The GECKO project aims to develop student capabilities and improve student employability through the exchange of good practices and the development of regional cooperation in higher education in three ASEAN countries (the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand). The project specifically targets engineering students, aiming to provide them with the necessary management and linguistic skills to become attractive to both local and international employers. The project will support two major academic activities, in order to better adapt the current curriculum to the local labour market, thus promoting regional integration.The 1st activity includes the development and implementation of a multidisciplinary curriculum by international academic teams in order to enrich teaching and learning in the classroom and at home. This new curriculum will be supported by innovative teaching materials and modern teaching technologies such as online tools, MOOC, SPOC and e-learning. The 2nd activity focuses on improving regional cooperation to promote open-minded, critical, and innovative thinking in international teams. This will result in turn in the development of curriculum that encapsulates both global and regional aspects. Master students will participate in these joint initiatives that will be enhanced by ICT-based tools, to acquire the skills needed to be effective global citizens.In terms of multi-skills and innovative digital tools, teacher training is also one of GECKO’s central components and will be implemented through a theoretical and practical approach (E-learning session, exchange of experience, staff weeks, etc.). The project therefore facilitates the transfer, of knowledge and understanding of the multi-skills, leading in turn to a better employability for engineering students in Asia. This knowledge can be applied and developed, from the end of the project onwards, on all of the courses at the partner universities, and in the long term throughout ASEAN universities.

In the UK cholangiocarcinoma - known as CCA, or bile duct cancer - is classified as a rare cancer, affecting only around 2000 or so people each year. In parts of mainland Southeast Asia, however, and especially in Northeast Thailand (Isan) and Lao PDR, it is among the most common cancers to be diagnosed. Doctors treating the disease at Khon Kaen hospital in Isan witness a regional burden in excess of 20,000 cases per year, while estimates of those suffering from the disease in Lao PDR are even higher. The prevalence of CCA in mainland Southeast Asia is predominantly caused by widespread infection with liver fluke that results from the deeply culturally embedded practice across this relatively impoverished region of consuming raw and partially cooked freshwater (cyprinid) fish as a ready source of cheap and sustainable protein. To date public health campaigns in Thailand have been largely characterised by a top-down approach, in keeping with a more widespread, hierarchical social structure that tends to place rural citizens as socially inferior. This is reflected in interpersonal relations where open self-expression and agency among grassroots communities in formal contexts, such as engagement with local authorities, education and health officials has tended to be impeded. Furthermore, the relationship that pertains between the Thai state, centred in Bangkok, and the peripheral, rural hinterland of Isan and neighbouring Laos is one of inequality, with the former deeming the latter to be culturally and civilisationally inferior. As a result, for over the past 50 years public health campaigns against the consumption of raw and fermented fish have had limited effect. This proposal therefore aims to explore innovative and effective ways in which the voices of those deemed at risk of developing CCA can be expressed and listened to and carefully heard on their own terms. Its intended outcome is to find meaningful ways in which local communities in Isan and Lao PDR can contribute to and direct their own public health interventions in ways that are most meaningful to their everyday realities and health priorities. We therefore propose to engage with those at risk of CCA in innovative and creative ways to develop broader, contextual understandings of health in relation to a range of related issues driven by the communities in the affected areas. Through a series of community-focussed workshops led by local filmmakers, artists, writers and poets and mediated by local NGOs and academics, this project invites grassroots expression of important daily concerns on the following themes: perceptions and interpretations of well being; life priorities and approaches to risk; diet and nutrition; definitions and significance of cultural and regional identity; and experience and understandings of the physical body in relation to both mundane and spiritual practice. The resulting artworks produced in the workshops - short films, drawings, paintings and pieces of creative writing and reportage - will form the basis of an exhibition that will tour the schools and hospitals of the region as well as having a more interactive presence on social media (Facebook and Line). Taken together, the workshops and exhibition aim to trigger a wider appreciation of bottom-up perspectives on the specific healthcare issues facing the region as well as the more general context of health and wellbeing in which those issues appear. The potential benefits will be in feeding this important, yet formerly little heard and acknowledged grassroots voice, into more effective public health campaigning and policy making in Thailand and Lao PDR with reference to CCA and other healthcare concerns (such as diet related diabetes, hypertension and heart disease).