Newspaper: Mining and Development project

1. VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1
DECEMBER 2013
Welcome to Women in Mining Newsletter
Special points of interest:
•
Welcome to the Project
•
Capacity Building
Workshop in Thailand
•
Our Communication
Dear Friends,
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to our
international research project.
The title of this project is
‘Equitable Employment for
Women in Mining Companies
in Laos and Thailand.
As the principal investigator of
this project, I really hope that
this project will serve the international mining community
and promote awareness of gender and mining as an important
academic field.
From day one of the project
when AusAID announced that
our team has been awarded
ADRAS grants on women and
mining in Laos and Thailand,
We have been enthusiastic
about the idea of this project
and have been working with
partners from Lao PDR, Thailand and Australia. I sincerely
thank our academic partners:
the National University of
Laos, Burnet Institute,
Thammasat University, Rajabhat Petchaburi University,
the University of Melbourne,
and RMIT University.
We also need to thank our
industrial partners: MMG
LXML Sepon in Lao PDR and
Akara Mining in Thailand for
their support for the project.
The key aim of our project is to
understand the concept of equitable employment for women
in the international mining
industry, particularly in Lao
PDR and Thailand. This issue
is important for all stakeholders in international mining
industry. We really hope that
the process and outcomes of
this research project will
influence policies and practices
in the international mining
industry. More importantly,
our team will aim to produce
policy briefs and academic
work that will be useful for the
Governments of Lao PDR and
Thailand.
Finally, I would like to thank
the Australian Government
(Australian AID) for your financial support for this project.
Associate Professor Natt Pimpa
Principal Investigator
Project Snapshots...do you know?
The research has been funded
by AusAID through the
AusAID Development
Research Awards Scheme
(ADRAS) under an award
titles Equitable Employment
for Women in Mining Companies in Laos and Thailand .
In May 2013, ADRAS awardees from 19 Australian
universities and research institutions, along with
researchers from Samoa, South Africa, Malawi, Thailand, India, the UK and USA were met in Canberra
at the ADRAS Communications and Engagement
Workshop. The workshop will help to improve the
uptake and use of research evidence by connecting
researchers with Australian Aid policy makers and
identifying the tools to communicate research findings effectively. Our team also participated in this
workshop and showcased the project to the international participants.

2. Capacity Building Workshop: 25-26 November 2013
Our team met in Bangkok on
25-26 November 2013. The
capacity building workshop was
one of the milestones of this
project since we involved all
key partners from Lao PDR,
Thailand and Australia in the
workshop.
Jen Tyrell and Watinee
Karnwong from the Australia
Education International (AEI)
also attended the first day of
our workshop and discussed
ideas on research and academic
promotions among academic
institutions and industrial partners in our region.
We discussed details of the
project as well as the nature of
Australian Aid and ADRAS
project.
The common understanding
among all partners is practical
research helps to inform where
and how our own and our partners’ resources can most effectively and efficiently be deployed. A robust and relevant
knowledge base provides the
evidence we need for sound
development policies and programs. We believe that our
project will lead to practical
and academic outcomes that
influence life and knowledge of
people who are interested in
international mining and gender equity.
We also discussed research
methodology, process and data
collection, research plans and
actions for 2014. The workshop was a great success for us.
We look forward to seeing all
partners again when we start
the data collection process in
each country.
Project Communication
We have designed several
ways to support our communication in this project.
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Twitter: We use twitter as a communication channel among our
team , industrial partners and the
Blog: We will include all
mining community globally. Twitnews and activities from the
ter is a way to keep our followers
project to the blog. The blog
up to date with current information
can be accessed at: themiabout your business. Importantly, it
dasresearchproject.blogspot.c
lets followers communicate with
om
you too. You can follow our twitter : @miningforwomen.
Website: We are in the process of
the development of website. I certainly will update contents and design of the website. You can aacess
the website at kttp;//seabiz.asia

3. VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1
ADRAS Communications and Engagement Workshop
More than 50 leading development researchers from around
Australia and the world arrived in Canberra in May to
kick off projects that range
from boosting women’s rights
in post-authoritarian regimes
such as Egypt and Libya to
studying the effects of Mongolia’s mining boom on herder
livelihoods.
The meeting marks the start of
the latest round of the AusAID
Development Research
Awards Scheme (ADRAS).
The scheme is AusAID’s flagship competitive research program, funding primary research projects to improve the
quality and effectiveness of
Australian aid in developing
countries. The 2012 round
awarded 50 grants to 31 Australian and international institutions totaling $32.9 million.
AusAID and various other
institutions from Australia and
overseas. The communication
strategy has been drafted and
will be shared in our project
website.
Natt represented our team to
participate in this workshop
and discussed key strategies
for communications and engagement with delegates from
Presentation at the 2013 ICSSS Conference
In July 2013, Rajabhat Mahasarakham University hosted the
3rd International Conference
on Sciences and Social Sciences
(ICSSS). The focus of the conference was development in
Mekong region. Thus, there
were a number of researchers from countries such as
Thailand, Lao PDR, China,
and Vietnam participating at
the conference.
We submitted two papers,
base on our literature review
and document analysis. The
papers were accepted and presented to the participants at
the conference.
International Mining and Development: Lessons Learnt from Mekong is the first paper we presented at the conference. The
focus of this paper is on the
current actions of mining
companies and their corporate
social responsibility.
The second paper from our project entitles corporate social responsibilities in Vietnam and Lao PDR:
What has been done? The paper
was well accepted by the research
community and generated conversations on
this issue
among the
participants.
Finally…..
Another Day, Another Month, Another Year.
Another Smile, Another Tear, Another Winter,
A Summer Too.
May Lovely, Happy Times
Decorate This Time Of The Season.
May Warm, Special Memories Brighten Your New Year.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!
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