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| Sewing the seeds ... the Hotel de la Paix Sewing Centre teaches skills. (Photo: Leisa Tyler) |
Angkor's tourist income is funding community projects beyond the Cambodian heritage site, writes Leisa Tyler.
March 26, 2011
The Age (Australia)
Cambodia's Angkor Heritage Park is the fastest-growing tourism attraction of any World Heritage monument. Increasing at an average rate of 30 per cent a year, arrivals are expected to reach 3 million this year, up from 200,000 visitors 10 years ago.
Tourism has turned the temples into one of the most sought-after experiences in the world and brought development and infrastructure to the nearby town of Siem Reap.
But few people in Siem Reap province benefit from these tourist dollars. Predominantly rural, the people remain among the poorest in Cambodia, many living on less than a dollar a day.
A Bangkok-based hotel management group is hoping to change this. "Tourism is better equipped and in a better position to deal with poverty than many governments," says Bill Black, the managing director of Ativa Hospitality, a management company that has the Hotel de la Paix and Shinta Mani hotel in Siem Reap in its portfolio.
Black is a man on a mission. Diverting a percentage of room rates into community-based projects, the genteel Canadian wants to prove that, with a little effort and imagination, tourism can be a vehicle for community development.
Black's first project, the Shinta Mani Hospitality School (now called the Institute of Hospitality), started in 2004. It enrolled 20 disadvantaged youths in a year-long hospitality course conducted at the Shinta Mani hotel that would prepare them to work in the town's burgeoning hotel industry.
The program was a success and became the model for similar projects in Cambodia. Another Shinta Mani initiative is the Connect program, in which hotel guests can buy and deliver practical items such as wells and vegetable seed, piglets or bicycles to families in need.
Since its inception in 2005, the program has built 1043 water wells with mini-market gardens and 97 small concrete houses with septic tanks.
Black has since established the Hotel de la Paix Sewing Centre with funds from the five-star hotel, which teaches needlework and accounting skills to young women.
More recently the Hotel de la Paix teamed with MasterCard to raise money for a new workshop, which is now under construction at the sewing centre. A previous project with the credit-card company bought 900 bicycles for underprivileged school children.
"The idea is to give people the opportunity to be self-sufficient," Black says, explaining that first they give families a well and vegetable seed. When they see the family has successfully grown vegetables, including surplus to sell for income, then they may buy them a bicycle or a female piglet to raise and breed.
Fiona Donato and daughter Felicity, 10, from Dover in Tasmania, became involved with Black's Connect during a school trip to Cambodia, buying two water wells and a piglet and delivering them to the donors. Donato says the experience was "life changing", and the school has since donated two more piglets, a house and 500 mosquito nets through fund raising.
1 comment:
Koh Tral Island must not be forgotten
By Ms. Rattana Keo
Why do Koh Tral Island, known in Vietnam as Phu Quoc, a sea and land area covering proximately over 10,000 km2 [Note: the actual land size of Koh Tral itself is 574 square kilometres (222 sq miles)] have been lost to Vietnam by whose treaty? Why don’t Cambodia government be transparent and explain to Cambodia army at front line and the whole nation about this? Why don't they include this into education system? Why?
Cambodian armies are fighting at front line for 4.6 km2 on the Thai border and what's about over 10,000km2 of Cambodia to Vietnam. Nobody dare to talk about it! Why? Cambodian armies you are decide the fate of your nation, Cambodian army as well as Cambodian people must rethink about this again and again. Is it fair?
Koh Tral Island, the sea and land area of over 10,000 square kilometres have been lost to Vietnam by the 1979 to 1985 treaties. The Cambodian army at front line as well as all Cambodian people must rethink again about these issues. Are Cambodian army fighting to protect the Cambodia Nation or protecting a very small group that own big lands, big properties or only protecting a small group but disguising as protecting the Khmer nation?
The Cambodian army at front lines suffer under rain, wind, bullets, bombs, lack of foods, lack of nutrition and their families have no health care assistance, no securities after they died but a very small group eat well, sleep well, sleep in first class hotel with air conditioning system with message from young girls, have first class medical care from oversea medical treatments, they are billionaires, millionaires who sell out the country to be rich and make the Cambodian people suffer everyday.
Who signed the treaty 1979-1985 that resulted in the loss over 10,000 km2 of Cambodia??? Why they are not being transparent and brave enough to inform all Cambodians and Cambodian army at front line about these issues? Why don't they include Koh Tral (Koh Tral size is bigger than the whole Phom Phen and bigger than Singapore [Note: Singapore's present land size is 704 km2 (271.8 sq mi)]) with heap of great natural resources, in the Cambodian education system?
Look at Hun Sen's families, relatives and friends- they are billionaires, millionaires. Where did they get the money from when we all just got out of war with empty hands [in 1979]? Hun Sen always say in his speeches that Cambodia had just risen up from the ashes of war, just got up from Year Zero with empty hands and how come they are billionaires, millionaires but 90% of innocent Cambodian people are so poor and struggling with their livelihood every day?
Smart Khmer girl Ms. Rattana Keo,
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