Cambodia

iDE has been growing prosperity in Cambodia since 1994 by building value chains and business models in agriculture, clean water, and sanitation that promote beneficial, affordable products and services.

Featured Project

Poor people can, and do, pay for toilets

Building momentum toward open defecation free status in Cambodia

Our sales and revenue data show that the business of delivering toilets to rural households is profitable and sustainable. With iDE’s help, more than 250,000 new latrines have been sold and installed by more than 300 local partner enterprises. And the effect is multiplying, with other businesses not connected with the project stepping forward to help satisfy the burgeoning demand for sanitation.

Why we’re here—

Out of Cambodia’s population of 15 million people, nearly 3 million are classified as poor and as many as 8 million others teeter just above the poverty line. One bad crop or one expensive illness will pull them back under. About 90 percent of the poor live in rural areas where farming is difficult because of increasingly unreliable rainfall, water scarcity, poor infrastructure, weak institutions, and poor market linkages. More than half the rural population is still without a toilet.

Farming is a business

Cambodia Agribusiness Development Facility (CADF) focuses on increasing the profit of small-scale commercial farmers

By improving access to technical assistance, market information, quality inputs, and new technologies, iDE increases value-chain efficiency and competitiveness to benefit small-scale farmers.

What matters—

Gender Equity

In Cambodia’s hierarchical society, women experience cultural barriers to accessing quality training, new technology, and government services. Women also face disparities in workload, decision-making power, and control over income and expenditures.

Focusing on women as customers and entrepreneurs, iDE strengthens their participation in rural value chains by increasing their access to technology, know-how, finance, and markets. Success in commercial farming also increases women’s self-confidence and standing in the community.

Learn more about iDE’s commitment to Gender Equity.

Nutrition

More than one in three Cambodian children under five are stunted, with approximately 45 percent of all child deaths attributed to malnutrition.

By promoting high-value, nutritious crops, iDE empowers farmers to earn more income and provide their families and communities with a more varied diet, improves access to safe water and sanitation, and helps people to avoid the gut diseases that prevent them from absorbing the nutrients gained from an improved diet. Better nutrition provides the fuel for families to move out of poverty today and ensures that the next generation reaches its full developmental potential.

Learn more about iDE’s commitment to Nutrition.

Food Security

An estimated 33 percent of Cambodians eat less than the minimum daily calorie requirement. And nearly 40 percent of children under five years of age are chronically malnourished, a statistic that has not improved in the last 10 years.

By improving farmers’ access to high-quality rice seeds, technology, and good agricultural practices, iDE helps farmers to double the yield of their staple crop; more rice means food security for them, their community, and the country. Training in vegetable production and improved access to markets helps rural families to earn higher incomes, invest in more assets, and protect themselves from lean years in the future.

Learn more about iDE's commitment to Food Security.

iDE Theme Climate Resilience Illustration

Resilience to Climate Change

Cambodia is ranked as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. Climate scientists predict hotter, drier dry seasons, shorter wet seasons with more intense rainstorms, and less overall predictability. With 80 percent of the population relying on rural agriculture, these climate change effects have a severe impact on many people.

iDE researches farming strategies that increase rural people’s resilience to climate variability and extreme weather. iDE helps farmers to spread their risk by growing more diverse crops in shorter cycles with water-saving technologies and climate-smart agricultural practices.

Learn more about iDE’s commitment to Smart Technologies.

New growth yields new hope

Lors Thmey social enterprise helps smallholder farmers improve the quality, quantity, and diversity of their production.

Lors Thmey operates as a business unit within iDE Cambodia with a mission to improve the economic resilience of poor rural households.

Infiltrating the market with clean water

iDE’s social enterprise, Hydrologic, won the 2018 Unilever Global Development Award!

Having safe water improves the situation of women and children, who are often responsible for fetching and boiling water.

What works—

Agriculture

iDE improves rural livelihoods and resilience by strengthening value chains for agricultural products, primarily in rice, vegetables, quick-maturity fruits, and pigs. iDE's Cambodia Agribusiness Development Facility (CADF) identifies market opportunities and constraints for small-scale farmers and then designs solutions that are implemented by local private service providers.

We have also established Lors Thmey, a social enterprise that recruits and trains local entrepreneurs to become Farm Business Advisors, who serve their local communities by selling agricultural products and services. By improving access to technical assistance, market information, quality inputs, and new technologies, iDE enables small-scale farmers to participate more effectively in markets and reap substantial benefits.

Learn more about iDE’s global Agriculture strategy.

Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH)

iDE develops efficient and scalable approaches that enable rural households to purchase and use sanitary latrines. Our strategy is to remove as many barriers to latrine purchase as possible. iDE introduces product innovations, creates demand through village meetings, and strengthens the ability of rural businesses to produce and install affordable, attractive latrines. Our social enterprise, Hydrologic, sells aspirational, safe drinking-water solutions to rural households. And iDE applied Human Centered Design to develop an effective water-soap-sink device integrated with latrines, to encourage handwashing after defecation.

Learn more about iDE’s global WASH Strategy.

Access to Finance

The lack of cash on hand prevents too many of our rural customers from investing in products that could improve their lives. iDE partners with microfinance institutions to develop effective models for selling beneficial products on credit. More than 50,000 product loans have been made so far. We are also piloting an in-house credit facility, in collaboration with Kiva Microfunds, to fill gaps that our finance partnerships don’t address.

Learn more about iDE’s global Access to Finance strategy.

Design for humans by humans

Farmers are more likely to invest their money in a solution that comes from their own ideas, and from their true aspirations. iDE uses Human Centered Design to engage with the market to reveal those needs and desires to design solutions that people want to buy and entrepreneurs want to sell. Those solutions are more likely to be sustainable and cost-effective, too.

Cambodia results to date—

1,016,909

Households Impacted

5,084,511

Individuals Impacted

162.00

Annual Income Increased in Dollars

6.60

Benefit-to-Cost Ratio

Our footprint—

iDE IN CAMBODIA

PO Box 1577, #97A, Street 19BT (Ta Phon)
Boeung Tumpun, Khan Meanchey,
Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia
Phone: +855 923 540 or +855 923 541
E-mail: Cambodia@ideglobal.org
Hours: 8:00am-5:00pm

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