Joint meeting with IDE (International Development Enterprises)

Today, on August 19, 2008 I and Mr. Lang Seng Horng, director of CESDE (Cedac Enterprise for Social Development) went to IDE office in Phnom Penh for a whole-day discussion on a new project, that project is called "Linking farmers with Market for Rural Prosperity" and it will be jointly implemented by IDE, CEDAC and PADEK. The target area will be selected along the national road 1, Prey Veng to Svay Rieng province. Up to now, we have discussed and agreed to prepare the project's budget of each partner, to identify and select the target site, etc. Hopefully, this project will be implemented very soon so that we can improve the capacity of farmers, especially the poorest farmers to produce vegetable for market supply, it is to note that each of CEDAC and PADEK will be responsible to improve the livelihood of 500 target families with increasing of income 150$, the vegetable farmer producer group is conducted. There will be 60,000 USD of the project's budget for both CEDAC and PADEK. To me, I think that even though this project seems to be small, but we can have more change to strengthen the vegetable farmer producer group and especially to link those groups to NAP (Natural Agriculture Product) in Svay Rieng and Prey Veng provinces and a few CFAs will be employed.