IFWP-MP Organizes Thematic Workshop on System of Rice Intensification (SRI)

18-22 May 2010: With funding support from the European Union (EU), CEDAC has been implementing a project food security project titled “Improving Food Security for Women and Rural Poor in Mundulkiri Province” since October 2009. As the rainy season is coming, IFWP-MP organized 3 thematic workshops on System of Rice Intensification (SRI), attended by 125 participants (38 women). In other words, there were 40 participants per workshop on average, those participants composed of district councilors, commune councilors, village chief, indigenous farmers, rural women and youths, relevant government officials such as the representatives from District Agricultural Office, District Office of Women’s Affairs, District Office of Education, Youth and Sports, etc. A Technical Support Officer of CEDAC Mr. Bao Vuthy accompanied by Project Coordinator of IFWP-MP Mr. Yim Sok Sophors facilitated those workshops in Koh Ngiek and Pechrda Districts, Mundulkiri Province. The workshops were organized at the district level. The workshops aimed to strengthen the Knowledge, Capacity and Skills of the farmers, local authorities and other local stakeholders related to the Principles of SRI especially to enable them have more technical ideas to improve their rice cultivation methods.

At the beginning, the district council provided his opening speech of the workshop. To make the participants know and understand well about the project, District Coordinators of IFWP-MP Mr. Mak Samath and Mr. Pheung Kosal presented the activities and results of the project to the participants in plenary. Then, the facilitator encouraged farmers to share their knowledge and practical experiences related to rice cultivation to each other actively. During the sharing experiences of farmers, Mrs. Phok La who is a cooperating farmer of CEDAC from Prohout Village, Kraing Leav Commune, Bati District, Takeo Province shared her practical experiences in applying SRI to the participants. She explained and compared the traditional practice and SRI practice to realize that the participants understand well about the differences between the traditional practice and SRI practice. Moreover, Mrs. Phok La encouraged the participants to pay more attention to conduct good rice seed selection, improvement of top soil fertility and improvement of rice cultivation techniques through the application of SRI principles. Mr. Bao Vuthy provided detail explanation on SRI principles and SRI techniques (optional techniques) to the participants in plenary and then question and answer forum was conducted to provide more opportunities for the participants to make sure that they have learned well. At the end of the workshops, some interested farmers were selected to experiment SRI for this rainy season.
In conclusion, the participants have understood and learned effectively regarding to the activities and achievements of the project especially they are strongly interested to the SRI principles through exchange of knowledge and experiences of SRI practice to each other. Importantly, majority of the participants intended to apply and experiment SRI in this rainy season in order to increase their rice productivity for producing adequate rice for family consumption and market supplies for generating additional incomes for their families.

Monthly Meeting of IFWP-MP for December 2009

The monthly meeting of the project team “IFWP-MP/Improving Livelihood for Women and Rural Poor in Mundulkiri province” was conducted on January 04, 2010 at CEDAC headquarter in Phnom Penh. All project team members included Mr. Yim Sok Sophors, Mr. Pol Samath, Mr. Mak Samath, Mr. Nhim Sokea, Mr. Pheung Kosal, Mr. Pel Sovann and Miss. Som Charya participated in the meeting. We have discussed and shared about the activities and results in December 2009.

In December 2009, the project conducted some activities, such as organizing extra study tour for 39 interested farmers (they are all the indigenous minority people, called Phnong) to Kompong Speu and Takeo Provinces. The purpose of the study tour is to train the interested farmers on agricultural innovations from the experienced farmers under other CEDAC’s projects. The interested farmers visited community-led saving group, village-based farmer associations, young farmer groups, women groups, multi-purpose farm, home gardening, etc. The visit was a very effective tool to attract the participation and satisfaction of the interested farmers in cooperating with the project. At the end of the visit, the project’s facilitators conducted reflection meeting with the participants in order to sum up what they have learned and what they are going to apply after visiting.

On the other hand, there are 11 collective saving groups were formed in 10 villages (in 6 communes) under the technical support from the project’s supporting officers like Som Charya and Ear Sophal. Totally, 183 indigenous people (99 women) participated as the members of saving groups. The accumulated capital of all groups is 1,698,000 Riels. It is to mention that the indigenous minority people are strongly interested in conducting collective saving group while they can access to credit service from their groups and also can help each other in terms of strengthening solidarity and cooperation among the members. The interest rate is 3 % per month which is lower than the interest rate charged by the middlemen in their villages. Moreover, there are some farmers starting to prepare vegetable gardens. The farmers can follow the technique of growing vegetables in the dry season as they apply circle garden.

To me, I can say that the project is being progressed even it is just started in October 20, 2009. However, we need to pay more attention to provide individual follow up advice to the target groups. More frequent follow up is really good to improve the understanding of the cooperating farmers amid the increasing of rapport between the project’s staff and the community people.

The project will undertake some main activities for January 2010, such as:

1. Organizing training for key farmers
2. Capacity building for leaders of collective saving groups
3. Organizing commune forums
4. Facilitating group training at village level
5. Providing training support to CFAs (Community-based Field Assistant

In January 2010, it is expected that there are 21 farmers apply vegetable growing technique, 31 farmers apply solid compost, 10 collective saving groups will be formed, 8 farmers apply fish raising in plastic hole, and 5 women groups will be set up. In order to ensure that those activities were conducted effectively, it must realize that the project team had prepared training guideline before organized those activities in the fields.

Exposure Visit of IFWP-MP

The project Improving Livelihood for Women and Rural Poor in Mundulkiri province (IFWP-MP) is organizing an extra exposure visit from Mundulkiri province to Takeo and Kompong Speu Provinces. 47 interested farmers as well as the community-based field assistants of the project participated in the trip.
The exposure visit is organized in order to strengthen the knowledge and skills of those who are mentioned above in relation to agricultural techniques (system of rice intensification, vegetable growing, multi-purpose farm…), community-led saving group, village based farmer association, etc. It is expected that the visitors are able to learn new ideas to attract their intention to the project. Based on the experiences of our work, there will be more and more farmers apply agricultural techniques and other innovations introduced by the project if they have actively participated in the exposure visit.
It is to review that the project IFWP-MP has firstly conducted target villages selection, introduction workshops at the district level, organized village general meeting, selected potential farmers, and it is now the stage for organizing exposure visit for those potential farmers. The project will provide monthly capacity building onward.

Field mission to IFWP

IFWP stands for Improving Livelihood for Women and Rural Poor in Mundulkiri province, Cambodia. It is to show that from 15-19 November 2009, Mr. Yim Sok Sophors who is the project coordinator of IFWP-MP went to Mundulkiri province with Mr. Sim Samoeun, senior program director of CEDAC in order to provide mission support for the project staff of IFWP-MP. During these field missions, 2 district workshops were organized with around 50 participants of each workshop, field visit as well as staff training were additionally organized during the mission. Click here to read in detail...

Monthly meeting of IFWP-MP in October 2009

A monthly meeting among project staff of IFWP-MP was conducted in October 30, 2009 at CEDAC office in Phnom Penh. Totally, 6 staffs participated in the meeting with the following agenda:

- Sharing attractive information
- Sharing activities and results in October 2009
- Preparing activity work plan for November 2009
- Presenting the project concept of IFWP-MP to participants, especially new recruited staff
- Others

The meeting lasted for a half morning. According to the result of the meeting, the participants impressed that they are sure about project’s activities to be accomplished in November 2009. Additionally, the project staffs have received more understanding about the project, but they need to learn more to ensure that they are qualified enough to explain the other correctly. Click here for more detail...

Improving livelihood for women and rural poor in Mundulkiri

The project IFWP-MP that received funding support from EC is officially implemented from 20 October 2009 to November 2011. The project will be implemented in 30 villages across 9 communes of 2 districts in Mundulkiri province.

Overall objective: The project aims to contribute to poverty alleviation and invest in vulnerable groups

Specific objective: The project aims to enable the subsistence farmers and vulnerable social groups especially women to increase their economic and social conditions through increased food production and income as well as through improved social cooperation.

1,000 direct beneficiary farmer families from 30 villages across 9 communes of 2 districts including 120 women headed families, 120 farmer promoters, 120 leaders of village based farmer organizations, 120 farmer producer group members, 120 saving group leaders and 150 representative of local authority and local stakeholders. 2700 farmer families, or around 13,500 individual farmers, in 30 villages across 9 communes of 2 districts of Mondulkiri province will get the benefit from the project direct beneficiaries through farmer to farmer extension and by improved access to services provided by the farmer organizations supported by the project

The estimated results: 

1) Farmers are able to secure their food security and family income through the increase of rice production and to diversify their agricultural production, by applying the innovations introduced and promoted by the project;
2) Improved solidarity and cooperation among farmers as well as better skilled farmer representatives lead to a greater sustainability of the farmer organizations and their collective actions;
3) The vulnerable social groups are empowered and can engage with local and relevant national government institutions and local level decision-making process affecting their food and nutritional security strategies.
4) The local authority and local stakeholders will have increased their knowledge about and their action in promoting participatory and effective social development in their villages and communes.

The main activities:
The main activities foreseen to achieve these results and outputs include: *training and coaching of 120 key farmers/farmer promoters (FP), there are 40 FPs on system of rice intensification (SRI), 20 FPs on multi-purpose farm (MPF), 20 FPs on improving the technique of pig raising, 40 FPs on ecological chicken raising (ECR) to engage integrated farming. *30 village based farmer organizations will be set with 120 leaders, *120 saving group leaders and 120 farmer producer group leaders will be coached and trained regularly in order to mobilize 30 farmer-led saving groups, 30 women led saving groups, 20 rice farmer producer groups, 20 chicken farmer producer groups, 10 vegetable farmer producer groups; *15 rice banks, and 5 agricultural input producer groups (piglet, rice seed and chick); * setting up 2 community based learning and marketing centers (CBLM); * Organize the dialogues and forums to build the capacity of 150 local stakeholders at communal level, district level, * set up 1 project coordination team consist of 25 members include representatives of department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, village chief, commune council members, district authorities, NGOs representatives and other relevant government institutions, 22 local experts will be formed in one community based organization for providing development services to the villagers.

Staff recruitment for IFWP-MP in Mundulkiri province

On 19 October 2009, I accompanied with Mr. Ouch Ngak, Mr. Bao Vuthy to conduct interview for recruitment of project's staff base in Mundulkiri province. After the interview, we finally selected 2 qualified candidates to fulfill the position of district coordinator and M&E officer.

It is expected that the recruited staffs will work effectively under support from the project officer, project coordinator, etc. Currently, some staff are working in Koh Ngiek district, Mundulkiri province to conduct recruitment of community based field assistants, get to know local authorities, including district governors, commune council members, village chiefs and other governmental officials in the target districts. It is expected that introduction workshop will be organized at the beginning of November 2009.

Meeting with GAA, HKI

At 10 AM on 19 Octoer 2009, I attended a meeting between CEDAC, GAA, and HKI at CEDAC office. We discussed about the project steering committee of the projects funded by European Commission. We have agreed altogether to give comment on TOR (Term of Reference). Those 3 NGOs plan to meet every 3 months. Next meeting will be held of HKI office.

Field Mission to IFWP-MP Mundulkiri province

CEDAC has recently received approval of implementing a development project under direct funding support for the European Commission (EC). At the inception of implementing this project, a field mission for the project, entitled “Improving Livelihood for Women and Rural Poor in Mundulkiri province (IFWP-MP)” was conducted from 14-16 October 2009 at Koh Ngiek district, Mundulkiri province. 5 project staffs, included Yim Sok Sophors, Pol Samath, Mak Samath, Lam Deun, Nhim Sokhea accompanied in this mission. During the field mission, we have achieved the following points:

1. Office Settlement

The project staff tried to find house for renting as the project’s offices. Notably, the project team decided to rent one office based in Koh Ngiek district and another one based in Mundulkiri provincial town.

It is to note that one office in Koh Ngiek district will be rented with a price of 170 $US/month and 150$US/month for the project’s office in Mundulkiri provincial municipality. The agreements will be prepared from November 2009 and it will be reviewed annually.

2. Meeting among the Project Staff

During the field mission, a meeting was conducted in order to set the priority activity for October 2009. Those are mentioned as follows:

a. Organizing District Workshops

2 project’s introduction workshops will be organized at district level with averagely 60 participants per workshop. The project staff will invite different stakeholders to participate in the workshops including village chief, commune council members, district authorities, government line departments (agriculture, rural development, women’s affairs, environment, relevant NGOs), etc. The leaflet of project summary will be provided in the workshop as well as the farmer magazines produced by CEDAC. The one-day workshop will be organized on 16 and 18 November 2009.

b. Recruitment of Community based Field Assistants (CFAs)

6 CFAs will be recruited. The project will selected 4 CFAs in Koh Ngiek district and 2 CFAs in Pechr Da district. Based on the discussion during the meeting, number of target villages located in Koh Ngiek district will be more than in Pechr Da district that is why there are more CFAs will be recruited in Koh Ngiek district. On the other hand, 1 CFA who is currently working for ALP will continue working for IFWP-MP as he is qualified enough to be responsible for this role.

c. Study about the Target Villages with Local Authorities and other Local Stakeholders

The project staff of IFWP-MP will firstly join with Mr. Cheav Sopheak to learn about an existing project of CEDAC in Sok San commune, namely “Agricultural Development Project for the Sok San Indigenous Community”. Then, the project staff will conduct field visit to possible target villages in the target districts of the project. They will meet the district authorities, chief of commune councils, village chief in order to study about situation of village whether they are appropriate to be selected as the project’s target village or not. It is to note that some villages in Koh Ngiek district, majority of villagers conduct fishing as the main families’ income source, not rice cultivation.

3. Conclusion

Based on the result of the mission, it is able to conclude that the project staff have known and understood about the activities to be carried out in October 2009 especially they have known the target districts of the project. This mission is helpful for the project staff to select target villages. Moreover, the project staff will declare job announcement for recruitment of community based field assistants (CFAs). However, the project staff will conduct announcement for recruitment of project accountant based in Mundulkiri provincial municipality.

Meeting with project team member of CEDAC Mudulkiri province

At the morning of Wednesday, September 29, 2009, Mr. Sim Samoeun, Mr. Yim Sok Sophors, Mr. Pol Samath, Mr. Lam Deun and Mr. Nhim Sokea joint together for a first project team meeting at CEDAC office in Phnom Penh. The purpose of the meeting is to introduce about a new CEDAC's project in Mudulkiri province to all team members. The project will be started in October 2009. The project is funded by the European Commission.

During the meeting, Mr. Yim Sok Sophors together with Mr. Sim Samoeun presented the overview of the project to all participants by expressing in detail about the goal, objectives, expected results, expected outputs and main activities to be undertaken by the project. The participants additionally discussed about what to be carried out for October 2009 such as office rental, recruitment of project's staff and community based field assistants and so on. This project will enlarge CEDAC's intervention in Mudulkiri province.