Environmental Education Changes Cambodian Women's Livelihoods
Oxfam partner Mlup Baitong has set up a series of projects that offer alternative, environmentally-sound sources of income for women in Cambodia.
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| Chea Panh, right, is learning how to support her family in an environmentally-sustainable way. By: Blake Peters/Oxfam |
Sitting beside her sister on a bamboo platform, Chea Panh's gentle smile and self-effacing demeanor belie her strength. Chea is a single mother raising two children alone in the Cambodian Commune of Chambok. Until three years ago, Chea supported her family by making long journeys into the forest to collect wood and sell it for charcoal. But finding wood had become increasingly difficult because logging companies had depleted the forests close to her community. Chea spent days away from home searching for wood—creating health problems for Chea and making it impossible for her to tend to her children.
Chea is one of many women in Cambodia facing a precarious existence. One of the physical reminders of the brutal reign of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, during which 1.7 million people died in the late 1970s, is the disproportionately large number of young Cambodian women that make up the population today. Largely uneducated, these women bear the responsibility of providing for their household in a desperately poor economy. In a country where ways to make a living are scarce and where more than 40 percent of the population is under the age of 15, women shoulder a heavy burden.
To make things more difficult, due to increased stability, Cambodia has become an inviting prospect for international investors and development projects that are exploitive of both people and the environment. Logging is a lucrative industry that has been aggressively pursued by the government and transnational companies, jeopardizing a resource that once covered 58 percent of Cambodian land. Over the past 30 years, Cambodians forests have been depleted by 70 percent—and still the logging continues. While large logging operations are doing the most serious damage, many local people have followed suit—unaware that at this rate, Cambodian forests could soon be gone.
Mlup Baitong Offers Alternatives
Today, the Cambodian-led organization and Oxfam partner, Mlup Baitong, is developing innovative ways for women in Cambodia to create jobs and become self-sufficient while protecting the environment. Focusing on environmental education, Mlup Baitong's projects empower local people to protect their depleting resources. Mlup Baitong holds workshops to educate local communities on the importance of preserving the forest, linking unsustainable logging to greater environmental consequences, such as erosion and flooding. What's more, Mlup Baitong has set up a series of projects that offer alternative, environmentally-sound sources of income.
Chea was encouraged by women in her community to join one of Mlup Baitong's Women's Savings Groups, where they raise and sell chickens to generate income. Today she is no longer collecting wood. Working closer to home, she is healthier and better able to care for her children.
Through the environmental workshops that Mlup Baitong organizes, Chea and other local community members are more aware of the environmental threats logging poses and the role they can play in protecting the environment. Additionally, Chea has a relatively sustainable source of income that does not threaten her health, her household, or the environment. Chea and many women still face countless challenges as Cambodia continues to grapple with oppressive poverty, but Mlup Baitong and Oxfam have brought an element of security to the long journey out of poverty.