Community Organizing 2:
INDIGENOUS and MARGINALIZED COMMUNITY:
Chiangmai Learning Journey

Prayong Doklumyai has spent the past 20 years working in grassroots community development in northern Thailand on a range of issues faced by rural farmers. He has worked with ethnic minorities, threatened by the lack of citizenship and forced relocation and campaigned with rural communities impacted by adverse government projects, including dams, mines, and power plants. Prior to his work on the community land title, Prayong co-founded the Northern Farmers Association to represent the interests of small-scale farmers and ethnic minorities in land use conflicts. He assembled the first nationwide coalition of farmers with land tenure insecurity. Formerly divided by ethnic or economic factors, these farmers are together proving to policymakers that land redistribution is not only necessary, but also viable, in the form of communal land ownership or “community land title.” As a highly regarded grassroots policy advocate, Prayong was elected as Secretary General of the Northern NGO Coordinating Committee for Development in 2004.

Chatchawan Thongdeelert is a well-known social activist in Thailand, Chatchawan Thongdeelerd is uniting professionals from various sectors to design and implement solutions to pressing social problems. He has worked in the civic movement for the past twenty-five years and has founded prominent civil society organizations, including the Northern Social Development Workers' Network and NGO-COD, a national coordinating body of regional civil society networks. He has gained widespread recognition for his work, including an Ashoka Citizen Base Initiative award for enlisting support from artists and writers for the Community Loves the Forest group. Chatchawan is a prolific writer and speaker in Chiang Mai, where he lives, and across the country.