From One Question to a Life of Impact
The Journey of Chanphone: A Youth Advocate with UNICEF Laos
Hi, Nyob zoo, Sabaidee,
My name is Chanphone XONGCHAIYUA. Many young people around me jokingly call me “the Ambassador of UNICEF Laos.” Honestly, every time I hear that, I still feel shy. But at the same time, it reminds me how far my journey has come.
Currently, I serve as a UN Volunteer (UNV), working part-time with UNICEF Laos. But my journey did not begin inside a UN office. It began with one simple question:
How can I create change in my community?
When I was 12 years old, I started volunteering without asking many questions; I just wanted to help. But when I turned 14, my home province faced severe landslides and floods. Many families lost their homes, and children could not go to school for days. Seeing this devastation firsthand changed the way I thought. I realized we could not just wait for problems to solve themselves. Young people also need to act.
At that time, I joined the Xamnuea Young Volunteer Group. Together, we cleaned up public spaces across the city including Suansatha Park, Ongtue Temple, the Xamnuea Viewpoint, and the Nam Xam River. We believe that by doing this, we could set a positive example and encourage people to care more about the environment.
Of course, not everything went the way we hoped. Some people told us that cleaning was just our duty anyway. Others whispered that we only volunteered to make ourselves look good. As young volunteers, hearing those words hurt. But we still strongly believed that what we were doing was right.
Instead of giving up, we decided to adapt and improve. We shifted from just cleaning public spaces to organizing environmental awareness activities inside schools, targeting students at Phanxam, Phanla, Model, and Keopanya high schools in the Xamnuea district. This helped the community understand why our work mattered, and it inspired even more young people to join us as volunteers.
Still, I felt a pulling hunger to do more. I wanted our voices to reach even further.
Becoming a Youth Advocate
Then, in 2023, I was given a life-changing opportunity: becoming a Youth Advocate for UNICEF Laos. This experience inspired me deeply. It showed me that young people’s voices truly matter, especially when we have supportive adults standing ready to help us drive change in our communities.
As a Youth Advocate, I led workshops and interactive games to raise awareness about environment and climate change across Houaphanh, Xiengkhouang, and Vientiane. We focused on the basics: reducing waste, how planting trees is important…
Recently, I even received funding from UNICEF Laos under the Youth Champion Project to run a training workshop in Houaphanh. I partnered with a friend who studies Environmental Science to teach children the basic knowledge of environmental and climate change.
During my earlier activities, I hadn't thought much about the gender balance among participants, though I occasionally caught myself thinking, "It would be great if we had more girls, or more Hmong girls, participating." But during this recent project in Houaphanh, the reality hit me. Out of 45 participants, only 13 were girls just 28 percent. The vast majority were boys. This made me stop and ask myself: Why aren't the girls joining?
Driven by that question, I began to look deeper into the root causes. That curiosity led me face-to-face with the reality of child, early, and forced marriage. I realized that early marriage is a massive, quiet barrier keeping children especially young girls out of these spaces. It forces them to drop out of school and stay at home, stripping away their education, their confidence, and their future opportunities.
The Road Ahead
Seeing how these problems were connected changed everything for me. This journey finally led me to become a UN Volunteer, where I keep supporting youth work alongside the Youth Advocate Guide (YAG). In this role, I get to put my passion into action. I was able to bring my own ideas to help create a lesson about child marriage for Project Sinxay. On top of that, I am actively working on youth projects that started after a big regional conference in the Philippines, where UNICEF Laos supported me to go, learn, and share ideas on how to stop violence against children.
Looking back, I realize that my journey started from very small actions cleaning public park, speaking in schools, and helping my community. I am still learning, still growing, and still trying to improve myself every day. But one thing I strongly believe is that young people are not too small to create change.
Sometimes, change begins with only one voice, one action, and one person who decides not to stay silent.
