The Potential of Vegetables for a Poor Family

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Mrs. Ngers Chreb is a woman liv­ing in Andong Kraleng vil­lage who used to be work­less when the rice/cassava farm­ing sea­son was over, she has 2 chil­dren and an old hus­band, so she has the respons­ib­il­ity of sup­port­ing her fam­ily. As a res­ult, her fam­ily had only a min­imum income before start­ing to be involved with CRDT’s pro­ject in 2012. But since Novem­ber 2012, she has been a mem­ber of the Bonle Beitong Group at Andong Kraleng village.

Nowadays, she always receives advises from the groups’ chief and the pro­ject team on how to be a strong veget­able grower. Her fam­ily now man­ages to have enough veget­ables for their own con­sump­tion and they have been mak­ing more money by selling the sur­plus of veget­ables to their neigh­bors or in the next vil­lages. Cur­rently, she can pro­duce 1.5 to 2 kg a day of veget­ables for her fam­ily con­sump­tion and earn around $40 to $50 a month. Since she has been work­ing with the pro­ject, she was able to pro­duce 270kg of veget­ables and earned around $240. She said that “I never knew that veget­ables could help a poor fam­ily like mine so eas­ily. In fact, I don’t need much cap­ital to do this but I receive high bene­fits from it for my fam­ily and our daily meals. I will con­tinue with the pro­ject and com­mit to fol­low all advises giv­ing by the teach­ers (pro­ject team) and my chief”.

Also, the field staffs always visit her house­hold with the groups’ chief to make sure all bene­fi­ciar­ies are prac­ti­cing the right tech­nique and to check that there are no pests des­troy­ing their plant­a­tion. The field staffs also coach all groups’ chiefs for them to be able to fol­low up with their members.

By Meas Viphou, Pro­ject Man­ager in Mondulkiri

Internal Study-Tour

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CRDT has a lot of tools and strategies to improve the com­munit­ies’ capa­cit­ies to reach sus­tain­able live­li­hoods as well as to have busi­nesses with activ­it­ies like school train­ing, com­munity train­ing and out­side study-tour. How­ever, one of CRDT pro­jects in Ram­sar Site, Stung Treng province all already com­pleted all these activ­it­ies and still some com­munit­ies didn’t reach all expect­a­tions whereas some oth­ers were very suc­cess­ful with their live­li­hood and busi­ness activ­it­ies in cooper­a­tion with CRDT. In learn­ing from that, CRDT decided on 6th–7th April 2013, to con­duct one internal study-tour that took 17 per­sons includ­ing 8 women from 6 CBOs out of 19 CBOs that still lack capa­cit­ies to visit and learn from some suc­cess­ful pro­jects from another CBO in Ram­sar site.

The internal study-tour brought the par­ti­cipants to 2 CBOs in Koh Sneng to see the suc­cess­ful sav­ing activ­it­ies and pig rais­ing, one CBO in Kham Phann vil­lage (Khe) to learn more about veget­able grow­ing and high yields and also how to sell these products at the mar­ket and one CBO in Koh Phnov vil­lage taught them about sav­ing activ­it­ies and how to suc­cess­fully raise chick­ens with a pen, chicken house, and how to eas­ily find nat­ural chicken food in the area like earth worms.

Finally, all par­ti­cipants enjoyed this trip and felt like they learnt a lot and improved their capa­cit­ies with all the exper­i­ence that the com­munit­ies shared with them. The par­ti­cipants also com­mit­ted to keep using these tech­niques at home and help other mem­bers from their com­munit­ies.  Thus, CRDT has wit­nessed that these internal study tour are a good tool that allow com­munit­ies to meet other com­munit­ies, share their suc­cesses, fail­ure and doubts and receive help from one another.

By Ngeth Sen­glay, Pro­ject Man­ager in Stung Treng

Volunteering offer at CRDT

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Cam­bod­ian Rural Devel­op­ment Team (CRDT), NGO spe­cial­ized in rural devel­op­ment and con­ser­va­tion and based in Kratie, Cam­bodia, is look­ing for a volun­teer to assist the dir­ector as an Organ­iz­a­tional Devel­op­ment Advisor. The volun­teer will bring his sup­port and expert­ise in the fields of organ­iz­a­tional devel­op­ment, the NGO strategy and in human resources. The volun­teer should be qual­i­fied, incum­bent of a degree in man­age­ment, human resources or a related field and hav­ing already had a pro­fes­sional exper­i­ence in that field. CRDT will provide for an accom­mod­a­tion as well as a local sub­sist­ence allow­ance. Any inter­ested per­son should send his/her resume to Coline Ganz at coline.ganz@crdt.org.kh

Please find our ad and other volun­teer­ing offers on Envir­on­ment Job

Pond Site Selection at GARTIE village

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CRDT has com­pleted the con­struc­tion of a com­munity pond at Andong Kraleng vil­lage and it is now man­aged by a pond man­age­ment com­mit­tee. Below, the pond man­age­ment com­mit­tee is clean­ing the pond because the pond was dirty after construction.

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Gartie is one of the 6 vil­lages where CRDT has been imple­ment­ing the pro­ject by cooper­at­ing with local author­it­ies such as vil­lage, com­mune and dis­trict under a dona­tion by Aus­AID. In this vil­lage the access to water is dif­fi­cult and the vil­la­gers have thus less water for their own con­sump­tion. Up to now, 3 hand pump wells were donated by other NGOs but as the vil­lage is stand­ing on high land and these hand pump wells are easy to break it makes it dif­fi­cult to pump the water out. This is why in 2013, CRDT plans to dig a com­munity pond in this vil­lage in aim­ing at sup­ply­ing enough water to all these vil­la­gers to increase their agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion (veget­able) and their daily water con­sump­tion, it will decrease the dif­fi­culties and time of women and chil­dren to take the water from the faraway stream. The com­munity pond dig­ging site was selec­ted early April by a key per­son of the com­munity under sup­port from CRDT, Sre Preah com­mune and Keo Seima dis­trict offi­cials.  The facil­it­a­tion group con­duc­ted one meet­ing with the rep­res­ent­at­ives of this vil­lage to decide that the land for the pond will be open for pub­lic use. This decision was taken by the owner of the land and all vil­la­gers will col­lect some money to pay to the owner of land for the use of it. After that, all par­ti­cipants took part in the meas­ure­ment of the selec­ted land. As a res­ult, 3 own­ers were selec­ted for their lands and they agreed to con­trib­ute with a land in size 50m x 50m for dig­ging the com­munity pond and a land for grow­ing veget­ables. This decision shows that the project’s bene­fi­ciar­ies are start­ing to take this pro­ject as their own and also that the local author­it­ies gran­ted all neces­sary per­mis­sion relat­ing to the pro­ject imple­ment­a­tion activities.

By Meas Viphou, Pro­ject Man­ager for Mondulkiri

Vaccination: a key success for rural farmers’ chicken business

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Along the Mekong River in Sam­bour dis­trict, Kratie Province, CRDT has been work­ing with sub­sist­ence com­munit­ies since 2006 to enhance food and incomes in sup­port of conservation.

Chicken rais­ing is one of CRDT pro­grams through which we always encour­aged our bene­fi­ciar­ies through train­ings, exchange visit, and prac­tical imple­ment­a­tion within dir­ect bene­fi­ciar­ies. We have trained com­munit­ies how to make food for chick­ens, breed selec­tion, build chicken fence and coops and also par­tic­u­larly provide vac­cin­a­tion instruc­tions to CBO members.

In fact, last month this train­ing was con­duc­ted to bene­fi­ciar­ies in Beong Char com­mune and has been going on this month.  As a pos­it­ive impact from last month we proudly received the feed­back from mem­bers who vac­cin­ated their chicken. They are enthu­si­astic with the good res­ults as fewer chick­ens died than before the vac­cin­a­tion as well as the anim­als grow stead­ily and in good health.

By Bin Dim, Pro­ject Man­ager in Kratie Province

Japan provides a US$ 91,121 grant to CRDT in contribution to the rural development of Sambo District

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On March 27th 2013, the Embassy of Japan under the KUSANONE grant has awar­ded a US$ 91,121 grant to CRDT to con­trib­ute to the rural devel­op­ment of Sambo Dis­trict in Kratie Province. This pro­ject is to (i) con­struct small-scale water treat­ment facil­ity and to install 3,000m of water dis­tri­bu­tion pipes at Koh Pdao vil­lage, and (ii) con­struct an agri­cul­tural water dis­tri­bu­tion facil­ity, two water tanks (5,000 liters each) and 1,200m of canals at Sampin vil­lage, Kam­pong Cham Com­mune, Sambo Dis­trict, Kratie Province.

Please find the press release from the Japan Embassy Here

Natural Resources & Culture: Living in Ramsar Site, Stung Treng

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Ram­sar Site is the wet­lands area in the Mekong River, covered by 21 vil­lages from 4 Com­munes in Thala­boriv­ate and Stung Treng Dis­tricts, Stung Treng province. 2,285 fam­il­ies within a 12,000 pop­u­la­tion are liv­ing in Ram­sar Site and using its nat­ural resources (aquatic and forest resources) as well as hav­ing agri­cul­ture as their main activ­ity (rice fields, farm­ing and some live­stock rais­ing). The vil­la­gers are mostly Khmer people but they nor­mally use Lao lan­guage for their daily life. This can some­times be con­fus­ing for new­comers but it is actu­ally a nice way of see­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism happening.

The Ram­sar Site is a wet­land area full of nat­ural resources that are of tre­mend­ous value for our eco­sys­tem. Unfor­tu­nately, a lot of these resources present in the forests and rivers and being torn apart by the human activ­it­ies and the cli­mate change. This is why CRDT is rais­ing aware­ness to the local pop­u­la­tion, to have a sus­tain­able use of the nat­ural resources. The local people indeed depend a lot on these nat­ural resources. This is why CRDT imple­ments pro­jects that help people change their live­li­hood activ­it­ies to improve their food secur­ity and income gen­er­a­tion (e.g. live­stock, veget­able rais­ing, sav­ing activ­it­ies) as well as being sus­tain­able for the resources of the Ram­sar Site.

On March 19th, CRDT organ­ized a trip to show one of our donors CEPF as well as our part­ners WWF, World­fish Cen­ter, CED, CI and Bird­life the pro­gresses in our pro­jects. Thus CRDT organ­ized a homestay in the Ram­sar site vil­lage of Koh Sneng where the vil­la­gers were able to share their tra­di­tional music and their sense of warm hospitality.

By Ngeth Sen­glay, Pro­ject Man­ager in Stung Treng

Field visit with CEPF

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From March 18th to March 22th, CRDT had a field trip between Stung Treng and Kratie provinces with one of its donor CEPF, to show the pro­gresses of our “Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment to Sup­port Wise Use and Con­ser­va­tion of the Wet­land Ram­sar Site in Stung Treng, Cam­bodia” project.

We had the oppor­tun­ity both to learn more about the activ­it­ies of our part­ners WWF, the World­Fish Cen­ter, Bird­life Inter­na­tional, Inter­na­tional Rivers, CED and to be able to show to our donors the improve­ments our bene­fi­ciar­ies were able to achieve.

This week allowed us to high­light import­ant issues Cam­bodia as well as the Mekong River are facing, like the future build­ing of dams on the Mekong that could impact the live­li­hoods of the Cam­bod­ian pop­u­la­tion as well as the envir­on­ment (with a decrease in the amount of fishes avail­able) or the illegal activ­it­ies arm­ing the envir­on­ment (illegal fish­ing and logging).

Dur­ing this trip we had the chance to wit­ness endangered anim­als that our part­ner organ­iz­a­tions are try­ing to help and pro­tect like gib­bons, Ibis birds and Asian Soft­shell Turtles, and we went in CRDT and CED bene­fi­ciar­ies’ vil­lages to acknow­ledge all the improve­ments hap­pen­ing for the pop­u­la­tion. CRDT is work­ing on a day-to-day basis to help both the pop­u­la­tion alle­vi­ate from poverty and con­serve the envir­on­ment for the future generation.

We would like to thank our donors CEPF, The Mac Arthur Found­a­tion and the Gov­ern­ment of Japan for allow­ing us to con­duct such an import­ant pro­ject on the Mekong and we hope to con­tinue this suc­cess­ful part­ner­ship in the com­ing years.

By Coline Ganz, Fun­drais­ing and Com­mu­nic­a­tion Coordinator

Mekong River-Dependent Livelihoods

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Rice farm­ing, fish­ing, rais­ing live­stock, river­side garden­ing, and sea­sonal wage labor as their primary live­li­hood activ­it­ies and source of cash income.

Tra­di­tion­ally, com­munit­ies cul­tiv­ated their fields for their own con­sump­tion as due to lack­ing of tech­niques, seeds and mater­i­als and the dif­fi­culty to take water to irrig­ate their fields, they could only grow small quant­it­ies of food. Moreover, they hadn’t access to a mar­ket as the vil­lages are far away from towns.

For­tu­nately, since 2006 their situ­ation has improved as many NGOs have been com­ing to these vil­lages and help­ing the pop­u­la­tion, espe­cially CRDT. People’s tech­niques of veget­ables grow­ing were enhanced through provid­ing train­ings, mater­i­als and seeds were released like river hand pumps, pump water machines… Fur­ther­more, the mar­ket value chain and mar­ket demand was spread­ing out within com­munit­ies. There­fore, com­munit­ies were then able to pro­duce veget­ables for their own con­sump­tion as well as to be sold.

Nowadays, the aver­age annual house­hold income derived from the river­side veget­able garden­ing is around USD 50.00. River­side veget­able garden­ing occurs approx­im­ately seven months per year, most likely dur­ing the river’s low sea­son. The aver­age annual income from veget­able pro­duc­tion per house­hold is at least 100,000 – 200,000 riel (USD 25.00 – 50.00), in addi­tion to the veget­ables con­sumed by the house­hold. These house­holds com­monly grow pak choy, cab­bage, pump­kins, gourde, sug­ar­cane, toma­toes, sweet potato and nat­ive root crops, corns, mel­ons, egg­plants, cucum­bers, herbs, and oth­ers. River­side veget­able gar­dens are mostly taken care of by women and chil­dren although some men give hand from time to time (The Sam­bor Baseline Sur­vey, Estela Estoria Sept 2010).

By Bin Dim, Pro­ject Man­ager in Kratie Province

Ecotourism Potential in Andong Kralong Ethnic Bunong Community

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Mon­dulkiri province is in the north­east of Cam­bodia and has a lot of nat­ural resources, fresh air and shel­ters 97% of the indi­gen­ous com­munity of Bun­ong in Cam­bodia. It also attracts always more national and inter­na­tional tour­ists. Andong Kralong is a vil­lage of the province, about 25 km far from Sen Monorom town, with 117 fam­il­ies. In this vil­lage, there are plenty of nat­ural resources such as: forest, wild­life (exotic birds), water­fall sites, streams and Bun­ong cul­tures. These resources are pro­tec­ted by local people and at all author­ity levels as the Bun­ong Eth­nic Com­munity is leg­ally sup­por­ted by the Min­istry of Interior, which means that the com­munity is leg­ally using its own lands. Thus, this vil­lage has more poten­tial to estab­lish CBET (Com­munity Based Eco­tour­ism) due to the numer­ous nat­ural resources and the legal man­age­ment of the community.

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The Bun­ong com­munity spends a lot of time in the forest col­lect­ing the NTFP (Non Tim­ber Forest Pro­duc­tion) such as raisin col­lec­tion, wild veget­able, fish­ing, upper land farm­ing, veget­able grow­ing and live­stock, to sup­port their fam­il­ies. But they need to spend a lot of time going into the forest as it is far from their homes. Surely this then allows them to be fully skilled to stay overnight in the forest by using simple mater­i­als to cook and eat, such as bam­boo. Fish and wild veget­ables are the main food they will eat while stay­ing in the forest.

All these dif­fer­ent kinds of nat­ural resources and the dis­cov­ery of the local people life­style are great exper­i­ences to share with national and inter­na­tional tourists.

By Meas Viphou, Pro­ject Man­ager in Mondulkiri