About FLD

Farmer Livelihood Development (FLD) was established in 2002 to alleviate poverty in rural Cambodia. Five million Cambodians, 36 percent of the population, live below the poverty line of less than US$1 per day.

Ninety per cent of these people live in rural areas, where 80 per cent of them depend on agriculture, mainly rice production, for their livelihoods. Improving their chances of a better life is an important part of FLD's mission.

FLD currently works with 284 rural villages in eight Cambodian provinces, helping over 22,134 people (over half of them women) and their communities alleviate hardship. To achieve this FLD has inititiated a wide range of projects. These include:

• training courses, from harvesting wild honey to home mushroom growing, to rock carving to integrated farming systems, literacy programmes and basic financial management.

• marketing on farmers' behalf through FLD's Khmer Farmer Products shops

• the 'Get Ahead' project that trains young women for employment, or self-employment in their own businesses

• exporting locally made reusable shopping bags

• packaging and marketing village processed snack foods

• providing training services and expertise to other NGOs - rice and corn post-harvest management and storage in Pailin Province

• a weekly radio discussion and talkback programme for marginalised farmers and their communities

• a major aid project that will assist more than 5,000 food insecure households in two northern province

FLD believes that to improve rural imcomes and living conditions in Cambodia, information and training support is vital to achieve:

• sustainable land use and natural resource management

• diversified food production

• good nutrition

• knowledge of alternative sources of income

• better access to finance and marketing support

• stronger community relationships and village based support

THE CHALLENGE

More than a third of Cambodians live in poverty, on less than one US dollar a day. Most live in rural areas and depend on subsistence farming and rice production for their survival. FLD has designed programmes for those people to:

• alleviate poverty through rural training programmes

• diversify their farming options

• improve production techniques and output

• boost their incomes and better their livelihoods

• provide access to financial services.

FLD programmes improve food security. They also strengthen communities by building the capacity of village organisations and representatives, by encouraging communities to interact with integrity and empathy. This creates an environment where problems are solved through justice and democracy.

To achieve its aims, FLD has a three-pronged approach to break the vicious poverty cycle in rural Cambodia

	1. The Community Job Creation Fund - this assists individuals, groups and communities to learn new skills and create business opportunities from local resources.
	2. Gender Development - training young women and creating business opportunities for them.
	3. Business Development Services - Improving rural livelihoods by using FLD's skilled agricultural and small business training teams to impart new and practical skills, ideas and systems that lead to new business opportunities.