Citizen Engagement in Practice - Informing Digital Futures: Strategies for Citizen Engagement - page 73

director, a farmer, computer experts, a psychologist, three medical doc-
tors, two priests, business executives, and a former senior executive of
Applied Materials ” (The Jhai Foundation n.d.). The foundation has a num-
ber of active projects in which local people can choose to participate on the
basis of their preferences and skills. The participants in the projects are
volunteers and any project can have up to 225 volunteers per week. Volun-
teers come from many domains and walks of life. The Jhai Foundation
website lists amongst the volunteers “ farmers, attorneys, business people,
accountants, graphic designers, website designers, database management
experts, construction workers, computer programme trainers, agricultural
experts, small business developers, coffee tasters, coffee industry experts,
clerical workers, bankers, warehousemen, procurement specialists, doc-
tors, nurses, hospital administrators, food industry technologists, weavers,
engineers, telecommunication specialists, well-diggers, teachers, and non-
profit management experts . The ethnicity of the volunteers are typically
¼ Laotians, ¼ Lao-Americans, and ¼ are veterans of the Vietnam war ”
(The Jhai Foundation n.d.).
The projects supported by the foundation initiative include coffee grow-
ing, education, information technology and economic development. The
information technology project in particular has introduced computers into
the schools on Laos, created four Internet learning centres to teach both
adults and children, and has plans to establish 20 more. Regarding the first
learning centre, the Foundation reports: “ the whole community feels it
owns it. It teaches both kids and adults. And it is initiating a collaborative,
project-based learning project that is unique in the world. Its project is to
collaborate with schools in similar latitudes and in the U.S. to discover
ways to experiment with local organic cash crops for local and interna-
tional markets. From the beginning kids make money, their parents find
ways to keep their kids home, and the school gets new community re-
sources - parents who are farmers, agriculture extension agents - that
they never had before ” (The Jhai Foundation n.d.).
Overall, the foundation has helped 25 villages improve their social and
economic well-being, helped villages create many new businesses and
moved 10 tons of medical supplies. The projects produce high impact be-
cause their communities own them. “ We always hire locally, if possible,
and help fund contracts, signed by local people, with local experts…Jhai
helps create change that is sustainable, because it is locally conceived and
implemented to be that way, with minimal interference and direction from
outsiders. And we always try to start slow, making sure everyone is on
board, building momentum as we go ” (Jhai Foundation n.d.).
The perceived benefits are significant for the individuals and communi-
ties involved. It appears that the Jhai Foundation demonstrates considerable