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LOA Signed with Sustainable Cambodia

On November 28, a Letter of Agreement (LOA) on implementation of Self-Help Group Empowerment for Sustainable Community Development project was signed between Heifer Cambodia and Sustainable Cambodia, at Heifer Cambodia office in Phnom Penh. The signing ceremony was witnessed by entire Heifer Cambodia team and Mr. Sorn Soknay, National Coordinator of Sustainable Cambodia, and its representatives. Sustainable Cambodia, a charitable nonprofit organization, was initially established in 2001, working with Cambodian villagers and helping them build self-sustaining communities that have clean water, reliable food stocks, health care, education, income generation and employment, while embracing environmental and social responsibility. Its mission is to empower rural families to improve their quality of life through education and sustainable community development. In his opening remarks, Interim Country Director Ho Bunyet welcomed the Sustainable Cambodia representatives. He addressed that it was his first time of signing the LOA with project partner under Heifer Cambodia new beginning. “The project will not only increase income and improve health, environment and livelihood of project participants, but also enable them to extend their help to other needy families through passing on the gifts (POG) approach,” said Bunyeth. Heifer Cambodia will work in partnership with Sustainable Cambodia to implement the project through shared leadership, triadic partnership and co-mentoring. Before the LOA was signed, each unit of Heifer Cambodia provided the project orientations to the project partner related to logframe, progress report, financial report preparation, Values-Based Holistic Community Development (VBHCD), animal well-being recommendation, and correspondence. The three-year project will provide 60 small household families in remote Kravanh District of Pursat Province with the training, tools, and resources to better their living conditions through VBHCD. The participating households will organize themselves into self-help groups (SHG) of approximately 15 members each. At least 50% of all SHG family representatives will be women. Each SHG member will train in agricultural and animal husbandry practices as well as in VBHCD to strengthen self-reliance, leadership, full participation and accountability through education and experience. To expand social awareness in gender equity, environmental health, sanitation, HIV/AIDS and other related social issues, each member will also participate in informal training courses and public education campaigns. In order to improve their field practice of an integrated farming system, each SHG member will receive one heifer cow, agriculture equipment, horticulture seeds, fruit trees and forage. Based on the model of “POG”, by 2013 the SHG Project will expand the same opportunities to 60 new families in need who will participate fully in the community development process.

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