Four children’s educations, thanks to mushrooms!

Yuk Vy lives in Prey Roleap village in central Cambodia with her husband and seven children, who range in age from one to 19 years old.

The family are rice farmers. In the past, Vy worked as as wage laborer in nearby villages after each rice harvest in order to help support her family.  She had to leave her children in the care of a neighbor during the day, and when she returned home she felt too tired to do housework and take proper care of her children.

In order to help herself and her family out of this situation, Vy decided to join a CWS-hosted workshop to learn about oyster mushroom growing. After the workshop she received 60 bags of mushroom spores to cultivate at home so she could be near her children.

Vy has been able to harvest an average of 15 pounds of mushrooms each week. Her family consumes many of these mushrooms, but she is also able to sell some to earn $3 – $4 US a few times each week. Even though this is not enough to cover all the family’s needs, it allows the family to send four of their children to school.

Since the oyster mushroom growing business has been so beneficial to the family, Vy plans to expand it during this rainy season with the help from her husband and children, who help her watering the mushrooms before they go to work or school.