Rural Assistance Program Prey Veng (RAP), Cambodia

Rural Assistance Program : then and now 

             1999 ~ 2017

A foundation for success...

Since the early days  when  our Rural Assistance Program began in January 1999, we have worked hard  to improve the livelihoods of our farmers by encouraging them to diversify their farming from growing only a single annual crop of rainy season rice.

With that end in mind, we drilled wells and gave  our farmers access to year round  water from those wells to diversify: 

• We encouraged them to plant vegetable gardens and fruit trees.
• We provided the seeds and seedlings. 
• We provided small livestock such as chickens, ducklings and piglets to further the goal of diversified agriculture. 
• We urged our farmers to abandon  use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides with which they were poisoning the soil and the water around their farms and villages. 
• We urged and trained farmers to use organic fertilizers and compost.
• We embarked on a program to plant many thousands of trees in that badly deforested area. 

These things in combination,important to a critically important need to restore  the soil’s natural fertility and improve our farmer’s crop yields without resorting  to the misuse of dangerous chemicals. 

It all comes together....

Over the course of sixteen years, our program’s life has led to great improvements in the health and livelihoods of hundreds of farm families.  The pervasive hunger which plagued  our target area when we began, has  largely been eliminated from our villages.  Children whose families had once been much too poor to even consider  education were finally able to attend school reliably. Incredibly, many children from our families succeeded in completing high school.  A small number of those high school graduates were selected to join our Kasumisou Scholars program, receiving scholarships which allowed them to enroll in universities in Phnom Penh.

A natural evolution

Two years ago, with hunger nearly eliminated from our target area and most children attending school on a regular basis, the environment in our villages is significantly greener due to  the planting of thousands of trees by our farmers since 2000.  Quite naturally, we began to think about the next step toward improving the livelihoods of our farmers.   

We chose to introduce and promote moringa  cultivation in our target area, to help them to earn meaningful cash income, for the first time in their lives. (Moringa is a fast gwoting plant whose leaves are used as a nuturitional supplement.)  To pursue that goal we acquired organic moringa seeds, contracted with a moringa processor in Phnom Penh to purchase our farmers’  moringa leaves and hired a young graduate of the Royal University of Agriculture whose primary assignment was to instruct our farmers in the successful cultivation of moringa on a significant scale.   For the first phase of this new effort, our field team selected fifty farmers to pioneer this new effort and worked with them to convert small plots of their land to moringa cultivation. 

In April of this year, our pioneer farmer group began to harvest their first moringa leaves.  The harvest of the moringa leaves has continued at regular intervals through this month.  Twice a week, a member of our team picks up the leaves at drop off points in each village and then transports them, packed under ice in the bed of a pickup truck, to our processor in Phnom Penh. 

Like all ventures, there can be setbacks,  for example, excessive rains in August caused many of the plants to yellow, making their leaves unsaleable. But in general,   the results have generally met all of our hopes and expectations and the cash which our farmers have received for their moringa leaves have put them on a path to greater financial independence. 

 At the present time, we are looking for sponsors for wells so that additional farmers can join our projects.

 Our sincere thanks to our donors for their generous support ! This project continues to change lives.

Barbara & Mark Rosasco

GlobalGiving 50% Donor Match Day July 12 can help our Moringa Project !

As we recently  reported,the  initial group  for the Moringa Project  was 50 farmers , included including  18 women farmers, most of whom are the primary support for their family. Their average  is 44. These photos will introduce you  to some of our farmers. As you can see, moringa farming is hard work beginning with germinating seedlings for transplant into hardpacked soil in barren fields.

The newly transplanted moringa plants  will require at least 3 months to mature from planting of the seeds to first harvest opportunity. Once matured, the moringa plants can begin to provide our farmers with a regular monthly income as the leaves can  harvested about every 30 days.

As you look at these photos, imagine what a rising  monthly income can do to improve the lives of these subsistence farmers. Moringa planting represents a rare opportunity for sustainable income in a remote area with few other economic opportunities  and  it represents a real economic game changer for our  farming families.

Key to the success of this program is not only the  education and technical support provided by  our team but also the  access to water that a well can provide. Most of our current moringa farmers have wells but we have another 10 farmers who would like to join our program but cannot afford to drill a well.

Last year, as we began the project,  we committed to drill 10 new wells at about $ 280 per well. Your donations for well drilling, during the GlobalGiving 50% match day could  “reduce” your donor cost to about  $195 with a donor match from GlobalGiving . So far, we have raised money for 5 of the 10 wells, which means we have 5 farmers who would like to join our program but cannot join  unless they have  access to water.

As the news of success of our program grows, we anticipate that we will have other farming families who want to join. The GlobalGiving 50% Donor Match Day will help to supercharge donations,  so we encourage you to  participate in this great opportunity and tell your friends how they can really make a difference in the lives of these farming families by providing reliable and sustainable monthly income. 

This program is off to a great start and we hope to continue and expand upon its initial success

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Barbara & Mark Rosasco