Project Sinxay, run by the Lao Youth Union with UNICEF, has now reached more than 7,000 young people in seven provinces, up from just over 1,000 a year ago. Its youth-led projects range from rice-straw products to campaigns against child marriage.
In February, 27-year-old Bounpanh Chaleunsin started picking up one bag of trash a day on the Mekong riverbank in Pakse. One Bag A Day now has about 400 members and groups in 13 provinces of Laos.
Lao health and agriculture ministries marked World Rabies Day in Vientiane with free pet vaccinations and a renewed goal of ending human deaths from dog-transmitted rabies by 2030.
A $1.4 million Japanese grant, run by the FAO with Laos's agriculture ministry, has finished 31 small irrigation schemes and 17 road improvements in Luang Prabang and Oudomxay, and 1,150 households earned wages building them.
Laos has designated a 217,400-hectare national park in the Annamite Mountains, protecting habitat for the critically endangered saola and several other species found almost nowhere else on Earth.
