Laos
PROGRAMME DESCRIPTION
Anna Phommachanthone’s Background and Origin
As someone from an impacted community, Anna made the decision to reconnect with her Lao roots. She decided to reach out to Legacies of War in order to advocate and work towards a better future for her ancestral home. She is only one example of many making a similar journey. This influenced her development of Khao Niew’s Classroom and her involvement with other projects; Thip Khao Talk, Legacies Library and the Lao Heritage Foundation (LHF) Virtual Camp.
Born in Luang Prabang, Laos, Anna Phommachanthone’s early childhood was filled with Lao traditions. Her environment changed when her parents made the difficult decision to uproot their family to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in order to provide her with an American education. Like any other Lao-American in the early 2000s, Anna grew up watching the Disney Channel, playing outside in the neighbourhood, going to family parties and overhearing adult conversations about ‘the war’. Knowing very little about Lao history, she assumed ‘the war’ they were talking about had happened hundreds of years ago. However, the older she got, the more she became aware that all her family members experienced it. Even her own life, to some extent, was the product of war. Her family wouldn’t be in America if the American Secret War in Laos had never happened.
Although Lao culture was alive in her household, the small Laotian population living in her area meant there was a lack of a sense of community. At high school, Anna decided to take the matter into her own hands, seeking out Lao organisations through the internet. She stumbled upon Legacies of War’s (LoW) website through a few Facebook searches and read through every page. She then patiently waited for two years until she was eligible to apply for an internship with Legacies.
Anna is one example of many young Lao-Americans who learned about their family’s past by putting together the pieces of history. On her internship application, she expressed a strong interest in knowing her roots through history and connecting to other Lao-Americans. With her determination to make an impact on other Lao-Americans who are on a similar journey, she influenced the creation of Khao Niew’s Classroom (KNC). This is a virtual classroom producing content to inspire democratic engagement and educate youth – particularly among the diaspora community – in advocacy, culture, and unexploded ordnance and mine-removal work.
She made an initial draft of her first version of Khao Niew, showed it to the team for fun, and the rest is history. With Lao culture rarely seen in media, the creation of Khao Niew’s Classroom became a tool to educate a younger audience about the history of the American Secret War in Laos, our work, and Lao culture. It also gives them representation and shows that symbols of Laos can be fun, playful, and informative.
‘Sticky Rice Model’ of Community Engagement
Anna’s participation at Legacies represents the grassroots efforts that we engage in to activate changemakers in our ‘Sticky Rice Model’ including youth advocates.
LoW is committed to fostering a healthy partnership between the United States and Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), in order to remove the remnants of violent conflict while fostering peace and reconciliation. It has developed its own model, the ‘Sticky Rice Model for power mapping’, which can be used to visualise the support and influence of groups and individuals, placing them into categories that can be transformed into an action plan. As a food staple of Laos, sticky rice serves as an effective metaphor for the power mapping strategy that LoW uses. Each grain in a sticky rice ball is necessary to create a network of influence, just as each member of a network plays their own role. Furthermore, the flexible and malleable nature of a sticky rice ball helps us to visualise the ways in which we can shape and influence our own networks in order to strengthen partnerships and achieve advocacy goals. Just as sticky rice is a staple food, so the model for community engagement is the foundation for how we activate, engage, and fuel grassroots efforts to change policy and help drive change for humanitarian assistance in Southeast Asia.
The Sticky Rice Model helped LoW to plan strategic engagement with both Senator Patrick Leahy (ret.) and Former US President Obama for over a decade. This helped to expand the US’s partnerships and humanitarian efforts for Southeast Asia and put in place foreign policy to support the region. Through this model, LoW has rallied support from a series of unlikely allies, including youth advocates, government officials, veterans, anti-war activists, and intergenerational members of the global Southeast Asian community. Anna is a prime example of the success of the sticky rice model because her participation was activated by the formation of the sticky rice ball – our map of influence for advocacy centred on the Southeast Asian youth.
Through this model, Anna’s influence as a youth advocate has helped engaged congressional offices in Pennsylvania towards action on removing mines. As a result of her advocacy work, she has helped activate and further the participation of her member of Congress, Senator Lloyd Smucker, in responding to and joining the Global UXO/Demining Caucus, which now has 47 members. Anna has also supported a grassroots initiative that activated advocates in all 50 states, resulting in a letter-writing campaign to over 9,200 elected officials in 2022 within seven days. Her power map has also included a network of over 180 youth advocates and interns that she has trained under this model. The Sticky Rice Model provides a framework for the pipeline of youth advocates interested in engaging their networks for campaigns, workshops, and educational initiatives meant to garner support from policymakers and the general public.
Anna as a role model for other Lao-Americans and war-impacted countries
Anna, along with 21 other fellows, had the opportunity to attend the 10th Meeting of States Parties on the Convention on Cluster Munitions at the United Nations in Geneva as a Mine Action Fellow. She was one of two Americans in the entire cohort and the first Lao-American to become a Mine Action Fellow. During her week in Geneva, she was able to meet other young people who were equally passionate about Mine Action. She learned how other countries are handling UXO clearance and survivor assistance, depending on their current stage of clearance. Anna also presented to her cohort about LoW and its work. Many had never heard about the American Secret War and were unaware how much of an issue UXO is in Laos. LoW allowed Anna to become a Mine Action Fellow and bring awareness to her colleagues about the situation in Laos.
Anna was the first Legacies intern to travel to Laos with LoW. This highlighted the importance of bringing a Lao-American youth on the trip, because they are the next generation of leaders and play an essential role in bringing the US and Laos together. During her trip, Anna was able to meet the leaders of Mines Advisory Group (MAG), the HALO Trust and Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) and found out about their work. She was also meeting and talking to women her own age who are working to remove mines. We believe it is crucial for Lao-Americans to be able to visit Laos and absorb their heritage, and to see for themselves how they can become involved and invest in the Laos diaspora living in the U.S.
Khao Niew’s Classroom’s lessons started as multiple graphics. While this continues to be a form that we use, we quickly learned that creating video lessons would broaden its reach as they would be easy to share. Anna now works to illustrate and animate each lesson.
Our goal is to create more free downloadable content – such as postcards, graphics, artwork, and flashcards – for all ages to use to share and teach others about the American Secret War and ways that they can become involved and make a change. Currently, Anna dedicates a portion of her limited hours each week to research and material production for this project. There are so many opportunities for growth within Khao Niew’s Classroom; and – as our funding and staff grow – Khao Niew’s Classroom is ready to grow along with it through researching new topics, collaborating with classrooms around the world, and widening its outreach.
