The distance from Vientiane to Xai district, Oudomxay province is 600 km. You can travel by bus, car or airplane and mountainous with sloping hills ranging from 100 m above sea level to 2 800 m above sea level. Only 16 percent of the total area is below 200 m. Travelling by bus spend 15 hours, 12 hours by car and 1 hour by airplane. Most of the villages in the Xay district are located far from district capital Mai. The population mainly lives from rice farming, gardening as well pig and/or water buffalo cattle raising with an average income from less than 2 US Dollar per capita and day. Most of them have no access to the national grid yet. People mostly use diesel lamps, small gen-sets, candles, lead-acid automobile batteries for lighting and wood for fire. To improve their livelihood CDEA and the villagers developed the plan to install 8 biogas plants in Oudomxay Province for demonstration

The over-all objective is to assist in poverty reduction in Oudomxay province according to the government’s policy on poverty reduction.

The specific objectives are:

• To built a model target group on making waste (animal manure) work for economy.
• To increase the income generation opportunities of the target people in the community to improve their livelihood.

The first biogas plant shall be established in Bane Mai. Bane Mai or Mai village is the first village in Oudomxay province that CDEA selected to develop for demonstration or model village for REEPRO Project. 2008 the local organisation got funding support from GAA 20,000,000 for pig raising in Bane Mai in order to establish a community development fund, CDEA also provide 30 mango seedling for testing if they grow up well CDEA will train villagers to produce more for sale. Villagers have cattle, buffalo and pigs, the animal dung which is not used by the people so far; so the REEPRO team and the villagers jointly decided to built a biogas plant to make the animal dung/manure work for economic of family. The technical installation and operation will be accompanied by a REEPRO training programme for the local stakeholders.

The advantages are:

1. The manure treated in the biogas plant can be used as organic fertiliser, which improves the soil fertility and thus increases the crop yields.
2. Villagers can minimise the fire wood and electricity consumed per year as they can use the biogas for cooking and lightning.
3. A possibility to promote biogas plant to Oudomxay Province especially in Bane Mai, Xay district, Oudomxay Province.
4. The training programme and the implementation of the biogas plant as demonstration project will promote the transfer of the approach to other districts within Oudomxay and neighbouring provinces such as Phongsaly and Luangnamtha.

The villagers show a high interest. To implement the project they will spend 3.360.000 KIP (394 USD). Further support comes from German Embassy (61.198.000 KIP) and from CDEA (3.680.000 KIP). This amount is not enough to realise the idea. Approximately 50.000.000 KIP (5.868USD) are still open.

Thus, we still look for financial donations to realise this project. For more details please contact reepro@dgs.de.

Ban Mai (Mai village):      

CDEA had been requested by the group villagers of ban Mai, to assist them in poverty reduction.

Ban Mai or Mai village was the first in Oudomxay Province that CDEA had selected as a pilot community for the sustainable community development. It is located about 12 kilometres from Xay District. The road is mostly in poor condition especially during the raining season where accessibility would be quite difficult. There are a total of 64 households with 70 families comprising a total population of 312 persons of which 169 are females. The ethnic group is mostly the “Leu “. Their main occupation is agriculture, of which 100% is based on traditional methods with 53 ha of paddy fields.  The main source of income is selling lao-alcohol and agricultural products such as pigs, poultry. vegetable etc.. The average income per household and year is approximately 3,500,000 kip or 291,666 kip/month. The income cannot subsidise the family. There are few opportunities for students that finish elementary or secondary schools. They do not have much productive activities and mostly stay at home with no jobs. Some young get themselves busy with seasonal work in the chinese farms. Very few students can continue their study in the city. During the planting season, they help in the farm work or sell their services as farm hands. After the harvest season, about 70% of women are busy in making lao-alcohol and sell to markets in the city.

In 2008, CDEA received funding support from GAA for a target group in pig raising with a total of 20 families. The total beneficiaries were: 92 persons including 48 females. CDEA also got co-funding support from BfdW trough DED for a study visit and training in Vientiane (for target farmers).

It was through observations and data collection through interviews from the group and personals, CDEA found out that: Villagers do have enough land for making intensive farming, pig raising, cow/buffalo raising, vegetable/crops growing, organic matter for soil fertility improvement. However, they are lacking the technical knowledge, skills and related information to proceed. Furthermore, CDEA also identified that villagers have basic knowledge on animal raising of which they can use alcohol waste as a feed for pigs and then use pig dung and cow dung for biogas production.

The Community Development and Environment Association (CDEA) has got funding support from German Embassy and Schmitz-Foundation for renewable energy for life.

The criteria setting up for selecting the Biogas plant owner:

The criteria has been set up for farmers who can be the owner of Biogas plant as below:

1. Volunteered to become pilot family (active to participate to the project and follow up the technical advice of expert) ,
2. Have appropriate space for biogas plant,
3. Have labor at least 2 to 3 persons, 
4. Ready to make contribution such as unskilled labor cost, materials which can be find in local sources,
5. Number of pig at least 4 to 5 heads  or cow/buffalo at least 4 to 5 heads,
6. Have the space for making the home garden,
7. Agreed to pay back 50% of the total cost (within two years) to the community therefore setting up a community development fund (for themselves/extending the members).

At the beginning, 8 biogas plants has been focused to built in Mai village, but after taking the detail survey and individual interview by CDEA’s staffs in cooperation with Science and Technology Research Institute (STRI) technical staff we found that there are available for only 4 families. However the team continued to take survey in Bore village.

The name of Biogas plant has been finalized as below: