Local [Canadian] company honoured for work in Cambodia

Winnipeg native Cordell Jacks, centre, is an integral part of IDE’s success in Cambodia.

8/07/2010
By Trevor Suffield
Winnipeg Free Press (Alberta, Canada)

A St. James-based enterprise that aims to make life easier for Cambodian people in Southeast Asia has been honoured for the second time in less than two months.

International Development Enter­pri­ses, a registered charity, works with farmers to help them develop sustainable technologies that will allow them to become participants in local markets.

IDE’s goal is to bring 20 million poor, rural families out of poverty by 2020.

It has already helped approximately 3.8 million families with its initiatives, according to Stuart Taylor, executive director of IDE Canada.

Last month, IDE’s latest program, the Easy Latrine, was honoured with Best in Show at the IDEA International Design Excellence Awards.

The latrine is a low cost, easy-to-install device that costs $25, is installed in less than a day and helps combat the poor sanitation that kills many people in Cambodia each year.

"The components are pre-fabricated and we work with local crafts people that make the parts and are able to sell them and make money doing that," said Taylor, who lives in St. Boniface.

More than 3,000 latrines have already been sold since the program was launched approximately six months ago.
It was the second time IDE has been lauded recently for its efforts in the developing world.

In May, it won the inaugural Nestle Prize in Creating Shared Value for an innovation program in Cambodia.

The Farm Business Advisor program has facilitated 60 rural Cambodian entrepreneurs to start agricultural distribution and consulting services.

To date, the program has enabled 4,500 small-scale farm families to enhance their net income by 27%.
The award comes with a cash prize of more than $450,000, which the company will use to recruit and train 36 new advisors.

Taylor said that part of the success of the program was due to Tamara Baker and Cordell Jacks, IDE’s program manager for the water and sanitation program in Cambodia.

"It is so important, especially here in Cambodia where society is still rebuilding from the legacy of genocide and international support is necessary for a productive and healthy society to flourish," said Jacks in an email interview from Cambodia.

"The locals really appreciate the support too."

Jacks said that one of the latrine producer entrepreneurs was illiterate and went from making $50 a month, to over $600 a month by selling latrines.

With a worldwide staff of more than 400, and eight international field offices, Taylor said the company’s success goes much further than simply giving the proper tools to residents.

"Our approach is to design and market programs in such a way that those tools are available to them in the local market, through local retailers, produced by local manufacturers who are all making a profit, including the farmers," Taylor said.

Taylor said that in the next few years, IDE Cambodia will look to expand both the water and sanitation work and the farm business advisor work and act as a catalyst for other IDE programs.

In order for IDE to reach its goal of helping 20 million people, Taylor said other organizations need to step up and get involved.

"We need other businesses to come on board and look at investments in for-profit enterprises that are producing value for small rural farmers, be it affordable irrigation, affordable clean water or affordable sanitation for these latrines," Taylor said.

"We talk about basic human needs, and this is a way of using a market orientated approach to try and achieve that goal."

For more information, visit www.ide-canada.org.

Cambodia - Restricting pork imports

30 Dec 2009
Source: 5mpublishing

Surging pig imports from Thailand have pushed down prices and led to the closure of hundreds of pig farms, sector representatives said Friday as they called for the government to slash import quotas, according to Phnom Penh Post.

Curtis Hundley, chief of party for USAID's Cambodia MSME Strengthening Project, told a forum last week that authorised imports had surged over the last two years as importers filled a daily import quota of 800 pigs.

He said: "This surge, from an estimated 2,000 Thai pigs in 2007 to 300,000 in 2008 and 2009 has caused the closure of hundreds of swine businesses in Cambodia.

"These imports cost an estimated $35 million, which was sent to Thai producers. This is value that leaves Cambodia every year." Estimates did not include unregulated imports from Thailand and Vietnam.

Pig farmers attending the one-day pig-industry forum in Phnom Penh on 18 December called for the government to cut import quotas by up to 50 percent to lower supply and raise pork prices, though the director general of Cambodia’s Animal Health and Production Department raised concerns over whether local producers could meet domestic supply.

"Why do we allow imports?" he asked. "Because we recognised a daily shortage of pigs in the market when we were relying on local raisers, who don’t have the ability to raise enough pigs to meet current demand."

He also said a lack of competition from abroad could force pig prices beyond the means of ordinary consumers.

"Pig raisers want to sell their pigs for a high price, and buyers want low prices. We have to import pigs to keep prices stable on the market," he told Phnom Penh Post.

Kampong Speu province pig farmer, Prak Chandara, called for the government to slash the daily quota in half to 400, saying current prices at market are higher than the costs incurred raising the pigs.

He said: "If the government cuts the quota to 400 pigs per day, I think farmers will be happy to increase their production and we will have the ability to meet current demand."

Pork was retailing for 15,400 riels (US$3.69) per kilo in and around Phnom Penh on 17 December, according to Ministry of Commerce data, down 3.75 per cent from January 1.

Hem Kosal, who has been raising pigs in Kampong Cham province since 1995, acknowledged that imports are needed but said the government needs to develop a flexible quota system and set import limits daily or weekly to meet temporary shortfalls.

He said: "Imports have forced pig prices very low, and some family-run businesses have had to give up because they no longer earn enough to maintain their businesses. If the government does not solve the problem for us, small pig-raisers like me will die. I don't mean that we shouldn't import at all, but we need to consider quotas more carefully."

He acknowledged that imports outside the official quota system are a bigger concern.

Kampong Cham province slaughterhouse trader, Ting Vothy, called for the government to develop a province-by-province system of duties on pig imports that would take into account local supply and demand issues.

He also drew attention to the practice of charging unofficial fees to people transporting pigs at checkpoints set up along the road and called for government action to stamp out the practice.

Helping build dreams and a dam in Cambodia

The water gate construction crews are using a combination of old and new building methods — local trees become forms and props, and empty cement bags keep freshly poured cement from drying too quickly. Submitted photo

Deer Park man’s work honored at classical music fundraiser Upvalley

Monday, August 04, 2008
By CAROLYN YOUNGER
Napa Valley Register (California)

Four years ago Tobias Rose-Stockwell swung his leg over the back of a motorbike driven by a young, orange-clad monk and putt-putted into the Cambodian countryside with four other monks. The backpacking artist from the Napa Valley had no idea where he was headed.

In June, Rose-Stockwell and one of those monks, venerable Mean Somet, stood on an earthen levee and looked out over the 123-acre embodiment of a dream-turned-reality.

When expected October monsoons drench the Siem Reap region, the massive gate under their feet will be lowered to trap the water in the 50-hectare reservoir. Later the gate will be raised to fill an intricate system of canals — some of them centuries old — that provide liquid life to villages and surrounding rice fields.

The expanded reservoir, repaired levees and reconfigured water gate came about through the unfailing energy and determination of Rose-Stockwell and local village leaders; not to mention a fundraiser held thousands of miles away in the Napa Valley — an evening concert and auction that raised $90,000 for the project.

Organized and produced by mezzo-soprano Meghan Scheibal, the “Young Musicians for Young Humanitarians” concerts featuring classically trained singers, are held several times a year to benefit the efforts of young men and women working behind the scenes to improve the lives of others. Last year, the spotlight was turned on longtime Deer Park resident Rose-Stockwell, then 28.

After nearly four years of scrambling for money, working with village elders, Cambodian government officials, Cambodian Mine Action Center and structural engineers from Engineers Without Borders, Rose-Stockwell was floored by this generous outpouring of support.
First to raise his bidding paddle that night was winery owner Dick Grace. The move added $10,000 to the pot. Then Grace raised his paddle again for an additional $10,000. It wasn’t long before paddles at every table were being raised — at $5,000 a bid.

“The auctioneer couldn’t keep up,” a still incredulous Rose-Stockwell recalled. “We raised $90,000 in three minutes; and after years of scraping together the first $30,000, this was incredible It was overwhelming. I almost fell over.”

The story of those years between Rose-Stockwell’s first visit and the reservoir’s restoration follows in the best traditions of village storytellers everywhere. What seemed at first a farfetched premise — that a 24-year-old stranger from Northern California could come to the rescue of nearly 10,000 men, women and children half a world away — became a tale of heroic proportions.

And there’s a sequel in the works.

“The change has been pretty enormous,” Rose-Stockwell agreed last week during a short visit to his family’s home.

The sometimes harrowing motorbike ride brought him and a friend, Tracey Rolls, to the Balangk commune near the town of Siem Reap. The two “farangs,” or foreigners, were met by 30 community leaders and about a dozen monks who explained their plight. The group asked the pair for help restoring an earthen dam that controlled the water level of the region’s life-sustaining rice fields: A dam that had been unusable for a decade.

“We were totally taken aback,” Rose-Stockwell recalled. “I had the feeling they hadn’t ever gotten anybody to come there, that we were the first.”

Something about the people and the project appealed to Rose-Stockwell and he decided to see what he could do.

In the years that followed, the community worked out a proposal for the dam. Rose-Stockwell made and sold original prints and sketches of the people he had met in both Thailand (where he had worked briefly in an orphanage) and Cambodia. He founded the nonprofit, Human Translation, and set up a Web site with essays and photographs of the region and the people living there.

“That was pretty effective in raising awareness, but not effective in raising big bucks,” he said, “and it was very time-consuming. At that point I thought the project was going to cost $25,000.”

He wrote grants — dozens of them — but didn’t get a response.

He discovered, too, that the region where government troops and the Khmer Rouge regularly clashed until as late as 1998 had never been cleared of landmines. Rose-Stockwell immediately applied for help from the Cambodian Landmine Action Center. It took four months to clear the western embankment where work on the water gate was slated to begin. Mine-clearing continued on the southern and northern embankments of the reservoir, and in and around the canals. (In the canal area mine crews, clearing 60 feet a day, have so far found and detonated 24 anti-personnel and seven anti-tank mines.)

Then he learned about Engineers Without Borders and met with EWB member Steve Forbes who came on his own to Cambodia to take a look at the community and the crumbling levee system.

“He saw it and said, ‘I don’t think you realize how big this is, Tobias. It’s big,’” Rose-Stockwell recalled. “I said, ‘All right let’s do it.’ That was three and a half years ago.”

With Forbes’ encouragement, he was able to get supplemental consulting and support from the organization.

“We could have done it exclusively with Cambodian engineers,” he said, “which we started to do but there was a big communication barrier and I wanted to be actively involved — to learn — and I couldn’t do this with the Cambodians.”

Rose-Stockwell estimates that by this point thousands of e-mails were winging back and forth across the Internet. EWB engineers guided the project through the entire design process, a Cambodian engineering coordinator, Ong Chanda, and translators were hired and 200 community members were trained in the construction and repair of the reservoir and water gate.

By 2006 the estimated cost of the project was $67,000. A year later the projected cost had doubled.

While Rose-Stockwell was coordinating the reservoir’s restoration and working with a full-time paid staff of five Cambodians and a “super volunteer” from Chicago, Wil Haynes-Morrow, he was also beginning to understand the needs of the community: Contaminated water and the resulting illnesses and deaths were major problems. So were the recurring bouts of scabies — barely visible burrowing mites that infected hundreds of children and led to serious secondary infections.

Rose-Stockwell set about organizing a water purification program — the red filter program which provides inexpensive but effective water filters for clusters of local households. He worked with the local hospital to develop a scabies treatment regimen of antibiotics and scabies medicine.

In addition, “we’ve been buying large jugs of benzyl benzoate and going from village to village for scabies cleaning ceremonies,” he said. “Everything is tied in. You can’t just look at one thing as the sole solution to the community’s problems. With the reservoir we were trying to get to one of the most basic issues, the local economy — if they don’t have water to grow rice they won’t have rice to sell. If they don’t have enough rice to sell they can’t afford to send their children to a doctor. It’s the same with water. If they don’t have clean water and they are too sick to work, they can’t plant rice ...”

To help with these projects Scheibal is planning a second fundraising concert, dinner and auction in the Clos Pegase caves Aug. 17. This year proceeds will be earmarked for clean water, basic sanitation, health and education projects, already underway through Rose-Stockwell’s nonprofit Human Translation.

“The basis of Human Translation is regardless of where you live, regardless of who you are, there is a universal human understanding that we should try to help one another,” Rose-Stockwell said, adding, “I’ve learned a lot about people and what it takes to make a difference. It’s a challenging question and the answer is, it doesn’t take much.”