VWB works with communities and local partners across Southeast Asia to strengthen animal health, livelihoods, and resilience through community-led One Health programs.
What We're Working On
Across Southeast Asia, the health of animals, local communities, and the environment are closely linked. By working with on-the-ground partners in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, we are helping to emphasize the importance of a One Health approach, recognizing the interconnection of human, animal, and environmental health.
Just as we do in Sub-Saharan Africa, VWB is dedicated to addressing the unique challenges faced in Southeast Asia through our extensive Volunteers Engaged in Gender-Responsive Technical Solutions (VETS) program. In Asia, our VETS program deploys Canadian volunteers to countries like Laos and Cambodia. The primary goal of the VETS program is to uplift the economic and social well-being of marginalized individuals, with a specific focus on empowering women and girls in these Southeast Asian nations.
Through VETS, VWB is committed to implementing interventions that strengthen agricultural resilience, reduce vulnerabilities, and enhance the capacity of local communities to cope with challenges at the national level in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam to promote agricultural best practices and their positive impacts on the environment, to build capacity of our local partner organizations, to enhance income generation activities, and to develop curriculums that train students in animal, human and environmental health programs.
Similarly, our Agriculture-based Growth and Resilience Opportunities for Women (AGROW) program enhanced the resilience of women and girls through animal, human, and environmental health (One Health) in three districts of Cambodia’s Battambang province (i.e., Rattankakmondul, Banan, and Ek Phnom Districts). AGROW employed innovative approaches to environmentally sustainable food production and farm diversification with a focus on cricket, chicken, and cattle farming as well as fodder crop management and vegetable production.
See below to learn more about each of our current projects in Asia.
To improve environmentally sustainable / green agriculture and nutrition of women and women-led groups. To strengthen the economic security from environmentally sustainable / green agriculture and livestock-based production of women and girls.
Global Affairs Canada
To work to improve the economic and social well-being of the world’s most marginalized people, particularly women and girls, in six countries across Africa and Asia (i.e., Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam).
Global Affairs Canada
#VETSVolunteerVoices brings you stories of our passionate VETS program volunteers from the field. Meet Donald Hilborn, an Agricultural Advisor from Ontario who recently completed his third VETS placement in Kenya (March–April 2026) with our local partner, Meru Dairy, supporting small-scale dairy farmers in building more sustainable and resilient feeding systems.
In recognition of International Day for Biological Diversity 2026, VWB reflects on how healthy rangelands, community-led animal health systems, and pastoralist knowledge help sustain resilience across working landscapes worldwide.
Based on field insights from Senegal, this blog examines how VWB’s COHERS program is helping drive early gender-transformative change at the household level — reshaping who decides, who acts, and how families respond to risks affecting both human and animal health.
