he Mekong is the world's 13th-longest river, passing through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia on its path from Tibet to Vietnam. Though violent rapids and waterfalls make navigation difficult, the great river's resources play a central role in the lives of myriad communities along its length.

In February and March of 2006, documentary photographer/filmmaker David Eberhardt traveled by boat along the Mekong River and some of its major tributaries. Throughout his journey, David visited a number of McKnight Foundation-supported programs in Laos and Cambodia. David — a former McKnight Artist Fellow in documentary filmmaking — chronicled his trip in hundreds of photographs, including those presented on this page.

Click each photograph to see a larger version.

McKnight's grantmaking in Southeast Asia

Most of The McKnight Foundation's funds are devoted to efforts within the United States, primarily in the state of Minnesota. Annually, about 2% of the Foundation's grants go toward work outside the U.S.

n Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, the Foundation supports community development and economic empowerment. In this work, McKnight aims to strengthen local institutions and community-driven initiatives to sustain and improve the lives of the region's most vulnerable people. The Foundation seeks to increase the capacity of isolated communities and families to achieve self-sufficiency and improve their quality of life.

In these three countries, grants support organized efforts to foster economic and human development, land mine victim services, health, and education. Throughout the program, emphasis is placed on building the capacity of indigenous organizations to address local issues. Each year, the Foundation grants over $1.5 million to such projects.

Among its strategies, the program directs resources to aid indigenous ethnic minorities and other exceptionally vulnerable populations. Funding is also aimed to protect and improve local management of existing natural resources, as resources to assist vulnerable communities. For land mine victims and their families, economic program support toward self-sufficiency is also provided. The program regularly considers emerging or innovative initiatives with great potential, as well as occasional advocacy projects directly rooted in the challenges, opportunities, and threats facing the region's marginalized people.

At the heart of the Foundation's grantmaking in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam is working with local partners to pursue long-term, significant improvements in community development and economic empowerment.

Preserving resources

ural communities of both Laos and Cambodia depend on natural resources like rivers and forests for their livelihoods. The area's inland fisheries rank among the most productive in the world. Fish provide the main protein source for most of the region's children and families. As important as they are, these resources face constant threats brought about by population growth and poor management practices. Non-local economic interests such as mining, commercial logging, and hydropower dams also play significant roles in the health of these important resources.

Early in his travels along the Mekong, David Eberhardt spent one week as a guest of the Culture and Environment Preservation Association. CEPA is a local non-governmental organization (NGO) working with communities in northern Cambodia to protect and effectively manage community fisheries and forests. CEPA is a leader in a growing network of local groups committed to maintaining natural resources to benefit local people. Since 2003, CEPA has received a total of $165,000 from McKnight, for fishery and forestry management programs.

The Sekong River is a major tributary that connects with the Mekong River in the Stung Treng province of southern Laos. Traveling with CEPA staff, David made a long trip up the Sekong to visit fishing villages. In each village, a CEPA organizer met with village elders to facilitate the election of local resource management representatives. Following elections, the selected representatives began a process of tracking and documenting each village's fishing practices and catch rates.

Throughout the region, a strong sense of community abounds. Among young and old, and women and men, all work together and play together; all share the river as an element central to their lives.

ambodia's Tonlé Sap, meaning Great Lake, is southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake. During the annual rainy season, the Mekong's strong flow swells the lake. Water expands into nearby fields and forests as the lake's size increases many times over, creating an incredibly productive breeding ground for fisheries.

Dependent on the Tonlé Sap for rice growing and fishing, permanent lake settlements of hundreds of homes and businesses have sprung up in many locations. These floating villages have created population pressures and numerous environmental challenges.

Earth Island Institute collaborates at the Tonlé Sap with a local NGO, Development of Appropriate Technology, on environmental practices to preserve the lake's resources. First and foremost, the groups encourage innovative methods to conserve the flooded forests that provide the valuable fish-spawning habitat. In 2004, McKnight's board approved funds of $50,000 over two years to support Earth Island's work on the "Great Lake."

Also active in the region, Oxfam America works with the Fisheries Action Coalition Team to assist the Tonlé Sap's local communities to develop better fishery management practices and to advocate adoption of more appropriate national-level fishery policies. Since 2000, McKnight has granted $375,000 to Oxfam America for its work along the Mekong River.

Economic and cultural discrimination

p and down the Mekong, indigenous ethnic communities face economic and cultural discrimination. Increasingly, these ongoing inequities threaten to undermine opportunities for productive livelihoods of those affected.

The Khmer people are Cambodia's predominant ethnic group, to which about 90% of the nation's population belongs. The Brao count themselves among the several non-Khmer highland tribes who make up the remainder of Cambodia's populace.

In northeastern Cambodia, David visited one ethnic Brao community on the Sekong River that is just beginning to confront emerging resource issue challenges. In the Luang Prabang province of northern Laos, David traveled along the Ou River, another major Mekong tributary. There, he came into contact with communities heavily populated by ethnic Khmu and Hmong communities.

For these groups, the successful preservation of life-sustaining natural resources is further complicated by isolation, estrangement, and discrimination from the country's majority population.

Community Learning International works to educate girls and young women, to prepare and empower them to face their communities' rapid societal changes. Behind one village's CLI school stands an encampment of bamboo huts. The huts provide rudimentary housing — built by the students themselves — for many who travel from villages as far as 30 miles away in pursuit of education. In addition to its direct work with the community education centers, CLI is also working on plans to build better student dormitories. To support CLI's community education work in Laos, McKnight's board has approved $230,000 in funding since 2004.

Legacies of war

Deadly reminders of the region's violent wars, land mines and other unexploded ordnance continue to affect people and communities in the region.

McKnight supports a number of efforts in Cambodia and Laos to assist land mine survivors toward economic self-sufficiency. In Phnom Penh, David visited the workshop of the Cambodia Trust, an agency engaged in physical rehabilitation and economic development efforts to support mine victims and their families. Cambodia Trust has received $195,000 from McKnight since 2002 for its work.

Photographer David Eberhardt

avid Eberhardt is a documentary filmmaker and photographer. In 2005, David received a McKnight Artist Fellowship in Filmmaking and a Bush Artist Fellowship; in 2006, he received a Jerome Foundation film and video grant. His feature-length documentary film, Long Gone (2003), earned top documentary honors at the Slamdance, Minneapolis/St. Paul International, Savannah, and River Run film festivals; as well as the Kodak Vision Award for Best Cinematography, a HBO Producer's Award, and the Audience Award at Italy's Infinity Film Festival.

David is currently in postproduction on the documentary Boat Punks, which follows young travelers who have found a life of freedom and adventure navigating the Mississippi and Ohio rivers on homemade boats. David returned to Cambodia in October 2006 to work on his third feature, Korsang, relating stories from a Phnom Penh-based NGO that serves Cambodians at serious risk of HIV and other hazards through injection drug and methamphetamine use. David can be contacted via email at java1shot@hotmail.com.

The McKnight Artist Fellowships

Support for individual artists like David Eberhardt has been a cornerstone of McKnight's arts program since it began in 1981. Funding through a McKnight Artist Fellowship can help an artist set aside time for reflection and exploration, take advantage of an opportunity, or work on a new project. The Foundation contributes about $1.7 million per year to the statewide fellowships. Administration of the fellowships is delegated to field-appropriate arts organizations around Minnesota. In partnership with McKnight, these organizations structure each fellowship program to respond to the unique challenges of different creative disciplines.

Related links

McKnight's grantmaking in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam
McKnight Artist Fellowships

Cambodia Trust
Community Learning International
Culture and Environment Preservation Association
Earth Island Institute
Oxfam America

Wikipedia: Laos
Wikipedia: Cambodia