Rural Assistance Program Prey Veng (RAP), Cambodia

From its initiation in January 1999 through the first months of the pandemic in Spring 2020, Kasumisou Foundation’s Rural Assistance Program  ( RAP) has helped us to transform lives and rebuild communities to a degree that we never imagined possible when our program first started.

• The RAP has drilled more than  500 water wells which, on average, were each accessed by four families
• We have planted many thousands of trees to improve soil fertility
• We have  promoted the adoption of organic farming, crop diversification and other innovative techniques which helped our often illiterate  farmers safely  achieve greater crop yields without increasing their use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides
• We have  provided countless small livestock - typically chickens, piglets and ducks but also a limited number of cows - to help the poorest farmers improve their families’ own nutrition while also providing them some opportunities to earn cash income.
• We have promote and encouraged,  whenever possible, general education in these communities

As the incidence of extreme poverty and hunger steadily declined among the farmers in our target villages, we expanded the program's area until our Rural Assistance Program  eventually covered three districts and more than 40 villages in rural Prey Veng province, Cambodia.

The complexity of this program, its geographical remoteness from the capital city, Phnom Penh, and the fact that, unlike our other programs for which we employed our own staff, this program was started and flourished as a partnership with a local NGO (non-governmental organization) which provided the staff with local knowledge and essential expertise. Those three factors - complexity, remoteness and the use of outside staffing - made it essential, we felt, that we should personally visit the program area on a very regular basis. Our quarterly visits to the program area allowed us to review our progress against both short and medium term goals and to course correct where needed. Those visits also allowed us to get to know many of the farmers who were participating in the program and to understand better the individual challenges which each of them faced. These hands on  visits also  helped us to closely watch program expenditures and to  deploy our resources effectively and  efficiently.

Our partner organization changed and evolved over time. The  staff assigned to our program rotated in and out, making the need for  active involvement and very close supervision on our part even more important. Our role in actively managing the program became  greater rather than declining as one might have expected as our program matured and achieved many of its benchmark goals.

The impact of the Covid pandemic and specifically the restrictions on travel  have made it nearly impossible for us to exercise our formerly close involvement on the ground. These restrictions had led us to suspend the program from the earliest months of the pandemic. Now after more than two years of suspension, we have very reluctantly decided that it is time formally to close down our Rural Assistance Program.

After more than twenty years of our  active participation in this program, we are so proud of what we have achieved in our efforts to   improve  both the natural environment and the lives and livelihoods of the farmers in rural Prey Veng province, historically  one of Cambodia’s poorest provinces.

Through our partnership with you, our  generous donors, we can see the transformation of both the land and the people that has taken place over the past 20 years. We will always be grateful to you for sharing this challenge with us and the success that it has achieved. Our heartfelt thanks to you all for your long time and loyal support. It has been our privilege to work with you.

We sincerely hope that you will consider shifting your support to our other programs which will continue to operate in Phnom Penh.  Our AIDS Patient Family Support Program, supports fragile families impacted by HIV status and extreme poverty and our Champey Academy, brings art, dance and music instruction  to disadvantaged children and youth. Additionally, Champey also provides  a safe environment  for fun and friendship for our students.  Both of these  programs are active on the GlobalGiving site.

Thank you,

Barbara & Mark

Links:

• Champey Academy of Arts
• Help Destitute Moms with Aids Care for Their Kids ( FSP)

Our program updates over these past 2 years have   described the impact of COVID 19 on our Rural Assistance program. Severe travel restrictions for Mark have been  a huge impediment to getting our program back to normal.  Our close personal involvement in this program, now spanning nearly 20 years, has always been a  key to its success.

Our personal knowledge of  our  participants family backgrounds, their needs and aspirations have been  pivotal to the success of the program. We  know how resources are being utilized and because were speaking directly with our participants, we knew  what was working well and what changes were needed.  It is virtually impossible  to run this program without the assurances and safeguards  that  our  personal  supervision  provides  because   unlike our programs in  Phnom Penh , we do not have locally placed staff in the countryside  who would be able  to oversee the the day to day  operations of the entire program. Mark’s frequent  on-site visits to review  our projects  and speak with participants were essential to monitor and maintain  efficient use of our limited  resources.

Cambodia  is now substantially open.   We had hoped for increasing normalization not only in  Cambodia but also in Thailand and Japan, countries that  Mark must transit through to get to Cambodia.  Japan remains closed to most foreigners.   Now with the rise of   the new Omicron variant of COVID, particularly in China, a  significant source of tourism for Cambodia, everything is once again uncertain and so  we must  reluctantly  continue the “ pause” of  our   current operations of our Rural Assistance.  

We are deeply grateful to you for your understanding during these challenging times. We are hopeful that this will soon , finally be put behind us.

Barbara & Mark Rosasco