Mon­dulkiri

The indi­gen­ous Bun­ong people of Mon­dulkiri have lived for cen­tur­ies in vir­gin rain­forest packed with biod­iversity and endangered spe­cies. Rely­ing on forest products and slash and burn farm­ing there has always been a nat­ural abund­ance. Recently mar­ket pres­sures have incentiv­ised defor­est­a­tion and increased hunt­ing on one hand, and on the other strictly‐enforced con­ser­va­tion laws do not even allow tra­di­tional live­li­hood prac­tices. CRDT intro­duce real altern­at­ives in agri­cul­ture, aquacul­ture, hus­bandry and tour­ism to ensure the Bun­ong and the forest nur­ture and sup­port each other.

Kratie & Stung Treng

In the highly‐naturally resource depend­ent Mekong com­munit­ies, CRDT sup­port the con­ser­va­tion of dol­phins, soft­shell turtles and giant stin­grays by redu­cing the amount of time people spend fish­ing and edu­cat­ing against the use of indis­crim­in­ate fish­ing meth­ods such as explos­ives, poison and gill­nets. CRDT train com­munity mem­bers to become war­dens for the envir­on­ment, to pro­tect wild­life to ensure a future income through tour­ism, and to pro­tect fish­ery and forest resources for their chil­dren and grand-children’s generation.

Le Tonle Tour­ism Train­ing Centre

From Octo­ber 1st 2012 CRDT will take over run­ning of the Le Tonle Tour­ism Train­ing Centre in Stung Treng. Partnered with the Swiss asso­ci­ation Tour­ism for Help who set up the gues­t­house and train­ing centre in 2007, we will offer local youths the pro­fes­sional train­ing they need to enable them to increase their chances of find­ing work. As well as provid­ing train­ing in the areas of hos­pit­al­ity and recep­tion, cater­ing, main­ten­ance and tour­ist guid­ance, stu­dents take courses in Eng­lish, com­puter sci­ence, account­ing, geo­graphy and his­tory. They are also trained in pro­mot­ing eco­lo­gical pro­tec­tion through care­ful man­age­ment of water and energy consumption.

Also a gues­t­house (see here for cur­rent prices and book­ing), stu­dents can put the­or­et­ical learn­ing into prac­tice by ensur­ing the smooth oper­a­tion of the gues­t­house and that patron’s needs are cared for. After fin­ish­ing their stud­ies, we sup­port stu­dents to find work by con­tact­ing schools or insti­tu­tions to con­tinue their stud­ies, guid­ing them in the cre­ation of their busi­ness, and by con­tact­ing poten­tial employ­ers and trainers.

Visit Tour­ism for Help’s web­site (French lan­guage) or their Face­book page for fur­ther information.