Awareness raising campaign on Environment during Vat Phou Festival 2018

The Vat Phou World Heritage Site Office (WHSO), in collaboration with Champasak District authorities, financed by the French Development Agency (AFD) and with the technical support of GRET, organise a pilot Awareness raising campaign on Environment during the Vat Phou Festival 2018.

The objectives of these activities is to raise awareness of the visitors and also of the businesses on site about the issue of solid waste in order to facilitate the management of the solid waste during the festival which attract every year about 100 000 pilgrims and generate lots of waste. 

Communication tools are installed on the WHSO exhibition stand (posters, banner, videos) and games are organised every day to communicate key messages on prevention and recycling to the visitors. 

A team of 15 volunteers (3 teachers and 12 students) from Phongnam Secondary School was trained before the opening of the Festival by a Solid Waste specialist from GRET to organise daily activities during the Festival.

Dressed with a green tee-shirt with the key message “don’t litter, throw your waste on the trash-bins”, they walk along the site with speakers to inform the businesses and the visitors about the activities and to encourage them to dispose their waste on the trash-bins installed on the site. Signboards are also installed to aware about the presence of the trash-bins.

A waste bank is set up on the site where businesses and individuals can bring their waste during the festival, especially recyclable waste like plastics and cans, and the recycling collector pay them for the waste collected.

We hope that this pilot action will be a success and will be replicated with more activities every year in order to protect Vat Phou World Heritage site during the Festival and to keep it clean.