Ladies Disabled Women Tour, Laos-One day
The Lao Disabled Women’s Development Cener is an exciting tourist destination in Vientiane. In a beautiful garden setting, it is situated on the banks of the Mekong just down the road from the Friendship Bridge and Buddha Park. Women with disabilities come from all over Laos to live and study here, gaining life skills and vocational training to empower them to set up an independent life. Visitors can learn about Lao culture, meet some inspiring women and support a fantastic cause. Funded almost entirely through donations, your tour will provide crucial support to help us continue enabling the disabled in Laos.
We will pick you up and lead you to the Center.
Disability Inclusion in the Workplace
Does your workplace or staff want to do more to support people with disabilities but lack the knowledge, skills or tools to do so? This one-day workshop will provide an understanding of disability, the language and etiquette and the benefits of inclusive workplaces. Through this workshop, management and staff will gain the knowledge and
understanding to develop achievable steps to effect real change in their workplace.
Includes: workshop + materials + refreshments (optional) Format: Optional half day, full day or short session on disability inclusion at your workplace.
Cultural Activities – Laos Cooking Class, Bacci Ceremony, Laos Traditional Music & Dancing.
The Lao Disabled Women’s Centre not only offers visitors a chance to learn about Disability in Lao and the work that we do at the LDWDC, but we also offer visitors to join us in some traditional Lao Cultural Activities.
We offer a lunch option (as above) which can be added on to any tour or activity, but if you want to learn how to make lunch in the traditional Lao way, this activity is for you. There are two options with this Activity:
• Basic Cooking Class – We will have ingredients ready for you at the Centre, so you can come and learn how to make some traditional Lao food with our Master Chef! You can make a variety of tasty dishes, from papaya salad, traditional larb, soups and of course sticky rice!
Market Visit and Cooking Class – When you arrive at the Centre, we will take you to the ‘Talat’, or Market, and together we will choose different ingredients, meet and talk with stall vendors and take in the sensory experience of buying food in the Talat the Lao way.
Our cooking classes can be modified for food allergies, preferences and anything else you may require. We want you to not only enjoy learning about Lao food, but to enjoy eating it as well, Saep Lai Lai!
Includes: Personal or Group Food Cooking Class (Market visit optional)
Format: Times and dates of Cooking Classes & Market Visits must be pre-arranged
Laos Traditional Bacci Ceremony
The Ancient Bacci Ceremony is an old Lao tradition, and even pre-dates Buddhist practice. We hold the Bacci ceremony in times of celebration, spirituality, readiness and mourning. We believe that the body is made of 32 spiritual organs, which can leave you when they want. The Bacci ceremony, and the tying of strings around each-others wrist’s calls these spirits back to you in times when you need them, such as marriage, birth, entering monkhood and other important times. Every time a string is tied around a wrist it is accompanied by moving the strings over the persons writs & saying ‘Haiy Kuad Nee, Dee Kuad Khao’ which means ‘bad luck out, good luck in. The Baci is an experience that will give you good luck and fortune in your future, and we are very happy to share this amazing experience and share with you this blessing from our students & staff at the Centre.
Includes: Traditional Lao Bacci Ceremony. (Please advise if you are vegan, as eggs are used in ceremony as a blessed food)
Format: Ceremony must be pre-arranged when booking. Takes around 1 hour.
Half Day and Full Day Handicraft Workshops: Information for Visitors.
The Lao Disabled Women’s Development Centre offers possibilities for spending a great time while enjoying
beautiful and timeless handicraft. Make your special events memorable and organize your birthday at our Centre,
a school workshop or surprise your family and friends. The opportunities are endless with our many skilled women
who can offer various handicraft courses:
• Weaving workshop – we welcome complete novices, as well as experienced weavers.
• Paper handicraft – in addition to the 30-minute workshop you can elect to spend a half-day or full day at our Centre.
• Recycled banana and mulberry papermaking – Banana paper is an environmentally conscious paper. Banana trees produce fruit only once a year and are then cut down, leaving abundant waste or by-product. Recycling the fiber from this by-product, into paper, helps to prevent the eco-system’s rivers and forests from becoming polluted with waste.
• Or if there is a skill you would like to transfer to the women then please get in contact. Includes: One on One Training + refreshments + tour + materials + lunch (optional). Format: To be discussed based on handicraft chosen
Phon Dork Champa Lorlian – Wheelchair Champa Flower Dance – Laos Instruments
The Wheelchair Champa Flower Dance is one of the LDWDC’s most loved activities. Our students combine traditional Laos costumes, traditional Laos dancing, and the Laos national Champa Flower, with the wheelchair for an amazing dance performance for our guests. You can choose to
have the Traditional Champa Wheelchair Dance activity as an added performance and to make this a truly Laos experience we use traditional Laos music played by our students.
In 2018 the Lao instrument the Khaen was added to UNESCO’s cultural heritage list. There is a saying in Laos that to be truly Laos is to live in a house on stilts, eat sticky rice and play the Khaen. We want to celebrate this by offering you a chance to see a performance with the Khaen, as well as other Lao instruments like the Lanet ek, being played by our students & staff. To get more involved you can choose to learn the instruments as well, although we cannot promise you will be a master after only one day! This activity supports not only the work of the Women at the Centre, but promotes our students to have confidence to perform and to be active, and gives you a chance to enjoy some of the traditional culture of Laos!
Includes: Traditional Music Performance and Wheelchair Champa Flower Dance Performance
Format: Performance must be pre-arranged when booking tour. 30 minutes
Visitors can always join our students after performance and try some new dance moves in a wheelchair or learn how to play a Laos instrument.
School Group Activities – LDWDC09
The Lao Disabled Women’s Development Centre is a place of learning, for everyone! We welcome School groups of all ages, and encourage teachers, parents or school staff to contact us directly to arrange a tour for your students. Our activities not only aim to be
enjoyable, but also informative about what it is like to live with different types of disability.
We will arrange a combination of our usual activities to suit your school group, but can include some of the following fun activities for school groups:
- Wheelchair Race – Have a race in some wheelchairs in our garden, it’s a lot of fun, and also gives students a chance to see what life is like when you cannot use your legs.
- Closed Eyes Balloon Game – In this game students are blindfolded and have balloons tied to their legs. The other person has to pop that person’s balloon before theirs is popped! This game is lots of fun, and shows students what it is like to live with a visual impairment.
- Charades – The classic game of Charades, where one person gives another person an activity, animal or something else to act out for the other people in the group to guess what it is– without using any words! This game is fun and shows how important non-verbal communication is, especially for people with hearing impairments.