Reflections Workshop promotes community-based organisation participation in land initiatives

The Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG) project is currently undertaking a planned program of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities. These are designed to assess the effectiveness of some of the MRLG Learning and Alliance (L&A) and Grant-funded activities.

As part of the L&A activity assessment, members of the Project Implementation Unit (PIU) recently visited Hanoi where, together with national staff, they ran a ‘Reflection Workshop’ to review work associated with the “promotion of community-based organisations participation in land legislation implementation and monitoring”. The workshop was attended by representatives from 13 partner organisations including lead partner the Center for Indigenous Knowledge Research and Development (CIRD) and representatives from the Fatherland Front of Vietnam and Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Association.

The workshop reflected on the history, objectives, activities and outcomes of the L&A group with the aim of sharing the lessons learnt and identifying key success factors. Of note was the strength of commitment among all partner organisations to work towards a common goal, the accumulated knowledge that was gained from working together, the positive impact that the L&A had on capacity building and the fact that the activity contributed to the launch of a monitoring mechanism for the Fatherland Front at all levels of government activities in general, and to land policy in particular.

Image: John Meadows (Acting Team Leader, MRLG), Joo Zimmerman (L&A) and Dominik Wellman (M&E) from the PIU and Lan Nguyen (the MRLG National Facilitator for Vietnam) are photographed with Mr. Phan Văn Vượng (Deputy Head of Democratic and Laws Committee, Central Fatherland Front) and Mr. Lê Công Lương (Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Association (VUSTA)).