Read the first blog post from PoP Fellow Hoolie Tejwani, as he joins our team on the ground in Laos:

“I’m in a rural village 9,000 miles from home, accessible only by muddy, unsealed roads. The electricity is sporadic and there is one phone for every hundred people. Yet, I feel connected…”

One of the first questions we ask is what they want most for their community. We won’t be giving it to them; we’ll be helping them create it for themselves.

Filmmaker Philip Buiser of Two Penguins Productions spent two weeks in Laos documenting the opening of PoP schools and profiling some remarkable people in Lao culture. Click to read the final installment of a three-post series.

Filmmaker Philip Buiser of Two Penguins Productions spent two weeks in Laos documenting the opening of PoP schools and profiling some remarkable people in Lao culture. Click to read the second installment of a three-post series.

Filmmaker Philip Buiser of Two Penguins Productions spent two weeks in Laos documenting the opening of PoP schools and profiling some remarkable people in Lao culture.

So today village elders tied me up and got me drunk, then sent me off to shoot the monks, until I discovered that the monks were, in fact, shooting me. Oh, and I crashed my motorbike.
The awesome part about all of this is that I’m not even kidding.
Thanks to the underground marketing campaign of a pair of friends (I owe you, Wilsher/Johnson), I have been granted the extreme privilege of shooting documentary materials for Pencils of Promise in Laos as they get set to turn over control of several …

A while ago I spent the afternoon with Kua, a 13-year-old at Pha Theung school. I waited for her to finish her morning class, dutifully pack away her homework and clean up her desk, then take me down to the river for an adventure.

It’s impossible to understand the Lao people until you meet them. They are hardworking and content. This is their life, and they are happy to be here and enjoy it as often as possible with family and friends. The children, complete with runny noses, dirty clothes and big smiles, light up every room in which they sit. They will crush your heart with cuteness, and pictures cannot do them justice.

This week’s PoP Profile features PoP’s incredible Laos Country Director, Leslie Engle.

When you first see Kua, she’s at the blackboard, the teacher admiring her work. She’s sporting a baseball cap and t-shirt with her school skirt and is undoubtedly smiling.
When they break for lunch, her classmates fall into a familiar stride behind their friend and leader. Kua knows everybody in Pha Theung school and village.
And everybody knows Kua. She is a confident, intelligent and friendly female who loves her village and her school.
As they file out the door, she announces to all of them that they’re going to take the falang, …