GROWING OUT OF POVERTY
IDE charity network head Mike Roberts of Calgary explains how the use of root coverings and drip irrigation is helping Cambodian farmer But Srey grow cucumbers.
For Cambodian farmer Chea Sophanny, life is more bountiful since he connected with a Canadian-backed charity offering agricultural, sanitary and safe water aid in developing countries.
Brushing back his James Dean shock of black hair, the energetic 35-year-old smiles broadly while welcoming foreign visitors to his home — a new metal roof, a pair of fat lounging cattle and scattered free-range chickens testifying to the benefits of branching out from the traditional rural Cambodian practice of small-plot subsistence rice farming.
“Before, it was difficult. But now it’s gotten a lot better,” he says in Khmer through an interpreter, showing off his new cucumber field, surrounded by rice paddies, behind the family home. A just-plowed empty plot nearby represents his vegetable expansion project.
“With the extra income, I’ve expanded my plot as well as built a fence around my house and a new roof. I also bought some chickens and other animals to raise. And a boat. I’ve been able to spend more for my children’s education.”
It’s a result of the work of Denverbased charity International Development Enterprises — or IDE — which operates in 11 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, using market-based programs to help some of the world’s two billion poor people surviving by growing crops on small plots of land in rural areas.
Winnipeg-based IDE Canada, which sponsored a recent communications tour of IDE operations in Cambodia and Vietnam, has been raising donor funds and accessing Canadian government aid for those programs since 1983 — according to its 2014 annual report, 83 per cent of its nearly $2 million in expenditures went to international projects.
In November, the Canadian charity will stage an amateur boxing card in Calgary called Clean Fight, featuring 14 local women — who have raised at least $5,000 each — battling it out at Cowboys Casino. The donations and ticket proceeds will be used for a new sanitary latrine and education project in Ghana, West Africa, designed to “knock out”’ diarrhea.
IDE Cambodia’s programs — which operate on a $4.5- to $5-million US annual budget — are overseen by country director Mike Roberts, 50, a civil engineer specializing in water resources. He grew up in Calgary and earned his bachelor’s degree at the U of C, and his parents and eldest son still live in the city. He became the first executive director for IDE Canada in 2000 (working part-time for IDE and a Calgary engineering firm) before winning the Cambodian job two years later.
He said IDE differs from other charities in that it doesn’t try to use short-term handouts to solve long-term problems.
From its Phnom Penh headquarters in Cambodia, it has 200 staff operating two main programs designed to build bucket-flush sanitary latrines and offer agricultural supplies and advice. Another 90 work in a spinoff company called Hydrologic, producing inexpensive water filters for household use.
“In all cases, what we’ve done is identified some constraint in rural areas to good and healthy livelihoods and we’ve worked with small enterprises to try to deliver solutions,” he said.
“We’ve had really good success in all three of those programs. Over the past 10 years, we’ve been able to sell more than 400,000 water filters in rural Cambodia. With sanitation, in the past five years, we’ve been able to distribute about 200,000 sanitary latrines. Agriculture programs tend to be a bit more complex, but we’ve reached in the order of 50,000 households with agriculture products that help them grow vegetables and rice.”
Chea is one of about 250 “farm business advisers” IDE employs in five Cambodian provinces, says John Chhay, 28, national sales manager for the program branded Lors Thmey (New Growth in Khmer). The FBAs — who are usually also farmers — are offered intensive training before becoming commission-earning sales representatives for a line of products that include drip irriga- tion systems and pressed fertilizer briquettes designed to better distribute fertilizer in rice fields.
FBAs usually increase their annual income by several hundred dollars a year with commissions, Chhay said, but their farm income can double or triple from the usual $300 to $500 per cycle as they learn to grow new crops that bring in revenue even during the dry season, when rice fields lay fallow. It’s significant money in a country where the average per capita GDP is just $1,200 US and many farms are barely profitable or moneylosing ventures.
Chhay was born in Calgary to Cambodian immigrants who subsequently returned to their homeland. On a vacation visit, the recent business student was offered a job with IDE.
“I thought NGOs (non-governmental organizations) were all about giving out things for free,” he recalled. “I have a business background, so I wasn’t initially interested. My mentor said, ‘No, John, you can bring your skills and expertise to the NGO world,’ and he was right.”
Meanwhile, at Hydrologic, general manager Rachel Pringle is keeping a close eye on news leading up to the United Nations’ climate-change conference in Paris in December.
The former London investment banker is hoping for a strengthening of global carbon prices — almost a third of the company’s $1.5 million US in annual revenue comes from the sale of carbon offsets to industrial emitters. The credits are earned because the filters deliver clean water without the need for boiling tainted water over wood fires, saving energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“The price of offsets keeps coming down,” she lamented, estimating the company will get only $5 to $7 per tonne for its 120,000 tonnes of offsets this year. “The actual value of the offsets market is not strong right now.”
The Hydrologic factory 40 kilometres north of Phnom Penh employs about 35 workers, while another 35 sell the Tunsai (Rabbit in Khmer) and Super Tunsai water filters for $18 and $36 US. The factory offers an alternative to Cambodia’s numerous garment and shoe factories, whose thousands of staff are transported to and from work packed standing up in heavy truck beds.
The heart of the Tunsai system is a porous clay pot that filters out sediment and micro-organisms. It is infused with silver particles to prevent bacterial growth and can produce up to 30 litres of clean water a day.
IDE Cambodia’s latrine program is also market based, with 140 manufacturers earning profits by building components and a net- work of commissioned salespeople overseeing their distribution and installation. Buyers can choose a basic plumbing package and build their own shelter — or go for the full turnkey package.
“Historically, in the rural areas especially, latrines were not used. People would just go out in the bushes to do their business,” Roberts said. “As population is increasing, that’s becoming more of an environmental and public health hazard. On the order of about 23 per cent of households in rural areas have latrines and we’d like to see that number increase to 100 per cent.”
Cambodia and Vietnam have a common border and a shared past of violent upheaval, but deeply Buddhist Cambodia, a constitutional monarchy, is decidedly different from its secular Communist neighbour — and so is its version of IDE.
When the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was formed in 1976 following reunification, it brought in a one-party state system that has swayed to allow private business ownership — but still mandates 5 a.m. daily news and music loudspeaker broadcasts to usher workers to their tasks.
The government also still limits the activities of foreign organizations, including IDE Vietnam.
Country director Nguyen Van Quang, 51, a Moscow- trained chemical engineer with a U. S. MBA, says the key to promoting IDE’s goals in Vietnam is an ongoing partnership with the Vietnam Women’s Union, a governmentfunded grassroots organization established in 1930 whose millions of members are devoted to issues such as family violence, women’s rights and health care.
IDE Vietnam promotes sales of latrines and irrigation supplies, but it does so by training Women’s Union staff to sell the products and local contractors to build them. It takes no credit. The products are branded as government-approved, not IDE-designed.
Nguyen said about 13 per cent of the rural population IDE works with have no latrine. About 40 per cent have unhygienic facilities, sometimes just a hole in the ground in the woods.
“Some farmers are using their expensive latrines to store rice, etc. They’re better built than their houses. Our dream is for the Women’s Union to find the motivation to expand the program to other villages.”
IDE Vietnam’s annual budget is about $500,000. Its current latrine project is supported with a $48,000 Cdn grant from IDE Canada, raised through a Clean Fight boxing promotion last year in Winnipeg.
On the recent tour, IDE Canada chief executive Bill Pratt was shown a latrine at the home of Nguyen Thi Ut, 60, and her husband Phan Thich, 70, a farmer who has been living on a government pension since losing his left leg in a landmine explosion. It features an eight-inch-thick concrete roof and doubles as a shelter to wait out typhoons.
“Now, that only happened because some women in Winnipeg decided to take part in our boxing event,” Pratt said with satisfaction.
A 95-year-old customer, Bui Duc, sold a cinnamon tree on his property for about $200 US to build a latrine. Wife Tran Thi Cug, 82, said: “I’m so looking forward to using it because it is so far to the one in the woods. And I worry about him.”
IDE Vietnam also sponsored a pig-rearing program starting in 2003 that partnered veterinarians with farmers in a kind of profit-sharing insurance scheme, said Nguyen Van Quang. If the pigs make it to market, the vets share in the reward.
It also trained local suppliers to make nutritious feed that allows pigs to grow to market weight in 31/2 months compared to the previous 10 months, greatly increasing profitability.
IDE’s involvement in the program ended five years ago when funding ran out, he said, but the benefits are still being felt because the feed and veterinary support programs put in place are still operating.
“With a market-based approach, you are looking at improving people’s lives without them even knowing,” he said.
“It’s not an easy job … but you can see the outcome. You can see people getting out of poverty who used to be very poor.”