CAMDOC

Development

The people in Roeul are in general poor farmers, living in small huts without electricity, decent water supply and toilets. Many people who used to have a small piece of farm land, sold this in order to survive or to pay for treatment of serious illnesses. At he end they are depending on work at other people's land. Other people sold their land in order to build a house. Now they are in a situation where they have to sell or rent their house as well. Although there is a national program to redistribute farm land, the execution is very slow and many malicious people and banks are 'interested to invest'.
Many families cannot afford their children to visit schools. Yet, there are too few teachers and the level of teaching is low. Teacher's salaries are low and many prefer to work in the cities where they can earn more, other leave to work in tourist industry in Siem Reap.
Due to bad sanitation and hygiene, as well as mal-nutrition, many people have a bad health and the death rate amongst the very young is high.

A variety of programs and projects, starting bottom up, must be introduced to help people develop towards a better active way of living, earning enough money to 'live' from, with better sanitation and less illnesses.

The sewing classes in the CAMDOC Training Center are the result from first attempts to form small groups in the villages to represent people with common interests regarding training in certain fields. The women in the sewing class hope to find a job afterwards or start a small shop themselves. Meanwhile the sewing teacher and a few of the better trainees started a tailor shop inside the Camdoc Training Center with support of CAMDOC. Thus, the 'profit' will partly be used to pay the people for their extra work, the remainder is meant to enable running the sewing activities self supporting later on.
Similar ideas exist for a computer class, with later related email and internet services.

The response or 'self-help' groups will also be involved in the introduction of the total sanitation concept, to take initiatives in health care, to start cooperations for farming or for social and society directed activities in the villages.

CAMDOC plans to involve already active local entrepreneurs in CAMDOC's development plans, directed to encourage them to be pioneers in developing a self supporting society in Reoul. The variety of activities must be wide, such that for a lot of local matters, skilled people can take initiatives and carry out the work themselves.

 

activities on commune level:

- distributed water supply, including wind or solar power driven pumps
- electricity generation based on PV-solar arrays
- start up small companies, using micro loans e.g. from the Asian Development Bank
- improve and enhance existing schools or build new schools
- improve the level of teaching by additional training (and salary)of teachers
- improve the roads connecting the villages with the main road and with each other
- introduce a system of basic health transport and assurance to support the very poor to go to hospital

on personal level:

- individual support for the poorest by a foster program (food for the family, stationaries and bike for the childs) and donated simple clean water wells
- introduce total sanitation concept, including composting toilets
- solar cooking
- gardening and agriculture with greater variety of fruits and vegetables against mal-nutrition