Case study | CEDAC

–Brief

For three decades Cambodia was ravaged by civil war, genocide and authoritarian regimes. The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (CEDAC) was set up in August 1997 as a national Cambodian NGO, to develop sustainable agriculture and rural development in Cambodia in response to the country's desperate need for national reconstruction. CEDAC was created with initial support from the French non-government organization GRET (Group for Research and Exchange of Technology).

Seven people worked with CEDAC at the beginning, and CEDAC supported farmers in 2 villages in Kandal Province. As of August , 2009, there were 431 people including 162 women working with CEDAC (382 people or 88.63% work as technical staff and another 49 people or 11.37% work as administration/supporting staff), providing direct assistance to about 100,000 families from 3,200 villages, 579 communes and 99 districts in 20 provinces of Cambodia. More than 1,000 students and rural development practitioners have benefited from CEDAC's training and exchange program. More than 100 organizations and agencies (community, national and internal organizations, foreign government agencies and multilateral organizations) have been cooperating with CEDAC during its 9 years of operation. CEDAC publications, especially the Farmer Magazine and Farmer and Nature Booklet series are widely used by farmers and development workers in Cambodia. Currently, CEDAC is considered as the biggest Cambodian Agriculture and Rural Development NGO.

Originally, the activities of the center focused on agriculture research and training. In 2002, CEDAC expanded its field operations, especially for farmer training and extension programs. CEDAC developed a five year plan (2003-2007) aimed at supporting farmers in 1,200 villages. As a result of achieving their plan objectives earlier than expected and the growing demand for their services, CEDAC have recently developed an ambitious strategic plan for 2008-2012. This plan aims at supporting 500,000 farming families or 2.5 million people (around 25% of Cambodia's farming population) to enhance their lives through sustainable farming methods and improved social cooperation and cooperative business practices. The new plan will focus on farmer led agricultural research and extension, community-based natural resources management, cooperative business (community finance and marketing) and the development of participatory local government.

–Vision and mission

CEDAC envisions a Cambodian society where small farming households enjoy good living conditions and strong mutual cooperation, with the right and power to determine their own destiny, as well as playing an important role in supplying healthy food for the whole society.

To achieve this vision CEDAC is committed to working for the improvement of lives of small farmers and other rural poor by enabling them to increase food production and income while ensuring environmental sustainability and maintaining strong social cooperation.

–Focus

• Building the capacity of the producer organization and networks, as well as linking them to market
• Enabling rural communities to have access to information, responsible services and resources for the improvement of family economy and for sustainable rural development
• Improving the living conditions and social status of marginalized, vulnerable and under-represented social groups
• Supporting the development of participatory and environmentally-oriented local government
• Building networks and partnerships which promote the development of ecologically-based family agriculture

–Innovation: Roadmap and framework 2006 to 2010

CEDAC envisions a Cambodian society where small farming households enjoy good living conditions and strong mutual cooperation, with the right and power to determine their own destiny, as well as playing an important role in supplying healthy food for the whole society. To achieve this vision CEDAC is committed to working for the improvement of lives of small farmers and other rural poor by enabling them to increase food production and income while ensuring environmental sustainability and maintaining strong social cooperation.

From 2006 to 2010, CEDAC has committed to implementing the following major activities:

1. Introduce a participatory research and extension strategy called Innovations in Ecological Agriculture and Sustainable Natural Resources Management into approximately 6000 villages in Cambodia (about 50% of total farming villages).
2. Introduce a participatory research and extension strategy called Innovations in Ecological Agriculture and Sustainable Natural Resources Management into approximately 6000 villages in Cambodia (about 50% of total farming villages).
3. Strengthen and expand village-based self-help associations and networks in 5000 villages, with the participation of 200,000 active members.
4. Strengthen the capacity of 100,000 women in farm-household management and enable them to participate in local development through group training and an exchange program.
5. Assist 250,000 rural children and youth to prepare for future employment in rural areas, by ensuring these children have access to primary school education, improved knowledge and skills in sustainable agriculture, and business management and leadership training.
6. Support the development of participatory and environment-oriented local government in 500 communes by strengthening cooperation and interaction between commune councils and farmer organizations, so that they take collective action to address local development issues.
7. Enable 50,000 vulnerable families, especially marginal and landless farmer families, HIV-AIDS affected families and those with disabled members, to better their living standards and self-confidence through acquiring farming skills and knowledge.
8. Support local infrastructure development and community-based resource management in 2,000 villages, with a focus on community ponds, small and medium-scale irrigation schemes, and community-based regulations for the protection of natural resources and the environment.
9. Support 600 village-based producer groups and networks (about 10,000 farming families) to market their organic products to domestic consumers in urban areas.
10. Provide socially-responsible credit services to farmer organizations for investing in the development of ecological agriculture, integration with other agricultural techniques, and business advice support.

Of the above-mentioned major activities, activities 1, 2 and 3 are the key stepping stones for CEDAC's ecological agriculture and community development program. The achievement of objective 1 will enable small farmers to increase food production and income (especially using System of Rice Intensification methods) by effective use of existing resources (please refer to Example 1). Objectives 2 and 3 will organise the rural population so that it can become a force in mobilizing resources for mutual cooperation, assisting other members of the community, and for overall local development. Strong farmer organizations will influence and interact with the government, especially local governments, to take more responsibility for sustainable local economic, social and environmental development.

It seems that CEDAC works within own roadmap and framework as we are now trying to do. It will be great if we can meet some of the directors and learn about their operation to set up scheduled roadmap. We've sent an email to learn more about difficulties and innovation of CEDAC, and we're looking forward to their reply.

–Reference

Cedac. [http://www.cedac.org.kh], retrieved May 5, 2010.

Research | Healthcare in Cambodia

For the poor the accessibility of healtcare in Cambodia is mediocre. Public healthcare is too expensive for the poor due to the corruption. Most of the poor people are not willing to use public health services. Instead they rely on selfhealing or traditional healers. According to UNDP people die at an average age of 57, that is lower than in neighbouring countries. Infant mortality rate is at about 95 per 1,000 live births. Cambodians also have more babies, die more often in malaria and are more likely to die when giving a birth than their Vietnamese or Thai neighbours. Health situation in Cambodia is among the worst in the world.

–High cost
Poor health comes with a high price in Cambodia. Cambodians spend averagely 33$ per person a year to treat sickness while goverments health expenditure is only about 2$ per capita. For the money the citizens spend on healthcare they'll get untrained doctors and drug sellers or "freelancing" government health workers for help and the expense can even worsen their condition and destroy families and threat their lives.“Expenditure on health care is one of the main reasons people are pushed into poverty—they have to sell off assets to pay for services,”
(Indu Bhushan, Asia Development Bank.) And on the other hand poverty is one of the main reasons of poor health, and that forms a vicious circle. Many districts in Cambodia still lack properly equipped hospital buildings and educated staff. Also, the capacity of the Ministry of Health to plan, manage, and finance health services remains weak.

–Problems in the system
When Cambodia was liberated from the Khmer Rouge rule in 1979, there weren't any doctors or nurses, no medical equipment, no handbooks, laboratory facilities or any other essentials. The government started training medical personnel using recovered hand-written notes from the pre-1975 medical classes. Training involved copying the notes verbatim in a situation where paper, pens, pencils and everything else, especially money, was in short supply. Even today for example the one year education of midwives doesn't include any clinical experience which is one reason to high mortality of women giving birth. Although there has been major development in healtcare since Khmer Rouge time due to different programs involving foreign money and NGO's, inadequate facilities and obsolete and inappropriate practices are troubling the health care system, especially considering the poor. Cambodian government funding remains an acute problem.

Stagnation and the very low levels of medical care in the public sector reflect the absence of the rule of law in Cambodia and the lack of genuine political will for change at the highest levels. Certainly, the Cambodian government health budget, which in 1998 reflects six per cent of the national budget, indicates something less than full commitment. - Stephan Rousseau, the head of MEDICAM

–Notes

• Problems in the healthcare system are substantial and corruption related
  
• The cost of healthcare for the poor is so high that it leads to a vicious circle
• Many organisations or corporations are dealing with healthcare in Cambodia. for example UNDP, UNICEF, ADB and GE.

–Reference
Healing Cambodia's Health Care by Eric Van Zant, Asian Development Bank. [http://www.adb.org/Documents/Periodicals/ADB_Review/2004/vol36_3/healing.asp], retrieved May 2, 2010.
Asian Human Rights Commission by Beth Goldring, Human Right Solidarity [http://www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/1999vol09no02/795/], retrieved May 2, 2010.

Open thoughts | Entrepreneur Support Programs

It seems that there are plenty of organizations and programmes to support poor to create and develop their own businesses with the help of financial support, education or other tools. Some programmes and projects are created by International Labour Organizations, some by international government-financed organizations such as Asia SEED or international social enterprises like EDW: The Cambodian Entreprise Programme and so on. There's also fast growing and widely spreading micro-finance programs like Banking with the Poor to help new entrepreneurs get their company started.

Naturally, it's extremely difficult to get information on all of the ongoing programs and how successful they are especially sitting here in Finland. One can only imagine how hard it must be for the poor Cambodians to get those information without access to the Internet. We doubt the accessibility of the poor to the fund.

After decades of projects and programmes there seems to be still almost no co-operation between the different organizations. In our humble opinion, what is needed now is an easy access to the fund from a collective efforts so that those in need can learn how they can improve their lives instead of waiting for some program to come to their own villages.

Research | Corruption - Point of no return

 A high degree of corruption is detrimental to the wealth creation of many nations. Corruption in goverment takes many forms, but according to Michael Beenstock, all forms of corruption share "the secret and usually ilegal abuse of conferred monopoly status". Beenstock distinguished three specific types of corruption:

1. Extortionary corruption, in wich payment is demanded for performing legal acts.
2. Subversive corruption, where bribery secures illegal actions.
3. Benign corruption, in wich the salaries of the lower-grade civil servants are modestly augmented by additional payments, that in many ways resemble tips or gratitudes.

 Corruption introduces distortions in the efficiency of resource allocation. When inferior products/services are chosen, the society is worse off. Even when the best products are selected, the existance of bribe means a higher cost. Corruption not only creates a concentration of unproductive wealth, much of wich flies out of the country, but also corrodes the nation´s culture, attitudes and values.

 Cambodia has the three types of corruption. The need of an Anti-Corruption Law, is more than obvious. The efforts to have an Anti-Corruption Law in Cambodiastarted in 1994. Each draft produced over the past 16 years has been below the international standards. The final draft was made available last week (10 - 05 - 2010)  after it was seriously scrutinized by concerning ministries. The 25-page anti-corruption law consists of 9 chapters with 57 articles, covering many forms of corruptions. The draft law requires all government officials in particular to declare their assets and debts. Most of Cambodians say that this law will never see the light.
 
http://piseth.info/docs/Cambodia%20anti%20corruption%20law%20-%20English.pdf
http://www.scribd.com/doc/10126390/Anti-Corruption-Law-of-Cambodia
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/6914793.html
The Marketing of Nations by Philip Kotler

Book | The Marketing of Nations

The Marketing of Nations by Phillip Kotler, is a guide book, to help the readers understand, formulate and develop the bases for leading a nation to development. The book explains how to asses and build up the nation´s strategic visons and postures, in different situations. For all that, The Marketing of Nations, is a book that gathers lots of important issues that are related to the current situation in Cambodia. I founded specially interesting the chapter about subsistence economies, and how to break the vicious circle.

Most subsistent economies are trapped, as Professosrs Reitsma and Kleinpenning argue, in a complex web of interlocking vicious circles. Without assistance from the outside world, it is believed that these countries will not be able to free themselves from the vicious circles. Low productivity is one of the major bottlenecks holding back economic development.

Improving productivity requires improving the "Eight M´s": Management (goverment leadership); manpower (human capital); machines (production system and equipment); money (capital); materials (natural resources); methods (approperiate technology); message (gathering critical information) and market (accesing the world market). For subsistent economies, foreign aid (financial, technical and managerial) would allow these countries to increase their productivity. Then earnigs would rise, the domestic market would expand, and agricultural and industrial producers could sell more, make more profit, an be able to make investments to raise productivity and output further. In this way, the countries would break out of their vicious circles and become sufficiently dynamic.

Another strategy to create wealth among this group, was proposed by Irma Adelman in 1984. The strategy is known as agricultural-demand-led industrialization (ADLI). This strategy consists of building a domestic massconsumption market by improving the productivity of small and medium scale agriculture. Irma claims, that small and medium scale agriculture has a larger linkage effects with domestic industry than larger scale agriculture, while having at least as high productivity level. Smaller farms are labor intensive side and use domestic implements and machinery. Small farmers have a larger marginal porpensity to consume, and a larger marginal share of their consumption is devoted lto ocally produced textiles, clothing, footwear and simple consumer durables such as refrigerators bicicles, sewing machines and simple electronics. Also they tend to invest heavily in building up human capital, devoting a large share of their incremental income to education.