Six Month Reprot

SAO SARY FOUNDATION

LIVELIHOOD PROGRAMME COORDINATOR

6 MONTH PROJECT REPORT

1. Executive Summary

Project Name: Livelihood Programme
Project Location: Peanica Kam Village, Rokha Thom Commune,
Chbar Mon District, Kampong Speu Province,Cambodia
Livelihood Coordinator: Pholla Kang
Email: pholla@ssfcambodia.org
pholla.kang@yahoo.com
Mobile: (+855) 089932766
Reporting Period: January-June 2010


2. Introduction

SSF Foundation is a nonreligious, non-political, and independent humanitarian organization devoted to ending human trafficking and helping poor children and families gain economic independence in impoverished communities. SSF was founded in 2006 and officially recognized by the national government of the Kingdom of Cambodia as a non-profit organization in 2007. SSF has special one program that have strong goal and strength strategy is the Livelihood program that this program will be assist the poor and poorest people to have better living. Other hand this program has assisted many family in Somrong Tong district amount a hundreds family.

3. Summary of Activities

• Business Support for HIV family: Cambodian societies have serious discrimination on people living with HIV. To cut this down, SSF had worked with one HIV family by supporting the family to run a small business (grocery selling). Doing this empowers, encourages, and motivates the family to overcome their struggles in life and lead their child to a brighter future. Moreover, we want to educate the society about HIV and break down discrimination. To support this family, SSF had provided the family through psychological consultation for living in society, health care, and small business (grocery selling). We had provided a capital amounting to 315 USD (1323500R) for purchasing goods and fees to build the store. Once this family could get the business running, they could get the profit of at least 2.5 USD a day. Through this business, the family could have enough food, could send the children to school and the family situation would get better compared to before when they had no career.

• Demo Family : Amounting 30 households in Kraing Rhong community that SSF has helped so far. We found that a few families have worked very hard and are very committed in their home gardens since they first started, especially one family named Aek Rin. He is very committed in working and he is keen to lead his neighborhood to do as he does. He thought that it is better to have a home garden for the family’s daily consumption like vegetable, herbs, chilies etc, saw like that ssf has proposed him to be demo family in his community. To encourage his family to do that, SSF Livelihood staff has fully worked out and provide new technical advice in growing vegetables with his family and to make his works effective and provide more impact to the other villagers, we had provided a water tank to store water (3m*1.5m*1m size = 50USD). This would be supported by his growing for a full year.

After getting the tank, he could grow vegetables consistently and make big profit of 2.5-5USD per day. If compared to previously, he could only get the profit from his home garden for only 2 USD/day. Coming up with his activities would have big effects to his community. Bot Korm, 34 years old with 2 household members said: he observed that Aek Rin’s family (Demo family) could earn a lot of money and have enough vegetables for his family. So it is better for him to go to work in the farm from now. I started to make the home garden for my family also, and other man Chanthan 28, said his family have home gardens have enough food and don’t necessary spending wash to purchase vegetable any more like before.

• Home Garden: To increase food production and health improvement in the Kraing Rhong community. They were encouraged to develop organic home gardens. To do so, SSF Livelihood staff has conducted training about techniques on growing vegetables and vegetable distribution to the families who are committed to growing under SSF’s conditions such as growing a home garden, fencing to surround the house and garden, preparing the soil, how to set rang upon the season, making the compost and collection of manure. SSF Livelihood staff provided technical advice and monitoring. Many residents in Kraing Rhong community said that: prior to this, their community has no home garden, and they also spent a lot for daily vegetable consumption, at least 3000R/day Van Choun said. Right now after get the training and advice, they could see the real advantage of organic home garden from the Demo family. The whole community was very interested on home garden and they had to build the home garden all together along their houses.

• Jar training and distribution: Kriang Rhong community is the community that SSF had supported so far. To help those villagers who have no water source for daily consumption last year, our team has supported one pump well. On the other hand, we found that the community still has problems of having no containers to store water to use in their organic home garden. So, during the dry season they were forced to give up their home gardens. Seeing their difficulty, we had promised to provide the water container to the residents, but our team had to first consider this case very deeply and we decided that we would like to train them on how to build their own water container instead of providing it to them directly. By doing so, they can get the water container and learn the skill too. They could use this skill for making money for their family’s livelihood as well. So, that is why in early March 2010, SSF has provided the water container-construction training to the villagers in the Kraing Rhong community. It went on from the 5th March 2010 to 14th march 2010. The training has been successful in training three trainees ( Not Vanak, Yem Thoch, and Mom Samath). This has affirmed that they could be building these jars independently and more than this, they could build water containers to distribute them to their community.

After the villagers have obtained the water containers, they can use them in their home garden, daily consumption, shower, and vegetable growing all through the dry season. More than this, we could cut down many problems like women’s health, cancer, and other diseases that affect women or girls, Chab Him (village chief) said.

• Rice Bank Initiative: 28 out of the 30 families of the Kraing Rhong community has rice deficiency. According to the community, the situation of almost all of the households are faced with insufficient rice to eat, most of them lack rice for 5- 8month a year. They also purchase and borrow a lot of rice or money from the neighborhood and other local lenders for survival. So their living was under serious debt. They have to work for a whole day to settle the debt alone and other families also fell in to loan shark’s grip due to ignorance. They forced their household members to work in garment factories and as cleaners. Most of the people effected were adults and children. To break down the problems of loan shark debt, exploited labor and other debts, SSF has initiated to set up the rice bank in the community for all households to save rice together and available for loan whenever they have no rice to eat. This would help the villagers escape the vulnerable position faced with rice loan shark and labor exploits. For support of the rice bank, SSF has provided the first capital of 200USD to purchase the rice. To consolidate with the community’s capital, it would mean 50% of the money comes from SSF and 50% from the community. Right now, the Kraing Rhong Rice Bank have the rice capital of 1200Kg.

• Self Help Group (SHG) initiative: This is to increase the income for families and communities and to cut out the debt from loan shark in the society, especially in the Kraing Rhong community where this always happens. We had initiated the community to create the Self Help Group. With the explanation and encouragement of SSF, all of the households in the community have joined this group and right now, this group has a capital of almost 200 USD. Other hand the group has bylaw by them self after community has get more training about bylaw from SSF. After the community has their own Self Help Group, all the members were efficient in accomplishing tasks or if someone suffers from serious illness, they could loan the money from their Group very easily.

• Chicken Raising: To increase the livestock for each household and the community’s economic status, SSF encouraged families to rear chickens, ducks and pigs. Our team has assisted the villagers in rearing chicken by providing know-how on raising, techniques in mixing organic feed and natural medicine. Due to successful amounts of raising chickens SSF had assisted a 28 year old, Vanak Nout who had wanted to rear chickens. SSF has provided the much needed education of helpful techniques on raising his farm. He was taught on how to grow his own vegetables like morning glory and cabbage, and use them to mix with market chicken feed, fish pellets and rice husk. As he began to feed his chickens with this mix, not only could he save on money spent on buying chicken feed from the market, but also his chickens grew healthier and had higher survival rate. In case the chickens fell ill, SSF also taught Vannak Nout to make all-natural medicines, which costs a lot less and works more effectively than store-bought chemicals. Now his chickens can grow up to 1.2 to 1.5kg. His family could earn a profit from the chickens of 25 USD-35USD at one time and this equals to fetching higher prices in the market. If compared to before, where his chicken growing rate is slow, constantly affected by sickness, and high lost rate; right now, his chickens are growing very well and he could get more profit making it unnecessary to work outside anymore. Furthermore, his family has enough food and his child could go to school, he said.

• Duck Raising: Apart from raising chickens, we also encouraged the community to raise ducks also. Some people do not have interest on raising duck but certainly, ducks could also be advantageous to family trough eggs and meat as well fetching a better price on the market. For instance, Korn Chear 58, widow said that right now, she is raising an amount of 40 ducks. The ducks are able to make her family have an existent living and have adequate food (rice). When she gets an illness, she could take the revenue from duck raising to pay for treatment. But if there are no ducks, she has to borrow some money from the neighborhood and she said that ducks are the life of her family’s living. Without it, her family will be in hunger again. Beforehand, her livelihood was very difficult- inadequate food and money to pay for treatment for illness; she had to do serious work like climbing the trees to gather leaves, finding crabs, fish and planting rice. Although she does a lot but the profit was limited for her livelihood. If she doesn’t do this for a day, she would have nothing for her stomach and her previous raising efforts of a few ducks ( 4-5) to generate income for her family has no advantage. She had to spend 7-8 months to harvest (sell duck) and each time, she could sell to get a profit of USD 15-20 only. The ducks often died a lot from sickness. And, she had no plans or savings or means to make her money grow. Solely, she only relied on the profit of her ducks, if any is available. But when SSF arrived at her village, her family changed a lot.

• Pig Raising: Of all the livestock that is common here, pigs seemed to garner a lot of interest from local farmers. Therefore, SSF provided these families with pigs and 3 families had extra capital to run a pig-raising business. In addition to that, SSF also assists the villagers by giving them the proper support and technical coaching by teaching them various important techniques used to raise pigs.

• Ceramic water filter distribution: Currently, 1.1 billion people worldwide lack safe drinking water and 2.6 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation facilities. Currently only 33 percent of rural and 62 percent of urban Cambodians have access to these two essentials. Some 1.8 million children die each year as a result of diarrhea – a rate of 4,900 per day. Together, unclean water and poor sanitation are the world's second leading cause of death among children. This is especially true in Kampong Speu province, Cambodia. Due to common situations like that, SSF has provided ceramic water filters to the Kraing Rhong community in Somrong Tong district, Kampong Spue province to cut out the diarrhea problem. Once the Kriang Rhong residents got the water filters, they could easily use the water and not spend a lot of time boiling it as before. The most effective affect of water filters for the residents is that they have no diarrhea, particularly for the children.

• Microloan Program: to support the livelihood of the families to have enough food and have better living conditions, we have been studying very deeply in this case to find out what the family strong points are, and we will conduct the family to strengthen the family capacity by SSF’s provision of small amounts of microloan such as money and vegetable seeds to the villagers to run the business. In return, we take the small interest rate of 10% per year. The Somart Sem family have no land for living and work, therefore, this family has got a loan from us to purchase the land and to run the fish selling business. Right now this family have land, and business also, and the family could manage to repay back every month to us ( 12USD/month). Additionally, the Sophon Hauy family is a very successful family that has come up to us for help in running her sweet business. Her business is running very well and she could be get a profit of at least 5-10USD per day. This career had made her family situation to be better-she could purchase a lot of rice, a fan, rent a house and a TV for the family. Previously, her family has no career and no income as well as insufficient food. But after SSF has come to know about her family and has supported the family by providing the capital to run her business, her family’s life has changed.

• Sanitation Toilet Project: To improve the sanitation in the community and to break down the problem from poor sanitation such as diarrhea disease and cancer, SSF has initiated the Kraing Rhong community to build the toilets along their houses. SSF provided some materials to build them like cement, sand, and ring wells while the community had to provide items and labor for the construction such as leaves, bamboos, sticks, wires, labor and anything that they could use from their community. In total SSF spent 30 USD per family and we provided toilets for 27 households. In a month, 27 toilets were finished. The community was very happy and their consolidarity of helping eachother in the process of toilet construction has helped to increase the fast completion rate. Now, they have toilets all along their houses that could use very safely. They could also take showers in the toilet properly, benefitting women and girls especially. This is unlike before, where they have go to the forest and ponds to take their showers or wells that are far away from the house.

• Family Assessment: To effectively run the Livelihood Programme, we had to execute family assessments first before we start to help a family. By doing this, we could gather all information from the family and it makes it easy to analyze the family data to make the best household planning for family.

4. Other Activities

A part from project works, Livelihood Coordinator had participated with villagers in road fixing in the village, to make traveling comfortable.

5. Major Challenges

- Although the HIV family’s business collapsed, we still have to find ways to help and encourage the family to running the business again.

- To find the trainer in training the community on building water containers is difficult because in Kampong Spue Province, there are not many water container constructors and the fee for training is expensive. But we still managed to find the best way and best trainer to do this. The trainer could train the trainees in 8days and after that; they could build the water container by themselves.

- To inspire community to make the rice banks. It is difficult to some of the villagers because they said that they have a little rice to eat have no way to contribute rice to be saved in the bank, and there were others who always have contrasting ideas to our concept despite having meetings with all of the villagers about rice bank creation. To show them more about the advantages and some of the poorest families, that have no rice to save for the first time, SSF supported 50% (200USD to purchase rice) while the rest were by the community and each family had to save about 20kilograms of rice. Now, the rice bank has a capital of 1200Kg.

- To improve the sanitation in community such as toilet building took a long time because the kind of soil that the community was digging was a hard type of soil. And, due to rainy days, the process was constantly delayed but through encouragement and support, the project was completed, albeit being behind schedule by a few days.

6, Lessons Learned

- To make me understand and know how to write the memorandum in purchasing some things which cost above $ 100

- The villager still wanted to get the jar but did not due to spending money for the training.

- Understand attitude of villagers in solidarity works and sharing for the general advantage of a whole community.

- To know the attitude of the owners of construction shops when asking them to make quotations.

- To know about making negotiations with the shop owner in purchasing goods

- It is not to easy to make an assessment form. Simon and I had spent at least three day to finish the assessment form and agreement form.

- To plainly about to set up household plan (don’t understand)

7, Future Plan

- Keep well-informing or communicating with local authorities about the project progressive
- Working with community representative to improve well's fence, home garden and their yards
- Digging creek irrigation system connecting from well crossing the village entirely

- Monitor and inspire learned families to produce compost, organic and natural passion after learning

- Facilitate monthly meeting at community level as well as guiding group preventatives to lead the meeting by themselves

- Providing additional loan to improve home-based business healthy or expansion
- Working with demo families to transfer their knowledge and experience to other families
- Strengthening capacity of demo families and other families that benefit through
- Monitoring processes/visit/follow up and evaluation of supported families
- Encouraging those target families to practice their planning
- Study impact of household planning and budgeting
- Working with community representatives to plan a child club in community
- Selecting few community members to attend vetted course
- To begin fundraising for launching child club in 2011
- Working with community representatives and their members to prepare 2011 plan
- Teaching those community representatives about proposal development and submission
- Publications and dissemination

Date: 07-July-2010

Made in Kampong Speu Province

Approved By: Uon Vichetr, Executive Director Written By: Pholla Kang, LPC