Pongro Village Sustainable Community Project
During the 2011 agricultural season in Cambodia, flooding devastated rural crops and communities were left with little to no food. Project Enlighten Team member Mr. Sim Sao and his village identified this community challenge, came to us with a need and proposed a simple resolution to this challenge through the creation of a vital rice bank program: Pongro Village’s ‘Progress Agriculture Bank,’ (PAB). Project Enlighten has provided the “seed money,” for this community project just outside of Siem Reap, Cambodia, to help impoverished villagers have access to rice during critical shortage periods (August-November). During these times of rice shortage or natural disaster villagers can rely on the PAB for rice, food and seed.
Families in rural Cambodia regularly face the effects of drought and flooding. This is why it becomes really important to find ways of making sure families have access to food all year. Rice is an essential staple to a Cambodian’s diet; a six-member family requires 5.5 pounds of rice per day to sustain health and life, for the poor this is a huge quantity. Having access to a rice bank, or storage of rice kept for emergency purposes, reduces the work of women who would otherwise have a labor-intensive task of searching for food during the periods of rice shortage.
As Mr. Sim Sao’s describes, “PAB will provide rice with very small interest rates. We will work with poor families so that they can survive, living sustainably into the future. The villages members divide up the rice in the bank, each families getting around 100kg to 200kg each, depend on size of their family. Then in November, when the rice harvest is produced, they pay back the rice they owed to PAB together with 10% interest or another 10kg of rice.”
Previously villagers borrowed rice from private lenders with high interest rates. Through their participation in PAB, they can borrow rice with low-interest rate. In addition, the interest paid remains in the hands of the community. Especially, for poor and vulnerable families, the rice bank helps prevent them from falling into debt due to the high interest rate charged by private moneylenders. The objective of PAB is not only to help the community of Pongro village during periods of food scarcity, but also to mobilize financial resources for community projects voted on by the village. Which means the community can identify and resolve not only emergency relief challenges but also invest in educational programs, access to clean water and medicine if needed.
The rice bank will have a broad impact on the life of its members and on the whole community. The rice bank not only helps to ensure food security, but it contributes to the development of social capital, human resources at the local level and community physical resources. It makes this Project Enlighten sponsored program with PAB so important for the long-term sustainability of rural communities, while placing social responsibility in the hands of the communities we work with. The greatest resolutions come from within a community, as only they have the power to discover the right way to resolve the challenges they meet in a way that works with their cultural and social considerations. We are proud to the support progress of this Cambodian community.