Development of Participatory Safe Communities in the Fragile Border Areas, Ubon Ratchathani Province

Abstract

          This research was a participatory action research to study the development of the participatory safe communities in the fragile border areas, Ubon Ratchathani Province, from 7 agencies in 2 villages by using 200 samples consisting of leaders of communities, representatives of communities, volunteers, housewives, students from high schools, students from Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University, and lecturers through health camp and safety activities for 3 consecutive days and 2 nights by using a  participatory social support process. The statistics used to analyze data were frequency and percentage.  

           The research findings were as follows.

            The leaders of communities, the representatives of communities, the volunteers, the housewives, the students from high schools, the students from Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University, and the lecturers had participatory exchange learning. The communities of the leaders and the students from the university accessed the problems at the community level from brainstorming and discussion. The problems could be concluded into 3 main problems: household and community garbage management, lack of garbage separation, and clean bathrooms and safe markets. These problems caused the implementation to solve the problems together appropriately and safely. The implementation was performed by the lecturers training on the environmental health in the community, the community philosophers designing garbage incinerators and teaching students from the university, the students from high schools learning working techniques on how the devices separating the garbage easily for safety, the students from high schools, and the students from the university helping on the clean bathrooms and the safe markets. These caused the samples learn the ways to depend on each other in the community. The learning included the food filling community that my house had, making merits by offering food to the monks in the morning, wrapping traditional rice porridge by using young coconut leaves, and performing Bai Sri Su Kwan to warmly welcome guests to the house and the guests becoming beloved children. The findings of the evaluation of the satisfaction showed that the activities to develop the participatory safe communities in the fragile border areas, Ubon Ratchathani Province were mostly at the highest level with 98.50% and the mean at 4.89 (SD.=0.17). The conclusion of the findings showed that learning the participatory community development and the access on knowing the real community nature could draw the attention of the philosophers in the communities to create the communities’ competency to solve communities’ problems appropriately and safely in the future.