By: Yi KimthanSamakum Kaksekor Samaki Mean Chey, known in English as the “Farmer Solidarity Community”, was found on 3rd February 2006. The CBO is located in Angkor Chey I Village, Damnak Kantout Khang Tboung commune, Kampong Trach district, Kampot province. There are 5 groups under the umbrella of the farmer association (FA) with 103 members, 60 of whom are women. To date, the association has been able to mobilize the capital through collective savings up to 22 million riel for providing loans to their members.
The main activities of CBO are:
• collective Saving for Self-Reliance (SfR) ;
• promoting agro-ecological innovations and conducting action research
• promoting natural resource management;
• present a voice to commune council in order to articulate the issue of the community in to CDP and CIP;
• promoting community business such as a community shop,
• mutual-help group
• rice bank
Since the establishment till October 2008, the CBOs had been working more on development and dissemination of agriculture innovation and the promotion of collective saving. It means that more activities related to income generation were carried out by CBOsb They also did not work closely with commune councils as well as they did not understand what is CIP? Why they needed to attend in the CIP development processes.
The CBO has cooperated and registered with CSPPM since October 2008. During the cooperation with the project, the project staff regularly provides training, coaching and follow up advice to build the capacity of CBOs to enable them to raise a voice to CC, attending on natural resource management and promoting community business. So far, the training topic raised by the project is shown as follows:
• How to write proposals and project management;
• CBO management and CBO planning development;
• How to raise a voice to CCs and others;
• Community business concept;
• CIP process and participation.
After cooperation with the CSPPM, Samakum Kaksekor Samaki Mean Chey and Damnak Kantout and commune councilors have improved the communication and cooperation, especially in the CIP development process. On the other hand, the CBOs are being recognized by commune councils and villagers as the actors that are playing very important roles in community development. By this recognition, there are more villagers interested to join. Thus, the number of members increased from 72 to 103. Additionally, the CBO also facilitated to form the youth group.
On the other hand, CBO executives also attended the monthly meeting of commune council to lean about CIP process as well as to present on CBO progress and problems within the community During the monthly meeting of commune council, CCs shares on commune’s activities,achievement and their work plan as well as on C/S fund and NRM-L fund that government has allocated to their commune.
By attending in monthly meeting of commune councils, Mrs Chey Siyath, leader of CBO said that Damnak Kantout Khang Tboung Commune has annual budget around 104 million riel with including 66 million riel is allocated from C/S fund, 24 million riel is allocated from NRM-L fundand the rest come from community contribution, birth and wedding registration etc. The NRM-L fund that available at the commune is only 21.6 million reil as 10% of total budget was allocated to provincial administration.
Furthermore, during the step 1 of CIP process, meeting at commune level and village level, Mrs chey Siyath raised some community proposal such as water gate construction for irrigation (vegetables, early rice planting…), improvement of natural resource management as the natural resource, improvement of the marketing for community products such as rice, potatoes, taro, peanuts etc. On the other hand, Miss Pech Sineth, the representative of youth group, raised some problems of youth such as school abandonment , migration, and non- attendance in both family and community work; she also suggested CCs to consider some alternatives such as providing vocational training, supporting both funds and ideas to youth group for education and occupation. As the result, issues raised were put into table 1.1.
In short, we observed that voice of this CBO is increasing noticeably. Based on the indicator of CSPPM, “voice” has three dimensions: Voice Awareness, CSO Structure and Voice Action. So all activities done by the CBOs can meet to the indicators of CSPPM such as:
• Awareness of CIP development process, awareness of the existence and amount of earmarked NRM funds and awareness of how to access those funds;
• Active participation in CIP Process, through the raising of issues and real needs of community through attending in at various CIP meetings at commune and village level and monthly meeting;
• Level of formality of structure and size, especially the size of membership and percent of female membership.
By interviewing, Mr Chheum Neth, chief of Damnak Kantout Khang Tboung commune council, “This year I am very happy because I observe that the representative of CBO attended in meeting at commune both monthly meeting and CIP process. Based on the meeting, I could know and learn a lot from CBO such as progress and workplan and had a chance to present them on the activities and plan of commune council as well. On the other hand, I have strong cooperation and communication with CBO executive members to ensure a good information flow between commune council and community”, Mr Chheum Neth said.
Since the cooperation with CSPPM, CBO impressed that they are gaining more knowledge and have a better understanding on how to develop a proposal, why CBOs need to develop work plan, and what is the importance of participation on CIP development processes. They are also more aware of the natural resource advantages. The cooperation and communication with CCs has increased remarkably and CCs also have strong support to CBOs.
