Story highlight
- Ethnic villages are the main beneficiaries of World Bank/Japan Social Development Fund grants that support livelihoods in northern Cambodia
- 400 farmers get training, with 150 already using Good Agriculture Practice techniques.
- 626 young people, including 413 women, are trained in entrepreneurship and market access, and food processing. Five youth group start-up businesses.
- 3 secondary schools build organic gardens with shade houses.
In Krola village, home to Kroeung indigenous people in Cambodia’s northern province of Ratanakiri, Sern Tola, reflects on the vegetables and crops she sells from her farm. “I’m happy with what I’m earning,” Sitting under the shade of her farmhouse by a stream, she smiles. “In the dry season I can make around 250,000 riel ($70) per day.”
Tola uses newly learned techniques on the farm, which now provides extra income that provides her family with a better life.
Each morning and late afternoon, she harvests cucumbers, sponge gourd, long beans, round eggplants, pumpkins, curly cabbages, corn, and other produce. Tola loads them onto her motorbike and drives through nearby villages to sell them. When there is a lot, her daughter takes the harvest to provincial markets.
Thanks to the World Bank/Japan Social Development Fund-supported Cambodia Sustainable Livelihood for Indigenous Communities Project, Tola received training in farming practices such as soil and seedling improvement and how to select crops based on the season. She also participated in a study tour to visit successful farming practices organized by the Analyzing Development Issues Center.
The Center received a $2.75 million grant from the Japan Social Development Fund through the World Bank to run this project in two provinces—Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri. The initiative was designed to complement the Land Allocation for Social and Economic Development Project III, which is financed by the World Bank.
The project works with 400 demonstration farmers, who pass on the knowledge they learn to over 1,300 other interested villagers and young people. Participants study entrepreneurial skills and practical knowledge in growing and small-scale processing of local produce, learning how to make goods such as banana, pumpkin and taro chips, soya milk, soap, and cucumber pickles.
Sitting on a bamboo bed with several youths who are busy slicing bananas to make chips, Sanok Nangchreab, deputy head of the youth food processing group in Kreh village, Poy commune in O’Chum district of Ratanakiri province, admires the way the Cambodia Sustainable Livelihood for Indigenous Communities Project helps young people, particularly those who drop out of school, leaving them without income-generating jobs.
“This project has helped us immensely by providing materials to produce the chips, by giving training, and by setting up the youth producers group. Without the project's support, we wouldn’t have been able to buy materials, as they are expensive,” she said.
Nangchreab and her youth members were inspired by a study tour to a food processing firm that makes banana chips. They realized that this job was good because their community has an abundance of bananas, which villagers previously only used for making cakes. Now, they know they can create a variety of products from bananas that can be stored for a longer time than the fresh fruit.
Similarly, youths in Srei Lvy village in Keo Sema district, Mondulkiri province. were looking for skills that could support young people dropping out of school with no paid jobs. Kroeung Nary, head of Srei Lvy’s youth group, sees that many young people have dropped out of school and are unemployed. She believes that acquiring skills could enable them to form a production group, which would help generate income to support their families.
“After leaving school, these individuals engage in farming alongside their parents, adhering to traditional practices,” she said. “However, relying solely on farming does not equip them with skills for the future. We cannot depend exclusively on natural resources or agriculture for sustainability. With additional skills, we can improve our livelihoods.”
As members of the Pu Nong indigenous community, Nary and her team practice shifting cultivation and live near a wildlife sanctuary, limiting their farming to the land they previously owned without the possibility of expansion. However, under the project they have learned how to grow soy beans and turn them into soya milk for sale in the community. The project has brought them hope. offering opportunities to move forward.
Currently, the youth group sells its soya milk based on orders. However, they plan more market outreach so they can produce not only soya milk but also passion fruit juice, aloe vera, dragon fruit, and watermelon beverages.
Both Nary and Nangchreab want to prove that ethnic minority groups are capable of achieving great things.
Nangchreab says, “Our group wants people to taste our banana chips, and we want them to realize that indigenous people are capable. Indigenous people are not confined to their traditional ways of life, with the women carrying baskets and the men taking knives to the field or farm. We want people to understand who we are and what we can achieve. So when they taste our chips, they will say, “Wow, these are really good, and indigenous people can do things”.
