The CHESH-Lao Program” is the name given to the activities in Laos of the Centre for Human Ecology Studies of Highlands (CHESH). CHESH is an independent Science and Technology Association (STO) registered in Vi etnam with the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA). It was founded in 1999 by the Vietnamese NGO, Towards Ethnic Women (TEW), to carry out research on the traditional natural resource management practices of indigenous ethnic minority peoples in the highland areas of the Mekong region of Southeast Asia. Its founder, TEW, had itself been working very closely with highland ethnic minority peoples in Vietnam, supporting village-level development projects, since 1994. In its work, TEW had developed strong critique of conventional development programmes, such as those going under the names of ‘poverty alleviation’, ‘hunger eradication’ and ‘capacity building’. Such programmes they saw as imposing outsiders’ views minority peoples’ lives. They were particularly critical of the failure of development agencies, both domestic and foreign, to listen to and learn from minority peoples. They saw this failure as resulting in interventions that were destructive of the ecological balance and close spiritual relations that minority communities had with their natural environment. In its own work, in the areas of land rights and gender relations, TEW treated ethnic minority peoples as experts in human ecology and sustainable resource management. TEW staff lived with ethnic minority communities for months at a time to learn their languages and cultures and the spiritual values behind their ways of managing natural resources. It was to research these matters more thoroughly that TEW established CHESH, in the hope that its research results would be used to improve government policies and the lives of ethnic minority peoples in the highland regions (Vandenhende: 11)
 
Meanwhile, in Laos, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) had recently established a Project for Rural Development of Focus Areas (PRDFA) to oversee rural development in selected mountainous and border regions where most of the ethnic minority people in Laos lived. As a new programme, PRDFA was looking for direction, and took up the suggestion of a Vietnamese colleague that they might learn something from the experience of TEW in Vietnam. Accordingly, in October 1999, a group of senior TEW staff were invited to Vientiane for talks with PRDFA officials where it was agreed that the two organizations would undertake a ‘Program of Cooperation’ aimed at developing the skills of PRDFA staff for working among highland indigenous ethnic minority communities. For TEW, the programme offered the opportunity for them to extend the research activities of the newly developed CHESH into Laos, a country where the traditional values and practices of indigenous ethnic minority communities were considered to be still well maintained. It was also seen as an opportunity to build a ‘key-farmer network’ in Laos to link up with the existing ‘key-farmer network’ in Vietnam, the result of TEW’s earlier work.
 
‘Key-farmer networks’ were a central feature of TEW’s strategy for improving the conditions of ethnic minority communities in Vietnam. As elsewhere in the Mekong region, ethnic minorities in Vietnam made up the poorest sections of the population. In TEW’s analysis, the cause of this poverty was a combination of isolation, in-confidence and no-ownership. ‘Isolation’was from other ethnic groups and from the centers of power where decisions affecting the lives of ethnic minorities are made. This was seen as leading to ‘in-confidence’, particularly in relation to the formal political system where ethnic minorities are officially looked down upon as ‘backward’ and ‘superstitious’. Isolation and in-confidence together led to ‘no-ownership’ (or loss of control) of both land and culture as minority peoples were either forcefully removed from their traditional territories by state sponsored resettlement programs or lost their land to state sponsored land appropriations. Given the close association between land and culture in highland ethnic minority communities (expressed in terms of spiritual relations), resettlement or land dispossession led to cultural loss as well. TEW’s ‘key farmer network’ strategy was aimed at addressing the problems of isolation by building strong inter-ethnic regional networks of ‘key farmers’ - knowledgeable, innovative, and forceful ethnic minority farmers capable of taking leadership roles in their communities. The problems of ‘in-confidence’ and ‘no-ownership’ could then be tackled by lobbying for state recognition of community land rights and respect for indigenous knowledge as a foundation for sustainable natural resource management and community development. Key farmer networks were established first at the village level on the basis of shared interests among farmers in traditional practices related to natural resource management such as herbal medicine, women’s textile handicraft production, ecological farming, customary law, and forest protection. The networks were then extended to the regional and inter-ethnic level by creating opportunities for farmers from different ethnic groups and different parts of the country to meet and exchange their ideas and knowledge. In this way TEW sought to strengthen the capacity of ethnic minority farmers throughout the region to withstand state and market pressures to abandon their traditional resources and cultural practices. It was with this background of philosophy and practice that CHESH entered into a Program of Cooperation with the Lao government in 1999.