Humanitarian Response

Lao PDR is vulnerable to windstorms, landslides, floods and droughts, which cause widespread agriculture losses. 

In the coming decades, it is projected that climate change will lead to more frequent and intense hydro-meteorological and climate extreme events. There will be more intense rainfall events, and more frequent and severe droughts and floods and more extreme wet and dry seasons. Annual mean temperatures will continue to rise by 0.1-0.3°C per decade, and the number of days with temperatures above 33°C will increase, while the number of cooler days with temperatures below 15°C will drop by two to three weeks per year.

What We Do

Save the Children is the leading humanitarian response agency for children in Lao PDR and provides provinces with technical expertise when responding to the needs of affected children.  Save the Children is committed to reducing children’s vulnerability to disasters, ensuring their right to survival and development and providing the support children and their families need to quickly recover and re-establish their lives, dignity and livelihoods.

In response to the floods triggered by Typhoon Haima and Tropical Storm Nock-Ten in 2011, Save the Children conducted the first successful cash transfer project in Laos. Bolikhamxay Province, located in the central region of Laos with a high poverty rate of close to 50 percent, was the worst-affected. As such, on top of race rations, the most vulnerable families were given three cash grants and a training on basic risk reduction for their livestocks and farmland. The project not only supported families through a disaster, it also ensured that their livelihoods would be protected in the next one.

The project was successfully replicated in subsequent disasters, most recently in the 2013 flooding in Nam Khop district, reaching 450 of the most vulnerable households.