TerraViva – In early May, IPS Asia-Pacific carried out a TerraViva edition for the ILO Theme Seminars on the Informal Economy: Street Vending and Labour Protection in Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

Part of the ILO informal economy project of IPS Asia-Pacific, this edition involved TerraViva’s Alejandro Kirk, as well as writers and contributors from Thailand, Malaysia, India and Mongolia. Regional Director Johanna Son was editor, and IPS Asia-Pacific’s intern from Singapore, Lin Zixin, also wrote for the newspaper. Web support was given by Marcelo Boedo and layout by Winnie
Dobbs.

The 20-page TerraViva edition was welcomed quite well by the participants and the ILO project, which passed on positive responses to IPS Asia-Pacific regional director. For them, ILO officials said, it was a new way of documenting a conference, not through staid paperwork but through news reporting. The full-colour newspaper also had a pullout poster.

This is the third TerraViva that IPS Asia-Pacific has been involved in since December 2005.

In the same month, IPS Asia-Pacific also oversaw the printing/publication of the first ILO informal-economy series of papers on the informal economy in Mongolia.