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"The place to be Local Alike is using tourism to boost the profiles of struggling communities 15 Jun 2016 at 04:00 1,021 viewed0 comments NEWSPAPER SECTION: LIFE | WRITER: KANIN SRIMANEEKULROJ Somsak Boonkam observing a forest hiking trail in Chiang Rai. Photos: Sayan Chuenudomsavad With their focus on introducing sustainable tourism practices to local rural communities in order to improve quality of life, local-tourism website Local Alike has recently been chosen to represent Thailand in Chivas' The Venture campaign, a competition among the world's social-enterprise start-ups, with the winner receiving a US$1 million prize. Now in its second year, The Venture's final round of judging will occur sometime next month. "We actually competed in the Thailand preliminaries last year, though we didn't make the cut," said Local Alike's founder and CEO Somsak Boonkam. "The judges last year were concerned about our ability to scale up, as we had only 18 partner communities offered. This year, we've grown to include over 50 member communities, all of whom were working very closely with to introduce and develop sustainable tourism in their communities. It goes together nicely with the campaign's slogan of 'Win the right way', as we are helping these local communities grow by their own strength instead of just giving them money." Unlike many other tourism-related businesses, Local Alike puts a significant emphasis on collaborating with locals in improving their community's quality of living. Furthermore, they also work closely with these communities to develop unique tourism experiences based on the community's cultural heritage. Once they're ready, Local Alike puts the community on their online platform, where tourists can go and enjoy the activities and facilities prepared and overseen by the locals themselves. Somsak Boonkam meeting with representatives from a partner community. To demonstrate his point, Somsak recalled his experiences working with the Baan Suan Pa com

"'WASH' strategy improves access to safe water and sanitation in Niger © UNICEF video A boy drinks from a UNICEF-installed well in Zabon Moussou, Niger, which supplies water for 1,750 people. By Nina Martinek As part of the launch of 'Progress for Children No. 5: A Report Card on Water and Sanitation', UNICEF is featuring a series of stories focused on achieving the 2015 targets set by Millennium Development Goal 7 - to halve  the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. GUIDAN GAZOBI, Niger, 8 September 2006 - Access to safe drinking water is a daily struggle for the people of Niger, especially women and girls, who are responsible for collecting water for their families. As a result, girls frequently miss school and women's health is adversely affected, often resulting in low birth weight in their young children. Infant and child deaths "We have to go beyond the food availability issue and tackle the lack of access to basic services like health, safe water, hygiene and environmental sanitation, which is contributing on a large scale to malnutrition," says UNICEF Representative in Niger Aboudou K. Adjibade. © UNICEF video Women carry water home for their families from the cemented well in the village of Zabon Moussou. In rural Niger, 64 per cent of the population does not have access to safe drinking water. Many people drink pond water that is shared with livestock, is contaminated by guinea worms and registers high levels of chemicals such as fluoride and nitrates. Indeed, a majority of infant and child deaths in rural Niger are linked to contaminated water, lack of hygiene and inadequate sanitation. Unsanitary environments and unsafe water threaten not only the survival of young children but also their and physical and mental development. Illnesses such as diarrhoea cause and exacerbate malnutrition, and can result in long-term stunting. Water, sanitation and hygiene UNICEF's ob

"Inner Bangkok is going through big changes. New public transport routes and rapid property development means that the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) is having to reorganize traditional neighborhood boundaries. Here, BK visits the communities at threat and speaks to residents about their fears for the future."

"THEY live in stilted shacks built on a mud flat above piles of oyster shells, broken glass and rubbish, their nomadic days on the seas of South-east Asia gone forever. Liya Pramongkit, an elder and midwife of Thailand's largest group of Moken-speaking sea gypsies, saw her people on the small island of Koh Lao dying at the rate of one a week, many of them starving mothers and babies. "We have lost our traditional way of life as our children no longer hear the stories that have been handed down by our ancestors," Liya says, her deeply lined face showing the hardship the Moken have suffered since they were forced to leave their seafaring lives, where the only things that mattered were the tides, the fish, the storms, the moon and the sea spirits. "Before, when we lived and died on the sea, life was much better," she says. Advertisement More than three decades working in Bangkok's slums did not prepare Catholic priest Joe Maier for what he saw on Koh Lao when he made his first 30-minute boat ride here from the Thai fishing port of Ranong, in south-west Thailand, four years ago. "The people were literally starving to death, trapped between the modern world and the Moken world," Father Maier says. "I have never seen people as poor. "The women did not have milk in their breasts to feed their babies and everyone had [intestinal] worms ... there were no traditional values ... it was a matter of basic survival." For centuries, home for the Moken were hand-built boats called kabang which they plied through the Mergui Archipelago, where 800 islands are scattered along 400 kilometres of the coasts of Burma and Thailand, in the Andaman Sea. They lived on fish, molluscs, sandworms and oysters, accumulating little and living on land only during the monsoons. But massively depleted fishing stocks, the declaration of marine reserves and crackdowns on itinerant fishers in Burma forced them off their boats into an uncertain future where they are struggling to survive in a Th

Freer Trade Could Fill the World's Rice Bowl TWITTER LINKEDIN SIGN IN TO E-MAIL OR SAVE THIS PRINT REPRINTS SHARE By TYLER COWEN Published: April 27, 2008 RISING food prices mean hunger for millions and also political unrest, as has already been seen in Haiti, Egypt and Ivory Coast. Yes, more expensive energy and bad weather are partly at fault, but the real question is why adjustment hasn't been easier. A big problem is that the world doesn't have enough trade in foodstuffs. Enlarge This Image Alanah Torralba/European Pressphoto Agency Filipino port workers unload sacks of rice imported from Vietnam to be distributed by the National Food Authority. Related Times Topics: Rice Blogrunner: Reactions From Around the Web Managing Globalization: Can rice Farming Be Laissez-Faire? The damage that trade restrictions cause is probably most evident in the case of rice. Although rice is the major foodstuff for about half of the world, it is highly protected and regulated. Only about 5 to 7 percent of the world's rice production is traded across borders; that's unusually low for an agricultural commodity. So when the price goes up - indeed, many varieties of rice have roughly doubled in price since 2007 - this highly segmented market means that the trade in rice doesn't flow to the places of highest demand. Poor rice yields are not the major problem. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that global rice production increased by 1 percent last year and says that it is expected to increase 1.8 percent this year. That's not impressive, but it shouldn't cause starvation. The more telling figure is that over the next year, international trade in rice is expected to decline more than 3 percent, when it should be expanding. The decline is attributable mainly to recent restrictions on rice exports in rice-producing countries like India, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Cambodia and Egypt. At first glance, this seems understandable, bec