Current Lom Orng News

Feb 13, 2013

    Lom Orng's USAID HARVEST project - training farmers to maintain and repair their own machines - is now expanding into its second phase. This time there are more women trainees than before: women mechanics are a big change from the Cambodian norm.
    The After The Flood permaculture project across the northwest met its 2012 targets and more. This project lifted incomes and health via chickens, vegetables and rice, and raised 13 elevated ‘safegrounds’ against floods - each the size of a football pitch - from the dirt dug out of 13 giant community ponds.

    Perhaps After the Flood's biggest success has been to diversify thousands of farmers away from Cambodia's rice monoculture. They are now supplying our shop in Phnom Penh's Duamkor wholesale market with fresh vegetables, and are earning more money.

Our next project is to bring treated, piped water to rural communes. (See Water menu.)

A borderline El Nino system was in place Apr-Sep - so we warned of drought in that period. Now the El Nino has decayed, so 'average' conditions are expected till about April 2013.

    Finally, in 2014 Cambodia will have have 70,000 higher education graduates - and 20,000 jobs for them. At the same time, it is hard to find a qualified plumber or electrician. So we're exploring ways of swinging more school leavers into trades. We want to turn some of our training centres into trade schools, to supply Cambodia and the region with electricians, plumbers and skilled construction workers. A work in progress.