KIPE Director Jack Kasarda at the destroyed
village where KIAsia will build a fishing boat repair center

Two days after attending a gala cocktail reception in Bangkok to celebrate Kenan Institute Asia’s 10th anniversary, delegates from the Kenan Institute picked their way through the post-tsunami rubble to learn how KIAsia planned to start its second decade.

KIAsia recently opened an office in Phang-nga and has run training projects in entrepreneurship in the area hard hit by the tsunami. The Kenan Institute contingent – including Noel Greis, director of UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Center for Logistics and Digital Strategy, and Jack Kasarda, director of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise (KIPE) – listened as students presented their business plans for economic recovery.

"Villages have recovered as far as new homes being built, but people still don’t have the livelihood they had before," Greis said. "KIAsia has been helping them develop skills to build business."

The Bush-Clinton Tsunami Relief Fund recently contributed $200,000 toward the Kenan Institute Fishing Boat Repair Center, a facility (and pier and access road) that will offer a protected site for fishermen to repair their long-tailed wooden boats, nets and other equipment used in open-boat fishing. KIAsia plans to complete the project by the end of 2006.

KIAsia has also set up a savings group for micro-loans to help villagers re-establish their livelihoods, advised local hotel owners interested in sustainable tourism, and conducted workshops with education leaders to show how the education system can help sustain tourism.

KIAsia was founded in February 1996 after the partnership of KIPE, Chulalongkom University and the Booker Group won a USAID competitive bid to set up the U.S.-Thailand Development Project. Today, its focus is building mutually beneficial partnerships with corporations, NGOs, academic institutions and government agencies in Asia and the United States. Paul Wedel, KIAsia’s director, said KIAsia and its staff of 70 look forward to working with Thailand’s neighboring countries in the coming decade.

"With strong support from corporate donors, U.S. and Thai governments and partners at UNC," he said, "we are confident we can make a positive impact on sustainable development in the region."

For more information about KIAsia visit www.kiasia.org.