During the 11th Youth Leadership Workshop in New Delhi, India, we presented our proposal to UNESCO MGIEP and asked a simple but powerful question: What would happen if we brought culture and nature conservation together as a driving force to address poverty, advance sustainable development, and protect national resources by investing in Lao youth?
From this question, our Conserve Culture, Protect Nature project was born through a small experimentation funding from UNESCO MGIEP. Through it, we recruited six outstanding participants—selected from more than 424 applicants—to join our project. Together with three team leaders, we formed a group of nine and traveled from Vientiane, the capital city, to the UNESCO World Heritage city of Luang Prabang, Laos, to put our ideas into action.
After finalizing the participants through both an application process and interviews, we selected six participants. We launched the project with an orientation session in Vientiane Capital City that combined a short, easy-to-understand presentation on conservation, system and design thinking through entrepeneurship and innovation with hands-on activities. The focus was mainly on team building and interactive exercises. Rather than just lecturing, we integrated the lessons we wanted them to learn into group work and collaborative activities.
The post-workshop survey in Vientiane Capital was overwhelmingly positive. Participants said they enjoyed the activities and clearly understood the core message we wanted to share. Many mentioned that the learning experience was fun, engaging, and left them feeling inspired by the ideas and practices we introduced.
Before we began learning and working together as a team, we integrated Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) into our program. Each participant was given a meaningful quote to explain to the group, helping to create an environment that nurtured SEL in youth development.
During our trip to Luang Prabang, we focused on the theme “How can poverty reduction be integrated with nature and cultural conservation?” All of our teaching was activity-based and rooted in teamwork and togetherness, guided by nine SEL principles that every participant carried throughout our time there:
1. Kindness: the most important professional skill 🌟
2. Criticize constructively, don’t gossip 🚫💬
3. Pay attention to others ❤️
4. Respecting others pays off in the long run 💼💡
5. If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together ✅
6. The more you give, the more you get 💖📈
7. Be honest and sincere: Do right even off-stage
8.Listen to understand, not just to respond 👂🗣️
9. Knowledge is power, action is change 📘⚡
Everyone was different, and many things happened along the way, but these principles helped us work together toward a common goal, treat one another like family, reduce conflict, and make our learning in Luang Prabang full of positive experiences.
The post-workshop survey in Vientiane Capital was overwhelmingly positive. Participants said they enjoyed the activities and clearly understood the core message we wanted to share. They described the project as life-changing, saying it gave them fresh inspiration to make a difference. Many now dream of becoming entrepreneurs who apply systems thinking in their businesses, strive to protect natural resources, and help people and nature live in harmony. They reflected that, after the program, they had learned to see both problems and solutions more clearly and wanted to integrate SEL into their leadership to achieve their goals.
Another powerful outcome was that the six participants—who had never met before—became close friends and continue to stay connected. For us as team leaders, this success reaffirmed that when we infuse emotion, empathy, and love into what we do—just as SEL teaches—we can truly inspire others to act and grow into better leaders.