UPLift--Poverty Alleviation For The Ultra-Poor

UPLift is a program designed to empower communities on the Thai/Burmese border that lack food security, opportunities for income, and education. Through the use of small grants and skills trainings, these families receive the opportunity to pull themselves out of poverty without having to rely on external aid indefinitely.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Wall Gardening Using Plastic Bottles

By Win Ko, UPLift Agriculture Officer

This video is about bottle wall gardening. It is a very cool method for the people who do not have enough space to grow vegetables, herbs, and flowers. KLDF is currently working with urban migrant schools in Mae Sot, Thailand to set up wall gardening projects for nutritional purposes. Enjoy!

Returning to the Landfill community with a Lot of Fun

By Ko Lynn, UPLift Program & Communications Officer

No "I" in "Team"

The Project Inspire program for women's empowerment with UN Women and Mastercard is still yielding results for Burmese migrant women in Mae Sot, Thailand. Due to this, UPLift held a follow-up workshop with motivated women in the community.

On Saturday, July 21st we held a workshop with ten motivated women at the landfill community that especially dealt with improving life skills. The workshop topic, Teamwork, is closely related to communication and responsibility because the individual actions will always affect the others around you. Working with others can make tasks easier, and teamwork can help solving problems by providing different perspectives and different ideas for the landfill women.


After the workshop we had some activities that directly related to the real lives of the women. It was really useful for the women and their daily lives because they all have to work the same type of job and they are likely to be a team.

Women participated in a teamwork activity called "Acid Ocean".
Because of the workshop, women could understand concepts of effective teamwork and be able to work together with different people. Even though most of the women who attended the workshop are illiterate, they felt pretty smart and capable to learn new things. They believe that the training would be able to empower the women who live in the landfill to be independent.
Although we have ended Project Inspire program, we have done a workshop with the motivated women again, and I felt very happy to spend my time with them. I will often visit the landfill and share as much as I can with them. As a Khom Loy UPLift staff I am willing to work with these women in the future.