Lately, ICCO has facilitated a number of questions to SPERI with regards to interests in learning more about strategies towards empowering grassroots civil society. Below are the 5 questions that ICCO through Program Officer was addressing. Please refer to below details of the exchanges of Qs and As.

Question 1: How could the FFSs help the poor farmers who do not have much land to improve their livelihood?

FFSs help poor farmers who do not have much land to improve their livelihood by focusing upon land rights. We investigate the historical context of why farmers do not have rights to land, how their land has been encroached upon and lost to land-grabbing by outsiders, and what are the basic and most practical directions for action in order to get their land back. Then FFSs try to connect farmers horizontally and vertically to empower their actions. Finally, FFSs study the holistic and strategic context of the challenges faced by the poor and helps them to find out for themselves how to design further plans in order to achieve livelihood sovereignty in terms of their own cultural values.

FFSs offer different spaces, at household, community and inter-community levels, where spirit leaders, key farmers and young activists can come together to share opinions and discuss solutions to their own struggling and suffering caused by top-down, un-transparent, undemocratic and exclusionary approaches of official governing and management agencies of both human and natural resources in our target area of groups who are living in buffer zones of national parks and conservation and watershed areas.

FFSs offer “Teaching by Learning, Learning by Doing” with an intensive focus on opening up and maximizing the opportunities for elders, key farmers and youth to connect and discuss up-to-date polices, and debate and find together the causes and solutions to their problems, gathering evidence and information from different situations and contexts, helping them to locate key findings in order to voice their concerns to and dialogue about higher policy governance and broaden their recommendations to local, regional and national media for political awareness raising, networking and influence, socially, economically and politically.

As a result of the above approach, poor young farmers have recognized and realized that their deepening problems over the last 30 years are caused by land encroachment and forest grabbing by outsiders which are threatening their livelihoods. Effectively seeing from the whole learning process via FFSs forums, meetings, alumni and conferences, the source of poor farmers voluntarily forge an awareness together in order to find their own ways of practically and strategically acting to prevent threats to their livelihood.

For over 17 years, FFSs have contributed to empowering horizontal and vertical Organizational and Institutional Development through dynamically updating activities raised by participatory and network action amongst isolated farmers.

Finally, being FFSs, MECO-ECOTRA themselves try their ways in order to develop inter-faces for participatory actions in co-governing social and natural resources. MECO-ECOTRA has ownership of FFSs philosophically, practically and strategically. In the administrative sense, FFSs are under the legal status of TEW, CIRD and CHESH merged under SPERI, but FFS Simacai is now run by local young farmers who are graduates of previous courses in FFS Simacai, with supervision by elders of the area and one senior staff of SPERI; and the FFS in HEPA is run by five young farmers (one from Laos) who are graduates of HEPA since 2007-2011, with supervision by elders, key farmers and one senior staff of SPERI.

Question 2: What is the progress and strategies for improving ownership of MECO-ECOTRA about the FFSs? How about the handover process of Dong Le FFS? We hear that it is now handed over to CIRD. Please share with us the process, expectation and ideas behind that?

For the progress and strategies for improving ownership of MECO-ECOTRA about the FFSs,   please refer to our answer to your question 1.

For the handover process of Dong Le FFS, please re-study our annual report, especially our internal and external evaluation reports which were sent gradually to ICCO since 1997- 2010. In addition to this, we should overview briefly for you: 1) Dong Le  used to be one field office of TEW 1995 which aimed at building up a social economic forum for poor farmer who were being isolated from participation in policy making and information sharing, including geographical difficulty. 2) As outcomes from different social economic forums, farmers realized their needs for Capacity Building and Community Development, then they asked for ‘Centre for Community Capacity Development’ (CCCD) under field office 1997 which aimed at building up network action among different interest group: 1) saving and credit, 2) gardening, 3) livestock husbandry and 4) community forestry, during 1997 – 1998. They struck crisis again and asked for monitoring and evaluation cross – interest groups. Then “Cross–Auditing Structure” appeared in 1999 together with recommendations to 1) separate this field office and CCCD to became an independent Centre for Indigenous Knowledge Research and Development (CIRD) in August 2000 which was registered under the Vietnam Union for Science Technology Association (VUSTA) under the Degree 81 of Science Technology Law; 2) Merge different interest groups into one coordinator board which scaling up from village – district – provincial and neighbor province levels  for a stronger governing and managing system in one hand, and for advocacy strategies in the other. In 2005, taking advantages of the policy for scientific community, we decided to merge CHESH, CIRD and TEW to become SPERI, independently under the Science Technology Law. As the results, logically and strategically, the national key farmer network of different interest groups under TEW/CHESH/CIRD broadened to  become MECO-ECOTRA acting framework (2005 -2015) with general 6 themes internally for real action: 1) Customary Law  in Community Governance and Management of Natural Resources; 2) Community Ownership of Spirit Forest and Bio-Cultural Diversity; 3) Eco-Farming Knowledge for Sustainable Land Use Planning and Livelihood Security; 4) Herbal Medicinal Wisdom for Community Healthcare and Bio-diversity Preservation; 5) Women’s Wisdom in Natural Dying and Embroidery of Textile Handicrafts; 6) Farmer Field School for Teaching by Learning, Learning by Doing toward Leadership in Democratization and Decentralization. To avoid political trouble confronting official networking region wide, we stated 5 themes for hidden social political context.  The MECO-ECOTRA 2005–2015 strategic framework aimed at three directions in Organizational and Institutional Development for action: 1)   Transforming CIRD into a practical FFS  for piloting  “Community Ecological Enterprises” for key farmers, young students, NGOs, local authorities, and media. Our expectation was to raising up the network of local niche ecological market producers for local product security in order to avoid chemicals and pesticides; 2) Transforming TEW into a practical FFS for piloting “Institutional Development  in Co-Curriculum Building” between FFS Simacai and the Lao Cai governmental Vocational Technical Training School in order to develop alternative farming and land use planning in Simacai for changing the way of conventional agricultural education; 3) Transforming CHESH as a cross-border forum and network for the empowerment for Young Indigenous Ethnic Leadership Development Strategy (YIELDS) in the Mekong region by piloting “Teaching by Learning – Learning by Doing” for re-structuring top down governing attitudes.

Soon after running “community ecological enterprising”, we realized that it was stills too earlier to raise this concept due to the producer-buyer-society habit of chasing after  conventional farming produce and using conventional production methods in Vietnam. This lead to SPERI deciding to move the “Community Ecological Enterprising” FFS pilot from June 2006 to June 2011 to be handing over to CIRD and to focus on continuing with Eco- Farming and Land Use Planning, Community Forestry and Farmer Networking for Land Rights. Particularly at the current moment the farmers are threatened with landlessness by forest grabbing under the new government policy of “industrialization as quick as possible” and opening up land for investment, destroying bio-diversity and excluding our  poor farmers. (This is the main reason for SPERI to compromise in order to return to CIRD independently and staying with their own legitimacy status which we still remaining at VUSTA’s administrative procedure)

Question 3: In term of policies, the report mentions the conflict solving case in Lao as an evidence of how MECO-ECOTRA influences the local government. This is very good. How about other issues, such as socio-political and adjustment?

The question about other issues, such as socio-political and adjustment is not within our ability to answer, sorry for that.

Question 4: The outcome # 3 indicates that the Mekong regional network will influence the local authorities in term of land use planning by using their eco-farming pilots and knowledge. Can you please share with us how the lobby process is going on and obtained results up to now?

At the moment, together with the Customary Law in Community Governing and Natural Resource Management theme, we are on-going to finish our lobby circular No.07/TTLB-NNPTNT – BTNMT/2011 for Lao Cai province in 1) re-mapping and gaining back thousands of hectare of spiritual forest for different communities, 2) re-allocation of spirit forest for communities will be continue soon afterward; we will inform officially when completed in  detail next report. Furthermore, different MOUs signed between SPERI and Nghe An authority, and Pre-agreement between Kon tum and Quang Nam authority will follow the pilot in Lao cai and Nghe An for re-mapping and re-allocation of forest to communities;  3) Coming national conference in Central Highland on Land issue will be carried out;

Question 5: In term of organisational development, one of the outputs needs to be achieved this period is to set up an M&E system. However, we could not find information about this in the report. Please share with us how this is going on.

Internal theme and between-themes cross-planning every six months for action are always participated in by key farmer and young. Cross-monitoring and evaluation among theme and between themes have become a habit within MECO-ECOTRA. However, an established organizational and institutional structure for this strategy only exists within HEPA Farmer Field School. We will inform to our young farmer leaders in HEPA to send you this indicator by next report in detail.