How stupid are the people?

Before you dear reader start to pull down to the comment section, let me explain why I used this provocative headline. Our night guards son recently went to the doctor because he didn't feel well. at Mahosot hospital they did a lot of checks, including blood checks. After he got handed over the test result prints and a bill. Nobody told him what to do now, what his disease is, what to do next. Even if they asked for. It is a very common thing in Laos that people are treated as they are dumb. Yes, they may not understand medical terms on first hand, but they are also listing to a explanation. Same problem is with any administrative office: People arent' treated very respectfully. Officer like to use their power to scare the people. This habit is something those working in the developing sector know quite well. While the more educated in the city may insist of a proper answer, people on the country side usually shut up. One reason is they are scared, since they experienced many times who the power has. Another reason is indeed lack of education: they just don't understand when some company explains how they want to change their village, environment, landscape etc. Help comes from an initiative that is already working in 300 villages. They basically build 3D models of a village and it's surroundings and explain - inculding landmarks know to the villagers - what the impact of a project might be.

“In former styles of land-use planning meetings, local people would usually just sit at the back of the meeting room waiting for it to end,” said Castella, one of the authors of Toward a land zoning negotiation support platform: Tips and tricks for participatory land use planning in Laos, which appeared recently in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning. As result, villagers often ended up implementing plans that they did not understand and that were doomed to fail. Things changed with the introduction of the 3D maps, which are put together with the help of the residents."

, wrote ZOE CORMIER in a blog post on the CIFOR website. Most people are not stupid. They are just not educated. And sometimes, they are brainwashed and trained to refuse education. This is the real threat. Initiatives like the 3D modelling might change this.