More tips for the socially conscious consumer: Cambodia

Beyond. Making money & changing lives!

This place offers tourism that benefits the community.  If you’re going to take a tour, which you probably will, why not opt to use them and make a little difference while you do.  Beyond employs locals & anywhere from 5% to 25% of their profits (depending on the tour) goes back into the community.

The same owner of Beyond owns a high end hotel Sojourn built in the village of Tac.  He uses the location to lure customers who want to feel like they are in the “real Cambodia” but there is a catch.  Almost all of the hotel activities are focused on the surrounding village.  Visitors can take a village walk, teach English at a school for a few hours, help in the rice fields, or pitch in building a water filter.

Their nonprofit arm is called HUSK! They provide trash bins for the village and pay for trash pickup for the community.

Our village walk with Beyond.

This was one of the highlights of our trip.  We got to see firsthand just how powerful a network of nonprofits working together can be.  In Tac, a small village there were a number of things happening:

Water filters. These filters are just $45 a piece but they are providing the community with safe drinking water. This means healthier kids that are able to attend school.

Compost Toilets.  Cleaner and safer for the community, ADDED bonus fertilizer to help the crops grow.

Stonger housing.  Each year during the rainy season it floods and many of the houses that have been built cannot sustain the damage caused by the water. New houses are being built for the poorest families that include a tin roof, cemented wooden pillars to hold up the house on stilts, and windows for circulation.

HUSK waste barrels. These barrels get the trash of the street. Cleaner streets, less rat, less disease = a more productive society.

The entire community receives education on how to use each of these. Our guide was a local from the community and told us how impressed he has been with the change.  He painted the picture of what the village used to look like and I can only imagine what is must have been like.

Little by little things are changing.

Cambodia: Building for the Future

Cambodia: A country of hope and promises for a better tomorrow.

Extreme poverty is no stranger to Cambodia but as you travel along the roads you see signs of development and you sense an energy about the people that things are changing - the economy is improving little by little.

A few facts:

The average Cambodian citizen makes around 650 USD per year (UNICEF).  In Vietnam the average citizen makes around 1010 USD per year YET, Cambodian is noticeably much more expensive.

Why? They import the majority of their goods and are reliant on external sources for oil and other natural resources. (We were informed from a few people that there are plans to begin offshore drilling. However at the time of writing this no plans had been revealed to build a refinery).

The country is just getting back on its feet after utter destruction by the Khmer Rouge: 2-3 Million people died.  Agriculture fields were destroyed by over use.  Infrastructure was destroyed – roads are being rebuilt roads, bridges, railways, etc.

Indicators that Cambodia is slowly changing.

Today education in Cambodia is free both primary and secondary.  More schools are being built.  Most parents want their children to be educated.  Many people who have received education want more than the life they have known. They are starting businesses, attending university, and are slowly speaking up demanding change in their country.