Small Businesses
With primary needs ensured through water access and agriculture, and a healthy community eager to learn new skills, many villagers want to act upon their hope for a better future for themselves and their families.
With two thirds of the Cambodian population under age 25, and 80% living in rural areas where access to education is limited, marketable skills become an essential tool to provide for one’s family.
While subsistence agriculture will help a family survive, a job will help it thrive. Through training and direct investments in the villages, Community First supports the creation of small businesses and rural ventures. In 2009, a sewing center manufacturing up to 2,000 mosquito nets a month was inaugurated in the village of Smach. The center can employ up to 15 seamstresses when at full capacity, and can also serve as a training site for many villagers eager to change their lives through a new trade as a tailor.
The community self-help groups provide the alternative financial lending resource that villagers need. It is sustained by regular investments from other villagers and can be borrowed against, collateral- and interest-free.
With access to capital and training, villagers can bring the two together in order to create their own sewing businesses and work from home, close to their families.
© 2012 Community First Initiatives, Inc. | 