REAL Program

The Rural Ecological Agriculture for Livelihood was developed in Thailand by the Thai Education Foundation in 1995 with the aims to build capacity of schools and communities on Integrated Pest Management or IPM which expanded to over 100 schools, colleges and communities through the supports from FAO Community IPM programs and Thai Government. The program later integrated pesticides impact assessment activities in 1997 where schools and communities collect data on pesticides uses, storage and disposal at home and in the fields and data were used as part of classroom research and presented to communities. Community action plan to reduce the uses of pesticides were developed and implemented with schools. in 2005, agrobiodiversity conservation was integrated into the REAL program to raise awareness on the importance of agrobiodiversity for their livelihoods and supported school-community conservation plans and implementation. The REAL programs were expanded to over 200 schools and communities in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam during 2007-2018 through the collaborations with ministries of Agriculture, Education, Health, universities and local government in participated countries under the supports form Kemi (Sweden).