Physically isolated in highland villages or cut off from mainstream society by differences in language, culture, and religious practice, Laos' 50 or so ethnic minorities have been all but excluded from recent social and economic developments in the country. Poverty and poor health and hygiene conditions pose a serious threat to these communities, demonstrating the urgent need for educational outreach to improve basic living conditions and provide opportunities for learning and income generation.

The UNESCO Minority Women's Literacy and Basic Skills Project, supported by the Lao government and Norwegian funding, has undertaken an innovative nonformal education project based on the needs of ethnic minority women. The project targets women because of the influence they are known to have on their families and communities in terms of improving education, health care, and basic skills.

Since its inception in 1993, the project has become the cornerstone of the Laotian government's nonformal education policy reinforcing the need to reach out to disadvantaged groups across the nation with alternative educational programs that are flexible and that attend to local realities, habits, knowledge, and traditions. The pilot project has also helped to establish financing, training, and infrastructural support for non-formal education in the country, and opened the door for future distance education initiatives. As a result of the project, the overall expansion of non-formal education will help to bring learning opportunities to the remote villages and towns, the rural poor and the ethnic minority communities of Laos.

This project is included in the International Literacy Explorer for two main reasons. First, it offers strategies to provide basic, quality-of-life services to ethnic minority women, a significantly disadvantaged sector of the global population, and second, its nonformal education programs are created around local realities, habits, knowledge, and traditions.

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