There’s no place like home

Prom Bunthoeun and his wife, Yorn Sarem, raised their children in a village called Nikom Kandal. It’s in Cambodia’s Battambang province, near the border with Thailand. 

Years ago, Bunthoeun and Sarem grew vegetables on land they owned. But they never managed to make ends meet as farmers. They made the difficult decision to leave their three children at home with their grandparents and try to find work in Thailand. There, they could earn $15 a day laboring on construction projects. That may seem like plenty of money, but they had to spend most of it paying for food and rent in Thailand. There wasn’t much left over to send home to Nikom Kandal. 

Last year, Bunthoeun came back to visit his family. That’s when it became clear to neighbors that his family was really struggling. Among those who took notice was our partner Rural Development Association. Bunthoeun and his family were invited to join the CWS-supported Promoting Better Lives program to help improve their situation. Sarem came home, and we got to work.

Like all program participants, Bunthoeun and Sarem began with studying the basics of vegetable gardening best practices. They already had an advantage over many families because they already owned land–even though they stopped using it years ago. So step one was to reclaim their 1/5 acre (about 8,700 square feet) parcel. Then they started creating a sustainable government with supplies and guidance from CWS and RDA. The couple decided to grow eggplant because they knew that there was a demand for it locally and they would be able to sell it. By using what they had learned about soil preparation, natural fertilizers, pest control and water conservation, Bunthoeun and Sarem created a flourishing and profitable garden. 

During the three-month planting, tending and harvest cycle, the couple earned about $12.50 a day. With this much income, they had enough money to buy rice and nutritious foods. They are no longer facing food shortages like their children and parents did when they only had the small remittances from Thailand to live on.

But it isn’t just the food that they’ve been able to purchase. They had money left over to expand the garden to also grow cucumbers, another valuable crop. They teamed up with their eldest son, a 23-year-old electrician living in Phnom Penh, to send their middle child to university. Their youngest, a 17-year-old, is continuing high school. The family’s quick progress towards a life of dignified work and a bit of prosperity is an inspiration for our team, and reaffirms our believe that there is enough for all.

Better water access means vegetable gardens in Timor-Leste

Maumetalao is a coastal village near the Banda Sea on the north coast of Timor-Leste. Changing weather patterns have wreaked havoc on life here, bringing extended droughts to areas that were already facing poverty. 

Brigita Maria Kefi and her family are among those who have struggled because of the droughts. She’s a 35-year-old mother of three girls, all of whom are under 10 years old. The family lives in a simple straw house in Maumetalao. Brigita and her husband planted a vegetable garden near their house years ago, which Brigita could tend to while keeping an eye on the girls. Because of the drought, though, they had to move their vegetables to an area closer to a spring–and farther from their house. Brigita could no longer tend the vegetables while watching her daughters, and having the vegetable garden farther away made it susceptible to theft, pests and animals. 

“Working so hard, and having little to no results was exhausting,” Brigita told CWS staff recently. Her family was losing money because their harvests were so small, and eventually they gave up on the vegetable garden. Like many of their neighbors, they reverted to planting only the local staples of corn, cassava and sweet potato. Their daughters’ nutrition deteriorated without the vegetables, and there was no extra cash from selling surplus vegetables. Without the cash, the family couldn’t buy vegetables or other items to meet basic needs.

We met Brigita through a freshwater spring protection project in Maumetalao. Our team works with communities to build water systems like this one to make sure water is stored in tanks instead of dripping on the ground and being wasted when someone isn’t actively filling a container. Now, spring water collects in a tank overnight. By morning, families can access about 4,200 gallons of water–enough for all their needs. There is plenty of water for drinking, bathing and housekeeping. And there’s enough to use to water vegetable gardens, even in the dry season. 

Now, once again, Brigita and her husband are growing vegetables near their home. Even better, they can garden year round, which means income from the surplus produce. Brigita estimates that she makes an extra $20 per month now, and this income has already been life-changing. “I was able to get some medical care I had put off,” she says. “I now feel healthier,” which will help her be even more productive. “Now I will start saving for some home improvements,” she says. 

The water system in Maumetalao has helped 400 people, including Brigita and her family, to have this opportunity. Our team is so excited to see all the ways that the families here will capitalize on their new wealth of water!

A $45 loan nearly doubled a family’s income. Here’s how.

U Htein Win is a widower; his wife passed away four years ago. Four of the couple’s eight children still live at home; the rest are married and living independently. After his wife’s passing, U Htein became the family’s sole breadwinner. 

U Htein has his own boat and relies on fishing as a source of income and as a way to add protein to his family’s daily meals. He was making about 3,000 Kyat ($2) each day. He has long wanted to expand into shrimp fishing, but in order to do that he would need special traps. If he were to try to take out a loan to buy the traps, it would be at a 10-15% interest rate that he simply couldn’t afford.

His life changed, though, when CWS introduced the concept of a savings group to his village of Koe Ein Tan, which is about three hours west of Yangon. Any resident can join the village’s savings group by contributing at least 2,000 Kyat ($1.35) each month. Some savers contribute as much as 9,000 Kyat ($5.87) each month to help the group’s funds grow faster. Once the group has accumulated 70,000 Kyat ($45) in savings, they can approve a loan for up to that amount to a group member. The loans have a 5% interest rate and a three-month payback period. 

U Htein felt that he could contribute the needed amount, so he joined the savings group. He was one of the first of the 17 members to borrow from the group savings. He applied for the maximum loan amount–after doing the math and feeling confident that he could pay the loan back–and bought 20 shrimp traps. His daily income has jumped from $2 to at least $3.33 each day. Some days he makes twice as much as he did before the shrimp traps!

When our team recently chatted with U Htein, he said, ““I like this activity! I am already saving about 4,000 Kyat [$2.60] monthly from my extra shrimp income. I hope our saving group lasts a long time so I can get another loan for more traps. Thank you, CWS, for showing us how to set up the groups. Our family no longer worries about food, nor about borrowing money at high interest rates.”

More earning potential means more possibilities in Indonesia

Ety Pitáy is a single mom to four children who range in age from 6 to 15. She and her children live in a rural, mountainous community in West Timor, Indonesia. Before she started participating in the CWS Berdaya initiative, Mama Ety relied on processing dried corn kernels to provide for her family. She would grind about 40 pounds of corn each month to remove the hard outer shell. 

For all her hard work, Ety earned less than $9 each month. This hardly kept her children fed, and it wasn’t enough to afford to send them to school. Ety had no savings. 

The family’s future changed drastically when Mama Ety joined Berdaya, which is Indonesian for “empowerment.” The program focuses on supporting women, including to organize and lead their own savings and loans groups so that group members can start or expand businesses. Mama Ety is the secretary of one of these groups. Through Berdaya, Mama Ety also learned new skills that she can use to expand her business. “Before, I only knew how to process corn, but now, along with my corn processing, I can make sweet potato chips and marungga [a local tree with nutritionally valuable fruit and leaves] sticks to sell to snack vendors,” she says.

By adding these products to her business, Mama Ety has been able to double, and sometimes triple her income!

Thanks to the savings group, Mama Ety says, “I can improve my household business by taking out affordable loans to reinvest in myself. But not only that, I can save for my children’s education. I never thought education for my children was possible.” 

“Age should never prevent you from learning.”

Khadra* is a 45-year-old Somali refugee living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Her journey to Jakarta was a long and winding one across land, sea and air. Thanks to connections she had made before leaving Somalia, Khadra found other Somali refugees when she arrived. They helped her understand how to go to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office to register as an asylum seeker. 

Khadra cannot read or write, so she was lucky to find someone to help her complete her registration documents. The UNHCR referred her to CWS, and we helped her settle into a CWS-hosted group home for refugee women and girls. 

That’s when she learned that for the first time in her life, education was available to her.

“Since I never attended school, I am a bit of a blind woman here,” Khadra says. She was born in an extremely remote village of just six families. The nearest town was a three-hour walk away. Even if she had been allowed or encouraged to go to a school that far away, her family had no money to pay for a uniform or supplies. So when a social worker in Jakarta told her about all of the classes and learning opportunities she had through the CWS program, she had her doubts. “At my age, I did not think I could join these activities,” she says. “But then I realized that age doesn’t matter. It all depends on your commitment.”

So, Khadra set out to learn how to read and write. Her commitment to learn was so great that these classes were not enough for her. She wanted to study more and more, so a CWS team member showed Khadra how to use a computer to study the alphabet on her own after classes ended each day. As her reading abilities grew, Khadra started reading and she practiced writing in paper exercise books. Now, Khadra can read basic sentences, and is certain that “age should never prevent you from learning. It is a lifelong process and an opportunity to not be missed. You just have to persevere.”

Education and skills development are an integral part of life for women, girls and boys in CWS-supported group homes. There are English, Indonesian, math, science and computer classes. And, life skills development opportunities help residents strengthen their readiness to live independently. Twenty-four women and girls are now living in a group home in Jakarta as are 45 unaccompanied asylum-seeking boys. All have a chance to develop new skills such as sewing, cosmetology, computer coding/programming, basic automotive mechanics and mobile phone repair. They also have a chance to study and practice arts and crafts, and to enjoy sports and yoga which, in their otherwise difficult and challenging lives, all the girls, boys and women do appreciate.

*Name changed to protect identity.

Teaming up for better health in Timor-Leste

When our team first visited Gariana hamlet in Timor-Leste, we were surprised by how hard it was for families here to get basic health care. We heard that for two years, no one from Gariana had been able to access the government-guaranteed Integrated Community Health Services that are meant to bring doctors and other health care workers–and vital vaccinations–to rural families like those in Gariana. When we heard this, our team began partnering with Health Center staff to reinvigorate the integrated health services in Gariana.

One person who is excited about this development is Odete Martins Bruno. Odete is a mother of two who has been participating in our Timor Zero Hunger program activities. She’s excited about the return of government health outreach efforts so that her children can be vaccinated against preventable disease and her family will be able to get other health services. 

As the government’s program is being reintroduced to Gariana, our team is supplementing with additional information for families who are seeking care. Our focus is nutrition and using locally available foods. For example, we hosted a nutrition workshop on how to enhance the rice porridge that is the staple of their children’s diets with nutritious ingredients. During the workshop, Odete said, “I always assumed that my children didn’t like vegetables. But after we were encouraged to cut nutritious vegetables into small piece that blend well with the rice porridge, I was surprised to see my children eat plenty!”

This is a small but valuable lesson for Odete and other moms, too. In all, 67 mothers who have a combined 87 young children As part of the Timor Zero Hunger program, in one lesson alone in Gariana alone, CWS has a chance to support 67 mothers to properly prepare rice porridge for their 87 young children. Going forward, CWS plans to expand to more villages on both sides of the island in partnership with national health workers and community leaders for the benefit of vulnerable families and their young children’s health and nutrition.