Life Development Center (LDC)

About us

The Life Development Center (LDC) was established in March 1994 by Mr. Manop Yangja and Mr. James Fish as a charity/non-profit organization in order to help vulnerable tribal laborers who were working in Chiang Mai city and the surrounding areas.

LDC Vision
Seeing vulnerable tribal people/underprivileged people having good living conditions, access to development opportunities, human rights, being spiritually saved and becoming economically self-sufficient in environmentally sustainable ways

LDC Mission
Developing vulnerable tribal people’s living conditions and environment conditions by enhancing villagers’ knowledge, competency, life skills, social accountability and providing/creating alternative sustainable development opportunities for the villagers

LDC Aim
To help establish 2-3 community sustainable development project models and learning centers in tribal communities

LDC Objectives
• To promotes community sustainable development projects and human rights
• To provide technical and financial support to local communities.
• To provide and enable supportive communication for development and empowerment
• To help improve vulnerable tribal people’s living conditions

LDC aims to be a reliable organization working to ensure that vulnerable tribal people have good living conditions. We promote community health care, self-reliance and solidarity through a holistic development approach. We believe we cannot focus on improving human life while ignoring nature’s needs, and strive to harmoniously integrate community development and natural resource conservation. We work closely with communities to establish income-generating projects that will both increase tribal people’s success and preserve the environment.

What we do
• Organic Farm: The LDC has created a demonstration farm to show the positive effects of organic farming. Many pesticides and fertilizers are causing health and environment problems throughout Thailand and many other countries around the world.
• Agrotourism and voluntourism programs: Through the organic farm, the LDC is able to support ecotourism, agrotourism and voluntourism programs.
• Women’s development and empowerment projects: We have established five women’s groups in Northern Thailand in order to promote and encourage women’s rights and empowerment. Women’s groups provide a platform for the women to help their community, improving the hill tribe women’s competency, responsibility, social accountability, and role in society. Women’s groups are actively engaged in different development activities for example doing handicrafts, organic farming, and involving in different social and environment problems solution programs with many other organizations and local officers.
• Volunteer and voluntourism programs

Projects:
The projects we are focusing now is developing our organic farm to be
• Community services learning and development center
• training, workshop and resources center
• environmentalists and philanthropists center
• volunteers base
• organic farmstay
• sustainable development study field
• etc.
We welcome volunteers from around the world, visitors, students and villagers who interested.

Manop Yangja is a Co-Founder of Life Development Center (LDC).

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.