Sakok and Nampoung villages, Xamnue district, Houaphanh province are Khmu and Lao Lump ethnic group, with 128 Household, 148 families, 12 poor families with population 685 and 345 women. The main activity in villages are rice cultivation and some households feed livestock like cows and buffalos, which others income potential is from NTFPs like sweet bamboo shoot, Biter bamboo shoot, Dja and broom grass flower, etc. The key issue finding in these 2 target villages is the roles and management positions taken by village authority and the elders which is entirely men. Poor forest management plan, lack of the experience on monitoring individual producing and poor coordination with the traders to negotiation the price, there is no long-term vision to ensure their knowledge and skill could be existed to support socio economic development and livelihood improvement in place. The women and youth still play limited role as a lead the community. The current approach of villages still applying

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toward using forests involve very limited space for village communities? involvement (especially women and youths) and it does not really consider forests sustainability or improving communities? climate resiliency through forests and income generation from bamboo shoots. The project aims to strengthening the two ethnic communities through the producer group development and established through income generation from bamboo shoots value chain to 128 household target group and experiences to exchange peer to peer with strong producer group; Empowered communities? women and youth representatives through GALS tools training to 52 families from two villages and share the experience of their GALS event in district or province multi-stakeholder spaces such as fairs; Sustainable forest management plan to 1 of 2 village and published the result of the project on methods, forest monitoring, results, and issues related to bamboo and NTFPs value.

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