Phetdavanh Sipaseuth is a specialist in land tenure rights and natural resources management. She has a passion for working with different groups of people, especially youth and ethnic minorities, and she is skilled at helping civil society organisations (CSOs) connect with their government counterparts.

She brings these assets to her role as a team leader for Village Focus International’s Land Learning Initiative for Food Security Enhancement (LIFE) Project, a consortium of more than 30 Lao NGOs and CSOs.

She supports LIFE in its participatory and interactive coaching on various land rights, natural resources, and land governance topics, and in developing its training curricula on contract farming, customary land rights, access to justice, the rights of Lao citizens to the use of natural resources, and other topics related to land tenure and food security.

She also is active in the Forest Law Enforcement Government and Trade process, helping CSOs to prepare position statements on recent laws and policies and present them to the Lao government.

She sees this fellowship as an opportunity to expand her knowledge of equity issues in ways that will build capacity for local CSOs and communities to protect their rights to land, forests, and other natural resources, particularly the food sources they derive from nature.