-comparative, in the Southeast Asia region. While maturing quickly in the last years of the LPRV Program, the policy assessment team remained a small team without representation from most of the CPRs. The primary

Policy assessment is the process of objective inquiry by which the direct and indirect, intended and unintended, consequences of policies are identified. Its purpose is to assist government officials in discovering the actual impacts of existing policies as they are implemented, and in predicting the likely impacts of future policy options.

(LPRV, brochure on its policy assessment role, 2002).


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outcomes of its work have been to clarify the meaning of policy assessment related to poverty reduction, and to show, through examples drawn from outside the LPRV Program, how policy assessment, particularly collaborative assessment, can contribute to poverty reduction by helping government to make decisions based on local information and comprehensive analysis. The team did not have the resources or time to analyze and document the policy implications of the CPRs’ empirical learning in the field about poverty causes and solutions; nor was it able to help the CPRs to do this for themselves. However, in various ways, often informal, the CPRs on their own did identify policy implications of their empirical observations, and helped local government and communities to do the same. Occasionally, a CPR put a concerted effort into policy assessment. For example, a workshop on urban poverty organized by the HCMC CPR in February 2001 engaged a variety of actors from government, international agencies, universities, and research institutions, to discuss policy issues related to urban poverty in Ho Chi Minh City and other Vietnamese cities. The two-fold purpose was to examine policy issues in general, and to develop an understanding of policy impacts on poverty as background for designing CPR community development projects in urban areas. One understanding that resulted was that poor urban communities face difficulties specific to the urban context. An example is the difficulties that rural-to-urban migrants face in accessing social services. Even the informal policy assessment work by the CPRs points to the potential for the LPRV network to offer conduits through which the understanding of poverty dynamics by local people (community members, officials, and academics) can be tapped in order to supplement the use of scientific study and governmental expertise in policy formulation by provincial departments and national ministries. NCSSH, with its links to the higher levels of the State and the Party could be one such conduit, acting not just to facilitate the flow of information from the bottom up, but also to help in its analysis at regional and national levels. NCSSH could also help universities to build and systematize their own policy assessment capacity, perhaps working through a group similar to the LPRV Program’s policy assessment team. Universities could ensure that their CPRs, and other units focussed on poverty, continuously enhance their policy assessment capacity by (a) maintaining links with communities and local government; (b) staying current with international literature on poverty reduction and on best practices in participatory evaluation and impact assessment; and (c) integrating policy assessment with other aspects of community work. If working with a commune on a new micro-credit project, for example, the CPR could document how micro-credit systems are affected by current policy, perhaps in reference to the international literature. Policy assessment from the bottom up will always have to confront the methodological conundrum inherent in inductive research. Information gathered through discussions with local people on the ground, or local surveys, may not be representative of broader regional or national trends. But this conundrum is well addressed in the literature on research methodology, and as the literature shows, should not inhibit universities from making, or helping other local people to make, contributions to the assessment of national policies.

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4.3.4. Commonalties Among the Three Themes The gender, ethnicity and policy assessment teams of the LPRV Program were all challenged by the need to struggle continuously with sensitive cross-cultural communication issues. In all three cases, the thematic focus related to power relationships—relationships between men and women, dominant and minority cultures, governments and people. In all three cases, there was much room for misunderstanding between Vietnamese and Canadians, just as there is between genders, cultures, or people with differing status roles. In some ways the relationship between Canadians and Vietnamese had its own internal power dynamic that had to be acknowledged and confronted. The bottom line was that Canada provided the funds for the LPRV Program, and the Canadian universities, particularly UBC, were responsible for these funds being administered in accordance with CIDA principles. The LPRV Program could be, and was, designed to maximize participation by its primary beneficiaries, the Vietnamese partners, but the knowledge of who was responsible for the funding necessarily coloured planning and decision-making. Awareness of this colouring sensitized at least some of the LPRV Program participants to the somewhat comparable, complex, relational issues facing the gender, ethnicity, and policy assessment teams in their respective spheres.

4.4. Conclusion: Lessons For International Capacity-Building, and Recommendations to CIDA The LPRV Program’s experience provides a number of lessons for international development programs oriented to poverty reduction through institutional capacity-building. The first general lesson is that in countries, such as Vietnam, which are open to outside ideas and committed to fighting poverty, an international program can help academic institutions build their capacity to contribute to the poverty battle over the long term. An academic-institution-building approach to international poverty reduction may be hard to explain to people who want to see richer countries assist poorer people in poorer countries in more direct, tangible ways: building the capacity of universities and research institutions to apply their already considerable resources to helping local governments and communities build their own capacity to work with and for the poor seems abstract and remote compared to international aid programs that provide food, vaccinations, or water directly to the poor. But, as the LPRV Program suggests, the payoffs of the university-capacity-building approach can potentially be more far-reaching than the payoffs direct aid can produce. The approach can be more far-reaching temporally, spatially, and in terms of the aspects of poverty addressed, provided there is a focus on building university capacity to contribute directly to poverty reduction, not just teaching and research capacity in general. The university-capacity-building approach can help those institutions of society that have been mandated to expand learning—universities— help people in other institutions, such as local governments, understand the systemic causes of poverty, the different ways it can be manifested, the poverty impacts of policy decisions, and the many possibilities for reducing


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poverty by building on local resources of all kinds, including personal, community, and cultural strengths. The approach can help universities help people to think about the nature of development and thus to do it not only more efficiently, effectively, and equitably, but also more respectfully so that those who need help receive it in forms that make their lives better in ways they, not outsiders, define as improvement. Specifically, the approach can help universities raise awareness of (1) the gender and ethnicity dimensions of poverty; (2) methods for enhancing participatory project planning and policy assessment; and (3) the life-long learning opportunities that experience (and reflection on experience) provides. The second lesson is that university-capacity-building can be effectively undertaken by linking universities and research institutions into a domestic network for mutual support and mutual learning, and linking such a domestic network to external sources of intellectual and financial support. Building capacity by building a mutual-learning network provides many benefits. In a network-form of organization, member institutions are allowed to take initiative and respond to their unique circumstances while sharing a common purpose. By taking locally appropriate initiative, institutions can be more effective and can generate a variety of strategies to solving similar problems. Variety enables learning about which strategies are better or worse for various purposes under certain conditions. The third general lesson is that an international program oriented to building the capacity of academic institutions to contribute to poverty reduction can face fundamental communication challenges. Communication barriers are raised by disciplinary and national cultural differences, knowledge limitations, and confusions within and between languages. The challenges can only be met through patient dialogue over time. Funders and principals of international institutional capacity-building programs need to build into their programming maximum opportunities for dialogue, and to recognize, as continually discovered in the LPRV Program’s experience, that mutual understanding comes slowly. Dialogue can sometimes benefit from electronic technology, but in cross-cultural circumstances this needs to be augmented by face-to-face interaction. When the goal of a program is to enhance the capacities of an institution and its members to learn, it needs to be structured to help participants learn from experience as they work toward institutional and social change. Knowledge about the interconnections among poverty, gender, culture, community organization, livelihood, and policy—the kind of knowledge that is needed if poverty is to be sustainably and respectfully reduced—cannot be codified and taught in training sessions. It is a knowledge area that is under continuous development, and it is an area in which differences in values and beliefs can yield conflicting knowledge. As some would say, the knowledge on which localized poverty reduction is based is continuously being socially constructed. Building understanding of the socially constructed nature of poverty-relevant knowledge is one of the capacity-building functions of a program such as the LPRV. Recognition of this function, and designing as rich an opportunity for dialogue within the program as resources permit, is at once an effective response to communication challenges to the completion of tasks in an international poverty-oriented program such as the LPRV and is of intrinsic value to program participants. The fourth lesson is that building a network of academic institutions to learn together as they build their capacity presents immense organizational challenges. Establishing such a network requires considerable time, commitment and resources. The LPRV Program’s experience

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supports the notion that the 'knowledge network' offers significant promise as a model for organizing international research and capacity building. The opportunity a network-form of organization provides for taking individual initiatives, and learning from them, is matched by the challenges a network presents to maintaining a common purpose (as opposed to opportunistically using network resources only to serve local ends), maintaining communications, and organizing collective events. As the LPRV Program discovered, to meet these challenges, a strong coordinating centre in the developing country needs to be established. The fifth lesson is that there can be capacity-building benefits for institutions in the donor country. In the case of the LPRV Program, many young Canadians and older academics learned much about capacity-building for poverty reduction, particularly in the Vietnamese context, but also at the general levels indicated in this volume. As a result of this learning, some in UBC are rethinking their approach to university-based international development and are recommending that UBC move away from project-oriented linkages to more sustained forms of international partnership. The purpose of international partnerships would be to provide, over time, opportunities for academics in different countries to learn together about ways universities can collaborate with government and communities to reduce poverty, to compare notes from engagement with real problems, and to encourage experimentation in the integration of poverty-related research, teaching and service so that poverty becomes a central concern in university programming. Building sustained partnerships for this purpose with institutions that participated in the LPRV Program is seen as a promising place for UBC to start.


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5. CONCLUSION In this chapter we summarize the major lessons learned from the LPRV Program. The chapter is divided into five parts: a review of the assumptions that underlay the LPRV Program; a summary chronology of the program which aids in understanding of the lessons learned; a synopsis of lessons learned about building capacity at the local level; a synopsis of lessons learned about building capacity of universities; and a synopsis of lessons learned at the level of international cooperation.

5.1. Assumptions From its initial design, the LPRV Program has rested on certain assumptions about poverty reduction and international development: 1) New approaches are needed to address the ongoing problems of poverty in developing

countries. 2) Top-down programs of poverty reduction implemented by national and international

agencies, while important, cannot have an impact on all the forms that poverty takes at the local level.

3) Poverty reduction programs would be more effective if greater use were made of local

resources, including the resources of local institutions such as universities, local government, and community-based organizations.

4) New methods for developing local coalitions to fight poverty are needed. 5) If the LPRV Program is to be successful as an international experiment in helping to

develop new poverty reduction methods, it needs to be based on principles of mutual learning-by-doing rather than knowledge transfer.

5.2. Chronology

Conceptually the five-year LPRV Program can be divided into three overlapping phases.

Phase 1, Development: Establishment of local CPRs; initial training workshops on participatory research, policy formulation, etc.; development of network for knowledge exchange among partner institutions; formation of teams on cross-cutting themes (gender, ethnicity, policy assessment).

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Phase 2, Learning by Doing: Involvement by CPRs in poverty reduction projects at the commune level, sharing, in workshops, of knowledge learned from these experiences. Phase 3, Dissemination: Developing curriculum materials, training materials, and pilot courses to communicate learnings from project work and related theoretical inquiry; planning for continuation of LPRV work.

As the LPRV Program proceeded through these phases, activity directions were increasingly set by the Vietnamese participants, and the role of the Canadians became increasingly secondary. The management philosophy of the LPRV Program, which provided for decentralization of programmatic and budgetary responsibility to the partner institutions, allowed for considerable flexibility in timing of activities. Production of immediate outputs and deadlines needed to be adhered to, and the cycle of international and national pan-LPRV workshops determined that they were, but the LPRV Program’s emphasis throughout was on the major outcome expected of it: building the capacity of universities to make an enduring contribution to poverty reduction.

5.3. Reducing Poverty At The Local Level The historical context of education in Vietnam has shaped university, government and community perspectives on the role that universities can and should play in relation to poverty reduction. A prevalent perspective is that because university staff are experts on various matters, their primary poverty reduction role should be in providing technical information and advice to the poor and relevant agencies. Much of Phase 1 of the LPRV Program, therefore, was directed to exploring rationales and methods for participatory research, a relatively new concept to many of the LPRV Program’s participants. In retrospect, perhaps there was not enough of this foundation-building before the CPRs began their commune projects (Phase 2). On the other hand, perhaps more attention to theoretical principles without opportunities to apply them would have been an arid exercise. Each learn-by-doing project in Phase 2 placed onerous demands on the CPR members involved. The plan whereby each CPR selected three quite different, and often distant, communes to work with, added to the burden. In light of the fact that the primary university responsibility of the CPR members lay beyond LPRV, i.e., to carry out already-heavy teaching and administration duties, the three-project plan may have been overly ambitious. On the other hand, the later projects went more smoothly thanks to the learning gained from the first project. Thus a major lesson learned about university involvement in local poverty reduction was that as experience is gained, university teams can work increasingly efficiently and effectively with local people and agencies.


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Two other major lessons learned in this regard were: a) community profiling can itself be a participatory activity that directly benefits local people––it need not only serve to orient outsiders to local conditions; b) good will on the part of university staff and students is not enough to catalyze local action that involves people in solving local problems––modest seed funding for projects is also required. Through the commune project experiences, and reflecting on them, the CPRs built their capacity to help others––university students, local officials and community leaders-- to develop theirs. This help was extended in Phase 3 through the production and testing of teaching materials, and through the planning for institutionalizing courses on participatory poverty reduction. A major lesson that was articulated in Phase 3 is that helping people to learn about participation can involve more than the traditional didactic teaching methods. In the commune project phase, the CPRs discovered that a collaborative process whereby universities work and learn with government and communities can be highly effective. At the dissemination phase, some of the CPRs became interested in teaching about participatory poverty reduction by using teaching approaches, such as problem-based learning, that incorporate, themselves, principles of participation. Vinh University, for example, is now working with UBC to apply problem-based learning to various teaching programs.

5.4. Building University Capacity The LPRV Program showed that universities have the potential to contribute significantly to poverty reduction in Vietnam. Indeed, it suggests that this potential may exist in other countries as well. The LPRV Program tapped this potential by creating: (a) multi-disciplinary CPRs led by senior scholars in each of the five Vietnamese university partners; (b) a mutual-learning network to link these CPRs with each other and the Canadian partners; and (c) a Coordinating CPR (CCPR) housed at NCSSH. It was only when the LPRV Program was well into Phase 2 that the CCPR was established, because it was only then fully realized that the network needed proactive intellectual leadership from a designated Vietnamese source if the full learning value of the commune projects was to be gained and if the dissemination of knowledge through the LPRV Program was to be effective. In Phase 1, the CPR members built their own capacity in the traditional way of being taught by and reading the works of outside experts, and participating in seminars. In Phase 2, they built their capacity, and increasingly that of their larger universities, in the rather novel way of becoming engaged in the collaborative solving of real problems and then reflecting on their experiences, including the experience of being exposed to the local knowledge of community members and government officials. In Phase 3, the CPRs applied themselves to teaching others what they had learned through publications and courses of various kinds. Thus the commune projects not only provided benefits for the collaborating communes, they also strengthened the universities as research and teaching institutions.

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As well, in Phase 3, attention was increasingly paid to institutionalizing the ongoing capacity-building processes in the CPRs and in their host universities. The major lessons to be learned from the LPRV Program in this regard are that it takes (1) commitment from the top of each institution; (2) inter-institutional support and mutual encouragement such as the LPRV network provided; and (3) attention being paid to the issue of incentives for academics to participate in outreach and internal capacity-building work.

5.5. International Cooperation The international dimension of the LPRV Program deepened the participants’ understanding of the complexities involved in undertaking a participatory and mutual-learning approach to capacity-building. Over time, it was realized that there are parallels in the way these complexities present themselves at the community development, institution-building, and international networking levels. Just as community development requires attention to thorny problems presented by issues of marginalization and power within the community and between the community and outside agencies, and just as institutional capacity building requires attention to power, participation, and commitment issues associated with organizational missions, structures, and incentives, so too international cooperation requires attention to building relationships of trust and mutual accountability. Fostering respectful dialogue for planning and learning is as important to the success of an international program as it is to the success of a community project or institutional change. Having made a commitment to taking a participatory approach at all levels of its work, the LPRV Program struggled continuously with the question of how it could best function as a whole international network with a coherent program––not only as a collection of individual units. In doing so, the LPRV Program discovered that: • Establishing a computerized technological base for networking is necessary but not

sufficient––it has to be supplemented with personal interaction within and between countries.

• Taking advantage of the diverse opportunities for funding young people to be involved

in a program can extend a program’s resources not only for discrete activities but also for carrying out co-ordination functions (such as newsletter production or stocking libraries with common core materials, which were LPRV Program activities significantly aided by young Canadians sponsored by WUSC and other organizations).

• A regular cycle of whole-network events (such as the annual international Steering

Committee meetings and LPRV Program planning workshops) provides much needed structure to learning-by-doing.

• Specialized teams with membership from partners in all countries can advance learning

and effectiveness on sensitive cross-cultural issues.

While the LPRV Program struggled with the challenges to coherence that its decentralized management structure presented, it also found that decentralization (when balanced with the network-strengthening measures listed above) provides a variety of opportunities for meeting its core goal of university capacity-building. Each partner was able to experiment


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with approaches to CPR organization, skills enhancement, fieldwork, and curriculum development, that reflected its unique opportunities and constraints. This enhanced short-term effectiveness in all these areas, and gave a sense of program ownership that strengthened immediate and long-term commitment. For example, Thai Nguyen included three local government officials in its CPR from the beginning. This enhanced the design of its collaborative work. As another example, toward the end of LPRV, the University of Dalat was able to build on its CPR’s work to develop what may be Vietnam’s first university program in Social Work and Community Development. Such initiatives could not have been planned from Hanoi, let alone from Canada. The variety of approaches enabled by the LPRV Program’s decentralized structure also contributed to mutual learning: each partner was able to take initiative and generate new ideas, some of which inspired parallel action or further new ideas by other partners. For example, the initial conceptualization of “getting-to-D” (promoting university-government-community collaboration), which came from the Hue CPR reflecting on its commune work in a session with its Canadian advisors, was found useful by all LPRV Program partners. As well, decentralization allowed individual partners to discover and fill niches in the overall network. The Ho Chi Minh City CPR, for example, was able to increasingly focus its work on the particular problems associated with urban poverty. Not only is this focus appropriate to this CPR’s location, it also allows other universities to learn from the CPR’s work in this specialized area. In total, the opportunities provided for capacity-building by the decentralized nature of the LPRV Program’s international network structure point to a major lesson: an international capacity-building program can itself benefit from being designed to maximize flexibility and experimentation, provided there are mechanisms to facilitate participation in setting common program directions and mechanisms to facilitate mutual learning through dialogue. Capacity-building is a never-ending process. For the LPRV network as a whole, now that the period funded by the CIDA grant is over, the next step is to find ways to continue the networking. The Rectors of the five Vietnamese university partners and the President of NCSSH have committed to working together as a Network of Universities and Research Institutions dedicated to poverty reduction. Each of the Vietnamese partners has also developed a locally appropriate structure for continuing its LPRV Program work. UBC is exploring ways to support the Vietnamese partners.

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Arbab, F. (1998). Rural University: Learning about Education and Development. IDRC.

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Boothroyd, P. and N. Knight, University of British Columbia, School of Community and Regional Planning. (1990). Regional impacts of the Northeast coal project in B.C (U.B.C. planning papers. Comparative urban and regional studies: U.B.C. Planning Papers No. CS #22). Vancouver: University of British Columbia, School of Community & Regional Planning.

Boothroyd, P. and Z. Mulla, Vietnam National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities, & University of British Columbia. Centre for Human Settlements. (1994). Development-oriented NGOs of Vietnam. Vancouver: University of British Columbia. Centre for Human Settlements.

Boothroyd, P., Pham Xuân Nam, International Development Research Centre (Canada), & Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. (2000). Socioeconomic renovation in Viet Nam: the origin, evolution, and impact of doi moi. Ottawa, Singapore: International Development Research Centre. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Boothroyd, P., University of British Columbia. Centre for Human Settlements, & UBC Centre for Human Settlements. (1991). Community economic development : an introduction for planners (CHS Research Bulletin . Vancouver: UBC Centre for Human Settlements.


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Boothroyd, P. and B. Wiesman, Northwest Regional Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies, & Conference. (1993). Development, environment and society in Vietnam (Research monograph series / Centre for Southeast Asian Research: Research monograph series (University of British Columbia. Institute of Asian Research. Centre for Southeast Asian Research) No. 2). Vancouver, B.C: Institute of Asian Research.

Chambers, R. (1985). Poverty and Livelihoods: Whose reality counts? Environment and Urbanization, 7(1).

Chambers, R. (1987). Rural development putting the last first. Harlow, Essex, England, New York: Longman Scientific & Technical. Wiley.

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Delaney, I. (1985). By their own hands a fieldworker's account of the Antigonish movement. Hantsport, N.S: Lancelot Press.

Donovan, D., A.T. Rambo, J. Fox, Le Trong Cuc, & Tran Duc Vien. (1997). Development trends in Vietnam's northern mountain region : volume 2 : case studies and lessons from Asia. Hanoi: National Political Publishing House.

Ellis, Frank. (2000). Rural Livelihoods and Diversity in Developing Countries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fritzen, S. (2000). Institutionalizing participation : lessons learned and implications for strengthening Viet Nam's national programs. Ha Noi: United Nations Development Program.

Hainsworth, G. B. (1999). Localized poverty reduction in Viet Nam : improving the enabling environment for livelihood enhancement in rural areas. Vancouver: University of British Columbia (UBC).

Helvetas. (2001). 10 key stages towards effective participatory curriculum development: learning from practice and experience in the Social Forestry Support Programme, Vietnam, and other Helvetas-supported projects (Experience and learning in international co-operation No. 2). Zurich: Helvetas.

Institute of Sociology with JICA. Nghe An Participatory Poverty Assessment, Forthcoming.

Jamieson, Neil, Le Trong Cuc and Terry Rambo. (1998). The Development Crisis in

Vietnam's Mountains. Honolulu: The East-West Center.

Kabeer, N. (1994). Social Relations Analysis. MacDonald M. (ed.), Gender Planning in Development Agencies: Meeting the Challenge . Oxford: Oxfam.

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Kanbur, Ravi and Lyn Squire, "The Evolution of Thinking about Poverty: Exploring the Interactions," in Frontiers of Development Economics: The Future in Perspective, ed. Gerald Meier and Joseph E. Stiglitz. Oxford and New York: The World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2001.

Meier, G. M., & Stiglitz, J. E. (2001). Frontiers of development economics the future in

perspective. Washington, D.C, Oxford, New York: World Bank. Oxford University Press.

Ministry of Education and Training. (2002). Education and Training in Vietnam 2002. Hanoi: MOET.

Moser, C. O. N. (1993). Gender planning and development theory, practice and training. London, New York: Routledge.

Narayan, D. (2002). Empowerment and poverty reduction: a sourcebook. Washington: World Bank.

Narayan, D. (2000). Can anyone hear us? voices of the poor. Washington, D.C: World Bank.

Narayan, D. (2000). Crying out for change: voices of the poor. Oxford, New York: Published by Oxford University Press for the World Bank.

Narayan, D., Robert Chambers, Meera Kaul Shah, and Patti Petesch. (2000). Voices of the Poor: Crying Out for Change. New York, N.Y: Published for the World Bank, Oxford University Press.

Narayan-Parker, D. (1997). Voices of the poor: poverty and social capital in Tanzania

(Environmentally and socially sustainable development studies and monographs series: Environmentally and socially sustainable development studies and monographs series No. 20). Washington, D.C: World Bank.

Narayan-Parker, D., & P.L. Petesch, (2002). From many lands (Voices of the poor). Oxford, New York: Published by Oxford University Press for the World Bank.

Nguyen The Dzung. (1999). Capacity assessment for Viet Nam's National Target Program for Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction: part 1: program assessment. Hanoi.

Ostry, A. S., & R.F. Woollard. (2000). Fatal consumption: rethinking sustainable development (Sustainability and the environment). Vancouver: UBC Press.

Poverty Working Group. (1999). Attacking Poverty: Vietnam Development Report 2000. Hanoi: The World Bank.

Reason, P., & H. Bradbury. (2001). Handbook of action research, participative inquiry and practice. London, Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE.


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Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a state how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed (Yale agrarian studies: The Yale ISPS series . New Haven: Yale University Press.

Sen, A. K. (1999). Development as freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Shanks, E., & C. Turk. (2002). Refining policy with the poor, Vietnam local consultations on the draft Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (Volume I: approach, methodology and influence). Hanoi: World Bank.

Slaytor-Thomas, B. e. al. (1997). Power, Process, and Participation: Tools for Change. London: Intermediate Technology Press.

Socialist Republic of Vietnam. (2002). The Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS). Hanoi.

Socialist Republic of Vietnam. (2001). National Target Programme on HEPR and Employment for the period 2001-2005. Hanoi.

Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy. 2002.

Stein, Janice. (2001). Networks of knowledge collaborative innovation in international learning. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Taylor, P. (2000). New perspectives, new curricula: a case study of participatory curriculum development in forestry education in Vietnam. 28 pp.

To Duy Hop and Luong Hong Quang. (2000). Phat trien cong dong - Ly thuyet & Van dung (Communitiy Development: theory and practice) . Hanoi: Information and Culture Publishing House.

Tran Kieu and Nguyen Huu Chau. (2000). Education in Viet Nam. Journal of Southeast Asian Education, 1(1), 219-241.

Turk, C. (2001). Linking participatory poverty assessments to policy and policymaking: experience from Vietnam (Policy research working paper No. 2526). Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

United Nations Development Programme. (2002). Human development report 2002: deepening democracy in a fragmented world. New York: Oxford University Press.

Vietnam, Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs. (2000). National target programme on hunger eradication and poverty alleviation, period 2001 - 2005. Ha Noi: Vietnam, Ministry of labour-invalids and social affairs.

Vietnam, Ministry of Labour Invalids and Social Affairs. (2000). Strategy for hunger eradication and poverty reduction in period of 2001 -2010. Ha Noi: Vietnam, Ministry of labour-invalids and social affairs.

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Watkins, K. (1998). Economic growth with equity lessons from East Asia (Oxfam insights). Oxford: Oxfam Publications.

Wolfensohn, James D. (2000). Keynote Address at the Conference on World Poverty and Development: A Challenge for the Private Sector by President. The World Bank Group Amsterdam, October 3.

Woollard, D. (1998). NGO researcher project (LPRV report - Nov.1998). Vancouver: UBC

Centre for Human Settlements.

The World Bank. (2002). Constructing knowledge societies: new challenges for tertiary education (Directions in development). Washington, D.C.: World Bank.


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Selected LPRV Reports and Communications Used to Compile this Report

Angeles, Leonora. 2001. Book II: Outline of Discussions in Hoi An.

———. 2002. Comments on Gender and Poverty Reduction Coursebook.

———. 2001. Comments on Thai Nguyen Coursebook: Participatory Project Planning and Management.

———. 2000. Gender Questionnaire for Commune Profiles.

Angeles, Leonora. 2000. Using Gender-Aware Participatory Research Methods in Community Poverty Profiles, Project Planning and Policy Assessment.

Angeles, Leonora, and Bob Woollard. 2002. Comment on CPR Vinh's coursebook.

Angeles, Nora. 2000. Workshop Proposal and Agenda, "Strengthening Organization Capacity for Community Participation in Dong Lien," TNU.

Anon. 2002. LPRV Program’s Lessons Learned After 4 Years.

———. 2001. Vinh Year 4 Lessons Learned from Commune Projects.

Benjamin, Xochitl. 2002. Localized Poverty Reduction in Vietnam (LPRV): Building Capacity for Policy Assessment and Project Planning.

———. 2002. LPRV Internship Final Report.

———. 2002. LPRV Sustainability: Resources for Funding.

———. 2001. Vinh CPR Process Documentation.

Boothroyd, Peter. 2000. Dalat CPR formative evaluation.

———. 2001. Documenting Learning By Doing Process.

———. 2000. HCMC CPR formative evaluation.

———. 2000. Hue CPR formative evaluation.

———. LPRV Capacity Building Matrix.

———. 1998. LPRV Year 1 Workplan.

———. 2001. LPRV Year 3 Performance report for CIDA.

———. 2000. Thai Nguyen CPR formative evaluation.

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———. 2000. Vinh CPR formative evaluation.

Boshell, Drew. 2001. LPRV Internship final report.

Boyle, Grant. 2001. Information Needs Assessment report.

Buckley, Molly. Commune-level survey report.

———. 1999. Dalat Commune Profiles - Research Findings.

Bui Thi Tan. 2000. Hue CPR Gender Group activities report.

———. 2000. Hue Phu Da Commune - comments on gender integration.

Bui Thi Thuy Hong. 2001. HCMC Tan Thanh: Report on Experiences from Pilot Project 1.

Bui Thi Thuy Hong. 2001. Report On Experiences From Pilot Project #1, HCMC CPR.

Bui Van Dao. 2001. Ethnology Coursebook summary.

———. 2001. NCSSH report on Thai Nguyen CPR.

———. 2000. Report by Bui Van Dao on Ethnic Minority and Poverty Reduction Workshop report, Hanoi and Thai Nguyen.

Cain, Helen. 2001. PAR Bibliography - Part 2 (Cain).

CCPR. 2001. Coursebook Compilation Report.

———. 2002. Final International LPRV Meeting.

———. 2001. LPRV Year 4 International Meeting - summary report.

———. 2002. Meeting of CCPR and CPR reps.

———. 2003. Meeting Report: 5th International LPRV Planning Meeting, Vung Tau, Vietnam, Dec. 12-14, 2002.

———. 2001. Network Development Group Year 4 first 6 month report.

———. 2001. Notes from meeting on planning activities by CCPR and completion of teaching curriculum, Cua Lo.

———. 2002. Notes of the LPRV 5th National Workshop [Day 2 and Day 3].

———. 2002. Participatory Poverty Reduction Planning with Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam.

———. Project Proposal: Training local cadres on participatory poverty reduction methods.


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CHS. 2001. Evaluation For Study Program Experience of Vietnamese Scholars at UBC.

———. 1997. Initial LPRV Proposal.

———. 1997. Linkage to Enhance Vietnam's Research and Teaching on Development Planning.

———. LPRV Year 1 Annual Report.



———. 2001. Network Development Assessment and Objectives.

———. 2001. Outline of competencies required of CPR Information workers.

———. 2002. Participatory Action Research in Education and Poverty Reduction Workshop Report.

CPR Hue. 2000. Meeting on "Curriculum Development in LPRV".

CPR Hue. Newsletter.

CPR Vinh. 1999. Vinh Nghi Phong Commune qualitative analysis.

———. 1999. Vinh Newsletter 1.

———. 1999. Vinh Year 2 Commune Level report.

———. Vinh Year 3 second 6 month report.

Da Lat CPR. Dalat Coursebook summary.

———. 2000. Dalat CPR Workshop "Building Dalat CPR Capacity for Poverty Alleviation", LPRV Program Recommendations.

———. 1999. Dalat Journal.

———. Dalat Year 3 first 6 month report.

———. Dalat Year 3 Loc Nam commune progress report.

———. Dalat Year 3 second 6 month report.

———. 2001. Draft agenda for Dalat Policy Assessment Workshop, Dalat, Dec. 5-9 2001.

———. 1999. Executive Summary of a National Workshop on LPRV Financial Systems, Dalat.

Final Report

113

———. 1998. Initial LPRV Program Planning Meeting, Hanoi.

———. 1998. Workshop with Local Government report, Dalat.

Dagenais, Huguette. 1999. Gender Group meeting at HCMC.

Dagenais, Huguette, and Do Thi Binh. 2000. Report from Community-Based Natural Resource Management Workshop in Guiyang, China.

Dang Anh Phuong. 2001. Curriculum Development Meeting, Hanoi.

de Koninck, Rodolphe, and Marc Miller. 2002. Comments on Ethnicity coursebook: Poverty Reduction for Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam.

Do Thi Binh. 2001. Gender Group meeting in Hanoi.

———. 2000. Report on working visit to Canada: Mar - May 2000.

Do Thi Binh, Huguette Dagenais, Leonora Angeles, Dawn Currie, and Steffanie Scott. 2000. Gender Group Year 3 Workplan.

Duong Huu Bien. 2000. Dalat Hunger and Poverty Problems at Da Loan Commune.

———. 2002. Dalat Loc Nam Lessons Learned from Micro-Credit Fund Implementation.

Fallavier, Pierre. 1999. LPRV and Information Technology: Final report.

———. 1999. LPRV and Information Technology: First Interim report.

———. 1999. LPRV and Information Technology: Second Interim report.

Farina, Sarah. 2001. PAR Bibliography - Part 1 (Farina).

Giap Van Thuoc. 2000. Report on Philippine Study Tour (TNU).

Giap Van Thuoc, Jason Morris, Leonora Angeles, Le Minh Tuan, and Nguyen Khac Son. 2000. TNU Commune 1 (Dong Lien) Pilot Proposal 2.

Gilchrist, Amy. 1998. Vinh Newsletter 1.




HCMC CPR. 2000. HCMC CPR Year 2 Enhanced Capacity report.

———. 2000. HCMC Tan Thanh Commune gender report.


114

———. 1999. HCMC Year 2 Commune Level report.



———. HCMC Year 3 first 6 month report.

———. HCMC Year 3 second 6 month report.

———. 2001. HCMC Year 3 Tan Thanh commune progress report.

———. 1998. Measuring and Defining Poverty Workshop report 1, HCMC.

———. 2001. Meeting between Bob Woollard and NCSSH institute of Ethnology, Hanoi.

———. 2001. Urban Poverty in Vietnam: Workshop Report. 2001: University of Social Sciences and Humanites, HCMC.

———. 2002. Training Course Report: Community Profiling in the Context of Participatory Action Research.

Hoang Ngoc Giao. 2001. Exercise of democracy in communes.

Hoang Van Liem. 2000. Hue Phu Da Commune pilot proposal, draft 3.

Hue CPR. Hue Coursebook summary.

———. 2000. Hue CPR Year 2 Enhanced Capacity report.

———. 1999. Hue Phu Da Commune pilot proposal, draft 1.



———. Hue Year 3 first 6 month report.

———. Hue Year 3 Phu Da commune progress report.

———. Hue Year 3 second 6 month report.

———. Hue Year 4 Workplan.

———. 1999. Minutes of Hue Workshop, "Planning for Poverty Reduction in the Commune Projects: Learning by Doing".

———. 2000. Report on training workshop, "Participatory Community Profiling for Learning By Doing Project Development", Hue.

Final Report

115

Huynh Quang Nha. 2001. Dalat - Process of Commune Profile Establishing and Project Planning of the Second Commune, Lat.

Huynh Thi Minh Phuong. Commune-Level Projects: Learning from experience (report from gender team).

———. 2000. Dalat Gender Group Year 2 Activities Report.

———. 2001. Dalat Hunger Elimination and Poverty Reduction Program at Loc Nam Commune (report).

Huynh Thi Minh Phuong. 2001. Evaluation of Study Program at UBC.

Lawrence, Andrew. 2001. LPRV Meeting Report at CHS.

———. 2001. LPRV Year 4 Network Development Workplan.

———. 2001. UBC Year 4 Network Development Workplan.

Le Minh Chien. Report on Using and Training Students at Dalat CPR.

LPRV Ethic Minorities Working Group. 2002. LPRV Ethnic Minorities Working Group meeting reports.

———. 2001. Ethnic Minorities Group Year 4 first 6 month report.

———. 2000. Report on the Ethnic Minority and Poverty Reduction Workshop report, Hanoi and Thai Nguyen.

———. Ethnology Group Year 3 first 6 month report.

———. Ethnology Group Year 3 second 6 month report.

LPRV Gender Group. 2000. Gender Analysis of CPR Management.

———. 2001. Gender Coursebook summary, draft 1.

———. Gender Group Year 3 first 6 month report.

———. Gender Group Year 3 second 6 month report.

———. 2001. Gender Group Year 4 first 6 month report.

———. 2000. Report on gender integration in LPRV.

———. 2001. Gender Coursebook summary, draft 3.

LPRV Network Development Group. Network Development Group Year 3 first 6 month report.


116

———. Network Development Group Year 3 second 6 month report.

LPRV Steering Committee at NCSSH. 2002. Main Conclusions of the 5th National Workshop, Nha Trang, 19-22 August 2002.

Maclean, Ken. 2000. Field notes on visits to TNU commune projects.

———. 2001. "Local in Participatory Approaches" report.

Matthews, Toby. General Characteristics of Tan Thanh Commune.

———. 1999. HCMC Bulletin 1.

McFadden, Steven. 1998. Dalat Newsletter 1.

———. 1999. Dalat Newsletter 2.

———. 1999. Dalat Newsletter 3.

McFadden, Steven. 1998. Measuring and Defining Poverty Workshop report, HCMC.

McGee, Terry, Leonora Angeles, and Steffanie Scott. 2000. Trainer's Kit from Dalat Workshops.

McGowan, Jon. 2002. WUSC Internship Progress Report.

Michael Leaf. HCMC Coursebook summary.

Miller, Marc. 2001. Laval Year 3 Annual Report.

———. 2001. Laval Year 4 Workplan.

Miller, Marc, Le Minh Vinh, and Truong Thi Kim Chuyen. 2000. Report on the Computer Mapping Training Course, HCMC.

———. 2000. Report on the GIS Training Activities.

Morris, Jason. 2000. Thai Nguyen CPR Cumulative Final Report.

———. 1999. TNU Newsletter.

———. 2003. Commune Planning for Poverty Reduction in LPRV. Vancouver: Centre for Human Settlements, University of British Columbia.

NCSSH. 2000. Computer and Internet Training Workshop report, Hanoi.

———. 2002. Extended Steering Committee Meeting summary report.

———. 2001. LPRV Coordinators Meeting report, Kuala Lumpur.

Final Report

117

———. 2000. LPRV Gender Workshop, "Integrating Gender in Field Research and Community Projects", Vung Tau - Summary of resolutions.

———. 1999. LPRV Year 2 International Meeting in HCMC - brief report.

———. 1999. LPRV Year 2 International Meeting in HCMC - NCSSH report.

———. 1999. LPRV Year 2 National Workshop.

———. 2001. NCSSH Year 4 Network Development Workplan.

———. 2001. Summary report on IKMAS-UKM workshop/study tour, Selangor, Malaysia.

———. 2000. Workshop overheads, "Participatory Action Research Steps in Learning By Doing Community Projects".

———. 2000. Year 3 International Workshop report, Hue.

———. 2000. Year 3 National Workshop report, Do Son.

———. 2000. Year 3 Steering Committee Meeting Conclusions, ChiangMai.

———. 2001. Year 4 National Workshop report, HaLong.

———. 2001. Year 4 Steering Committee Meeting decisions, Kuala Lumpur.

———. 2001. Year 4 Steering Committee Meeting verbatim report, Kuala Lumpur.

Nguyen Bich Lien. 2001. Dalat - Lat Commune Level Report.

Nguyen Bich Lien, and Le Minh Chien. Dalat Poverty Reduction Program for Lat Commune (report).

Nguyen Huu Minh. 2001. NCSSH report on HCMC CPR.

———. 2001. Report on Consultation Activities in HCMC CPR.

Nguyen Khac Son, and Pham Thi Ly. 2001. Thai Nguyen Year 4 Trang Xa commune progress report.

Nguyen Thi Le Bich. 2002. Network Development Group Year 4 Report on Activities.

Nguyen Thi My Trinh. 2000. Vinh CPR Commune 1 (Nghi Phong) Gender Report.

———. 2000. Vinh Nghi Phong Commune gender report.

Nguyen Tho Vuong. 2001. Hue Phu Da commune lessons-learned report.

———. 2001. Hue Year 4 first 4 month report.


118

Nguyen Tuan Tai. Dalat CPR's project on commune-level.

———. 2001. Dalat - HEPR Activities in Dalat University: 1998-2001.

———. 2000. Dalat Year 2 Commune Level report.

Nguyen Van Tiep. 2002. HCMC Bien Hoa Commune Profiling Exercise Concept Paper.

———. 2002. HCMC Bien Hoa Commune Profile Report.

Nguyen Xuan Mung. 2000. Dalat Da Loan commune HEPR Plan for 2000.

O'Donovan, Teresa. 2000. Survey of English Language Training provided by WUSC Teachers to CPR members.

Pham Thi Hong Hoa. 2000. Report on Philippine Study Tour Hoa (HCMC).

Pham Thi Ly. 2000. Report on Philippine Study Tour Ly (TNU).

Pham Xuan Nam. 2001. Policy Assessment Team Year 4 first 8 month report.

Phan Thi Hong. 2000. Report on Philippine Study Tour (Dalat).

———. What We Have Learned From Commune Projects at Dalat CPR.

Q. T. Phan. 2000. Thai Nguyen Dong Lien Commune pilot proposal.

Scott, Steffanie. 2002. Comments on LPRV gender and poverty course book.

———. 2002. Comments on LPRV poverty reduction and ethnicity course book.

———. 2001. Learning by Doing Self-Assessment Form.

Ta Thi Thanh Phuong. 2000. Report on Philippine Study Tour Phuong (TNU).

Ta Thi Thanh Phuong, Jason Morris, and Le Minh Tuan. 1999. Thai Nguyen Dong Lien Commune issues report.

Thai Nguyen CPR. 2000. Summary of Thai Nguyen CPR Year 3 Training Workshops.

———. 2000. Thai Nguyen Coursebook summary, draft 1.

———. 2001. Thai Nguyen Coursebook summary, draft 2.

———. Thai Nguyen CPR Year 3 annual report.

———. 1999. Thai Nguyen Year 2 Commune Level report.

———. Thai Nguyen Year 3 first 6 month report.

Final Report

119

———. Thai Nguyen Year 3 Lessons Learned from Commune Projects.

———. Thai Nguyen Year 3 second 6 month report.

———. Thai Nguyen Year 4 first 9 month report.

———. 2001. Thai Nguyen Year 4 Lessons Learned from Commune Projects.

———. 2000. TNU CPR Issues-Action Plan meeting report.

Tran Thi Khanh Tung. 2000. Outline for PAR Training Course at Vinh CPR.

Tran Thi Van Anh. 2001. LPRV Year 3 Commune Projects report.

———. 2001. Meeting between CCPR and International Agencies, Hanoi.

———. 2001. NCSSH report on Vinh CPR.

Tran Thi Van Anh, and Dang Bich Thuy. 2001. CCPR Year 4 first 6-month report.

Tran Thi Van Anh, Trinh Duy Luan, and Nguyen Huu Minh. 2001. Vinh Nghi Phong Commune Assessment Report.

Tran Thi Van Anh, Vu Tuan Anh, Trinh Duy Luan, Nguyen Huu Minh, and Dang Bich Thuy. 2001. Assessment Report on Operation of Commune Projects.

Trinh Duy Luan. 2001. How Can the Implementation of Grassroots Democracy Help the Poverty Reduction Strategy in Vietnam?

———. 2001. NCSSH report on Hue CPR.

University of British Columbia. 1995. Enhancing policy assessment capacity in Viet Nam and other countries .

Verlaan, Vincent. 1998. LPRV First Quarter update.

———. 2000. Network Development Group meeting in Hanoi.

———. 2000. Network Development Memo 1.




———. 2000. Network Development Year 3 Workplan.

———. 2001. Outline for LPRV Learning-By-Doing Projects.


120

———. 2001. Policy Assessment Workshop Report - Hoi An.

———. 2001. Verlaan - Boothroyd Trip Report to Hanoi.

Verlaan, Vincent, and Grant Boyle. 2001. Which Role For ICTs in International Development? - paper.

Vinh CPR 2000. Vinh Coursebook summary, draft 1.

———. 2000. Vinh Coursebook summary, draft 1.

———. 2000. Vinh monthly meeting.



———. 2000. Vinh Nghi Phong Commune pilot proposal.

———. 2000. Vinh Nghi Phong Commune pilot proposal.

———. 1999. Vinh Nghi Phong Commune qualitative analysis.

———. 1999. Vinh Year 2 Commune Level report.

———. Vinh Year 3 first 6 month report.

———. Vinh Year 3 first 6 month report.

———. 2001. Vinh Year 3 Nghi Phong commune lessons-learned report.

———. 2001. Vinh Year 3 Nghi Phong commune lessons-learned report.

———. Vinh Year 3 Nghi Phong commune progress report.

———. Vinh Year 3 Nghi Phong commune progress report.

———. Vinh Year 3 second 6 month report.

———. Vinh Year 3 second 6 month report (Vietnamese).

———. Vinh Year 3 Thanh Thinh commune progress report.

———. Vinh Year 3 Thanh Thinh commune progress report.

———. Vinh Year 3 Thanh Thinh commune progress report (Vietnamese). V ed.

———. 2001. Vinh Year 4 first 6 month report.

Final Report

121

———. Vinh Year 4 Workplan.

Vu Tuan Anh. 2001. NCSSH report on Dalat CPR.

———. 2002. Notes of the LPRV 5th National Workshop: Characteristics of Pilot Commune Projects and Special Identity of LPRV.

———. 2000. Vinh Nghi Phong Commune pilot proposal - comments by Vu Tuan Anh.

Vu Tuan Anh, and Dang Bich Thuy. 2001. Dalat Loc Nam Commune Assessment Report.

———. 2001. Hue Phu Da Commune Assessment Report.

Vu Tuan Anh, Trinh Duy Luan, and Nguyen Huu Minh. 2001. Thai Nguyen Dong Lien Commune Assessment Report.

Vu Tuan Anh, Trinh Duy Luan, Nguyen Huu Minh, and Dang Bich Thuy. 2001. Dalat - Lat Commune Assessment Report.

Woollard, Bob, and Vincent Verlaan. 2000. Hue Phu Da Commune pilot proposal - comments by Canadians.

Woollard, Donovan. 1998. LPRV Internship final report.


122

List of Appendices

Appendix 1: LPRV’s Achievements, Experiences and Sustainability

Appendix 2: An Assessment of Lessons Learned from the Program Localized Poverty Reduction in Vietnam (LPRV): Building Capacity for Policy Assessment and Project Planning

Appendix 3: Network of Poverty Reduction Research and Training Institutions

Appendix 4: Financial Report

localized poverty reduction in vietnam: building...

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