LEARNING COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROCESS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION: A CASE STUDY OF TALAY BUA DAEANG, NONG HAN, KUMPHAWAPI, UDON THANI PROVINCE

Abstract

This research is community action research (CAR) aimed to study the community’s potential development process for environmental conservation: a case study of TALAY BUA DAEANG, Nong Han, Kumphawapi, Udon Thani Province. The research framework includes community potential, community engagement and participatory analysis of the community, as well as environmental impact on the community. Data were collected for the period of one year by observations, community’s operation records, and interviews with participated community members. The findings are summarized as follows: 1. On community context for learning community development for environmental conservation, it was found that the community had good kinship-like relationship with one another, always helped each other, and had good cultural traditions. They employed local wisdom of villagers, had talented leaders, and good social mechanism to solve problems when there were ones. The community had all aspects of community capitals, namely, physical, economic, social, and cultural. Environment and management affected the capacity development of the community and occupational groups resulting to participation in indicating problems and studying for appropriate solutions as well as leading to action plan creation and appropriate solutions of problems accordingly. 2. For environmental impacts on the quality of life and community changes around the TALAY BUA DAEANG, Nong Han Kumphawapi, Udon Thani province, it was found that the average score on the item of TALAY BUA DAEANG made the community most livable  at a high level or the mean score of 3.88.  The mean score on housing was at a high level, with the highest satisfaction in terms of housing size compared to most household members or the mean score of 4.09. For the environment aspects, the mean score was at the moderate level with the item on TALAY BUA DAEANG’s effect on village’ cleanliness had the mean score of 3.57. The average score on occupational health aspects was at a high level, with the respondents agreed that TALAY BUA DAEANG made them live happier or the mean score of 3.80. For the quality-of-life aspects, it was found that there was a high level of satisfaction. The most satisfaction was with the overall social environment in the community with the mean score 4.09. 3. The development of a learning community for environmental conservation was implemented through the following three steps: 1) setting common goals together by organizing a meeting of villagers to create unified understanding, vision, and goals. It was found that the most crucial problem resulted from low incomes expensive and not enough to cover expenses, followed by the cost of agriculture is expensive. The goal of the community was that the community wanted to live well and live moral lives; 2) constructing infrastructure/basic mechanism for the development of the learning community. It was found that the strength of the community was having good leaders, as well as selflessness, compassion, virtue, and unity among the group, followed by that there were groups of organizations formed both ad hoc and with a clear function. The weakness of the community is that adults being bad models for children on drinking, followed by teen motorist’s noisy driving; 3) The project will come together to build an action plan for the creation of learning communities for environmental preservation by establishing a manual on the wisdom of catching fish and a teacher mentor learning community wisdom.