Rural start-up business in Cambodia

Ek Yit and his wife used to feed their four children whatever scraps
they could toss together, but with a few lessons on fish farming, the
family now has a steady income as well as a healthy diet.

"Before I started raising fish, it was hard for my family to find
food. We used to mix some poor quality rice with whatever vegetables
we could find around the house – it was the same as the food fed to
pigs," 40-year-old Ek Yit said from Neang Teut commune in the eastern
Cambodian province of Kampong Cham. "Now we eat fish, and can exchange
the surplus for rice so my family has enough food. This means that we
can afford for our children to go to school."

In families like Ek Yit's, a child's life in poverty begins at birth.
Parents with little or no education or skills are unable to earn
livable wages, which often leaves children hungry or malnourished, and
unable to enroll in school because tuition is seen as an unnecessary
luxury. Children often have to work to earn extra income for the
family.

These people become prey to human traffickers and abusive employers.
Adults, youth and children migrate or are trafficked to work in
inhumane conditions at home or abroad, while girls and young women end
up in brothels.

As a child-centred organisation, Plan International focuses on
improving the lives of deprived children, and with a holistic outlook,
we target the roots of the problem, which means enabling adults and
communities to have stable livelihoods to support strong, healthy
children and families.

In 2011, Plan trained 165,148 people in agricultural, vocational and
business skills. Here are the stories of people Plan worked with in
Cambodia and Timor-Leste.

Job security = food security

In Cambodia, Plan works with more than 8,500 of the poorest families –
totaling approximately 44,500 people – in Siem Reap and Kampong Cham
provinces. In communities like Neang Teut, Plan has helped launch
economic security activities like the fish-raising project, providing
families with skills, start-up materials and baby fish to establish
small enterprises that combat poverty as well as associated food
insecurity.

"Plan taught me how to prepare the pond and the water for the fish,
and then how to change their diet according to the various stages of
their development," Ek Yit said. "First we must feed them with a kind
of worm, then they progress to insects. The fish reach their full size
in three months, and then I can either exchange them for rice in the
village, or sell them."

Ek Yit can now feed his four children – who range in age from two to
15 – while also pulling in 8,000 riel (nearly US$2) by selling a
kilogram of fish in the market. He has even been able to send his
eldest daughter to be educated in Phnom Penh, where she hopes
eventually to gain the qualifications to become a teacher.

Plan has expanded the project to teach villagers mushroom farming.

"Now I can grow mushrooms, too, so I don't have to go into the forest
to search for vegetables," Ek Yit said. "Producing food like this has
improved almost every aspect of our lives. We have enough to eat, the
children can go to school, and they are happy."

Sustaining livelihoods in rural areas

A native of a small village in Timor-Leste's Aileu district, Agusto
left his wife and four children home and moved about two hours away to
the capital, Dili, to work for two years before returning home to work
the family land.

Forty-year-old Augusto is one of the men who return home, but many do
not, creating a labour shortage in the districts and a surplus in the
capital, where unemployment stands at more than 40 percent.

To strengthen livelihoods in rural areas, Plan has been working to
build sustainable income-generating opportunities and to provide
skills training.

Plan helped Agusto and his fellow villagers set up a livelihoods
programme, training the initial group of seven women and seven men to
start up a chicken farming business. Some members of the group already
had experience raising chickens, but additional training from Plan and
the Ministry of Agriculture helped them to improve on their
traditional chicken farming methods.

The group also visited other Plan-supported groups in Lautem, about a
seven-hour drive east of Aileu, to learn from their successes and
challenges.

"It's important that the groups get to see successful small businesses
up and running. It inspires them and helps them learn what works and
what doesn't," said Julieta Araujo, youth programme coordinator.

"The seed money the groups are provided with at the beginning is very
small and is only for essential materials to help start up their
business. It's the work they put in themselves, how they work as a
team, and what they do with their training, that is the real key to
successful income generation," she said.

In Aileu, Agusto's group has set up a chicken coop and is hoping that
with money earned from the poultry, they can expand to raise goats.
They also plan to establish savings and loans activities to support
their members and others in the community.

"To ensure sustainability of the group, we will continue to need
support in the short term to build capacity," Agusto said.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/strengthening-livelihoods-to-combat-poverty-and-improve-lives