Cooperation for Women’s Economic Development

Countries:

Cambodia

Start project:

2018

Partners:

ICCO

The program aims to contribute to the enhanced social and economic status of women in Women Agriculture Cooperatives (WAC) in the Cambodian provinces: Kampong Speu, Kampong Chhnang, Pursat, and Battambang. Despite of a lot of progress in the WACs in recent years, WACs focus on a limited variety of products and the quality of the products is poor. Farmers also lack access to quality seeds and market information. WACs have limited capacity and skills especially in entrepreneurship and business management and their financial systems and other record keeping is poor. There is a high demand for good quality or organic vegetables in Cambodia, but WACs lack the knowledge of growing the vegetables based on the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) standard or producing organic crops. Moreover, the WACs still face the limited access to markets and capital to support for their investments or growth. The project therefore focuses on the emerging need to connect the WACs better to the markets. The overall objective of the project is to contribute to enhanced social and economic status of women in agriculture cooperatives in Kampong Speu, Kampong Chhnang, Pursat and Battambang. The specific objectives are: (1) Improved business capacity of women in running the WACs; and (2) Enabled business environment for supporting sustainability of WACs. This project is implemented together with FCA and LWD and funded by Women’s Bank.

Background

The project ' Women Agriculture Cooperatives (WAC)' aims to contribute to the enhanced social and economic status of women in Cambodia.

Project Updates

Success Story: Producer Group

Apart from working as a teacher at primary school, I also joined the producer group of vegetables at Women Agricultural Cooperative (WAC) called Svay Meanchey Satrey Samaky, living in Kchang Tbong village, Svay Commune, Kampong Chhnang Province, which is around 50km from Phnom Penh city. By joining the training with CWEDII project about technical to plant vegetables like long bean, cucumber, morning glory, it made me to consume the water less then before. Normally, I could get around 3 million – 4 million riels round year. The income that I got from selling vegetables, I kept for my children’s education, some to invest more in my farm, and also for joining the social events like wedding, ceremony, and other Buddhism events. I’m appreciated for what WACs have done so far especially the role of them to facilitate to sell my vegetables to the market through collective center. I don’t feel fear that my vegetables can’t be sold out anymore. However, I still need more training about technical about planting other crops as well.