Ahead of ACLC 2026, we speak with Fa Likitswat, a landscape architect and academic at Thammasat University’s Faculty of Architecture and Planning.
What does it take to build stronger co-operatives for the future? At the Annual Co-operative Leaders’ Conference (ACLC) 2026, co-operative leaders and practitioners will come together to exchange ideas on growing their people, strengthening their organisations and creating greater impact.
Taking place in Bangkok, Thailand, ACLC 2026 brings together perspectives from Singapore and the region, with speakers sharing practical insights, experiences and lessons that co-operative leaders can bring back to their own organisations.
Ahead of the conference, we caught up with Asst Professor Fa Likitswat, a landscape architect and academic at Thammasat University’s Faculty of Architecture and Planning, to find out more about her perspective, what co-operative leaders can learn from the session, and what she hopes participants will take away from ACLC 2026.
From your experience, why is engaging youths in community development particularly important to the co-operative model?
Bridging university classrooms and local schools creates a dynamic ecosystem for the co-operative model. Academics bring research methodologies, university students provide technical co-design capabilities, and local school youth contribute grounded, lived experiences. In a co-operative context, this multi-stakeholder collaboration transforms theoretical community empowerment into active, place-based design, and long-term stewardship programs.
What have you learnt from your own experience of letting youths take the lead in community-centred projects?
Engaging youth creates a continuous cycle of community-centered development. University classes start by holding in-class consultancies with community members to understand real local needs with environmental challenges. Students then propose alternative design solutions—ensuring that their proposal responds well with the real-world problem. Then the final design could be practical enough to be built directly by the community. Once implemented, local school kids use the community space as an outdoor classroom and learning center, taking long-term ownership to carry the project forward.
What is one idea or perspective about youth empowerment that you hope co-operative leaders will challenge or rethink?
While co-operative leaders support a clear vision for integrating youth programs into community life, academic collaborators must shift their mindset, moving beyond treating youth involvement as simple educational field trips or volunteer labour for adult-designed green projects. Real-world complexity requires academics and institutional partners to support genuine youth empowerment by navigating real constraints around environmental challenge and intervention design, project ownership, and shared local resource management. We are deeply grateful to the Lien Foundation and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) for their generous support in making this complex, multi-stakeholder framework possible on the ground.
At ACLC 2026, what is one idea or action that you hope participants will take away from your session, and apply when they return to their own co-operatives?
The Pathum Thani Housing Co-operative Agrihood Project centers on a co-design and co-development framework. We hope this actionable blueprint demonstrates how co-operatives can partner with local universities, schools, and community members to transform underutilized spaces into functional, resilient assets for the environment.
Catch Asst Professor Fa Likitswat in her guest sharing at ACLC 2026.
By Sng Ler Jun
