via CAAI
05 January 2011
By Nancy L. Pontius
Special Correspondent
The children of Mut Phall, a farmer and gardener, and Phun Saoly, a construction worker, attend a Sustainable Cambodia school in Svay Att Commune.
Lakewood, Colorado — Rotary clubs in the United States, Cambodia, Australia and Canada are working together through Sustainable Cambodia Inc. — a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization — to help more than 15,000 Cambodians in 18 rural villages in central Cambodia.
In the Svay Att Commune, families such as that of Phun Saoly and Mut Phall can send their children to a Sustainable Cambodia school. The couple also has received piglets, irrigation water, fruit and vegetable seeds, clean drinking water and small loans to grow mushrooms and raise chickens.
Sustainable Cambodia partners with villagers, helping them improve their quality of life, Richard Allen, volunteer chief executive officer of Sustainable Cambodia, told America.gov. “We are an empowerment organization — not an ‘aid’ organization.”
The group focuses on villagers’ priorities and provides training and funding. In return, Cambodian families commit their labor and agree to help surrounding villages. The process develops a sense of empowerment and ownership, Allen said.
Sustainable Cambodia programs include projects based on the most successful development strategies from around the world:
• Preschool day care centers, which communities often see as a priority to allow mothers to work and provide intellectual stimulation for children.
• Kindergarten to 12th-grade instruction. In 2010, Rotary clubs in Western Australia funded construction of five new primary schools in remote Bakan district and financed 84,299 high-protein meals for seven preschools in Pursat province, Allan Lewins, a past district governor from Rotary International in Western Australia, told America.gov. During 2011, the clubs will support a preschool annex, a latrine, a well and a library at each of the five new schools.
• Resources for safe drinking water, including wells, large community ponds, biosand filters and rooftop rainwater harvesting. In addition to improving the residents’ health, when clean water is close to a community, “kids don’t have to spend many hours a day hiking for water and therefore can stay in school,” Allen said.
• Irrigation systems, which supply water for crops during the five-month dry season.
• Alternative agriculture, which reduces the villagers’ reliance on rice, bringing them seeds, training and supplies for growing fruits and vegetables year-round.
• “Pass on” animals — providing a family with a breeding pair of animals when they agree to receive animal-care training and give offspring to neighbors. The neighbors also must agree to give animals to additional neighbors, perpetuating the cycle.
Children gather with their teachers outside the Sustainable Cambodia library in Pursat province in November 2010.
Children gather with their teachers outside the Sustainable Cambodia library in Pursat province in November 2010.
• Village banks that offer microloans to families at low interest rates. To encourage repayment, initial loans to a few families must be repaid before more families can receive loans, Allen said. On average, at least 95 percent of loans are repaid. The village keeps the interest paid to fund future projects.
• Community rice banks, which provide safe storage for extra rice crops that can be consumed later or sold for higher prices during the dry season. The community retains a percentage of the sales to support the rice bank.
Nothing is given outright to the villagers. For each project, Cambodians contribute materials and all labor, Allen said. For instance, when constructing community ponds — that often span a tenth of a hectare and are 2.4 to 3 meters deep — Rotarians supply “funding that would have gone to pay for heavy equipment, which instead is paid to families for their labor,” Allen said. Plus, money is provided for shovels, wheelbarrows and fish that are stocked in the ponds and raised for food or sold.
Funding for a community is reduced gradually after three to five years, as residents become more and more self-reliant. By then, the quality of life in the village tends to have improved dramatically and the Cambodians have the self-created resources to sustain the new economy.
Sustainable Cambodia employs about 80 Cambodians locally to supervise and direct projects. All other staff members are volunteers.
U.S., AUSTRALIAN PARTNERSHIP
To make the most effective use of their resources, U.S. and Australian Rotary clubs joined forces, Lewins said. The relationship with the Australian Rotarians “quickly grew into a really neat partnership,” Allen added.
Lewins believes because “we are all part of the Rotary International organization, we jointly see ourselves as part of a greater movement to assist, wherever possible, those people less fortunate than ourselves — to help them move onwards and upwards toward a better life.”
Rotary International says there are 33,000 Rotary clubs in more than 200 countries and geographic areas. Club members “provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and help build goodwill and peace in the world,” according to the Rotary International website.
In November 2010, Australian and American Rotarians visited Cambodia. The Australians observed the progress of children in seven preschools, where student health and hygiene have improved noticeably since 2009, Lewins said.
“There is still another year [for] this project before we hand [it] over to the villagers,” he said. “The nutrition program will then become self-sustaining, operated by those villagers, while [we will] move the program on to other rural preschools in need.”
During the trip, U.S. staff worked with Cambodian staff “like the management team of a company,” Allen said, “to keep everybody in sync and make sure the Cambodian staff members have the skills they need to succeed.”
More information on Sustainable Cambodia’s efforts is available on the organization’s website and its Facebook page.
(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov/ )
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