Fish Raising

Today I went on my first trip out to the province and escaped the city, not that it feels like a city – the guide books are right it has a lovely town feel about does Kampong Cham.

Anyway I got taken out by a Tuk-Tuk 

to one the IBECP projects. IBECP stands for Improved Basic Education in Cambodia Project. The IBECP projects are run & co-ordinated by the Venerable Prom Dy, who is one of the founding members of BSDA but is funded through KAPE.

So we went out to Soung City to one of the families that is benefiting from this project and who are raising fish.

You might be asking yourselves how ‘fish raising’ is helping the education of the children, I know I did – works of 2 levels – firstly the poorest of the poor families tend to pull their children out of school if times are hard and they need a hand to make a living so in order to try and keep the children in school the project teaches the family a skill that could help feed them and also help create an income so that the children don’t get pulled out from school.

So ‘fish raising’ offers a practical life skill to the child and their family.

The family I visited today have been in the project for a year and are doing really well – they choose to buy some fish with their grant that only take about 3 months to mature – I am not sure what kind of fish they are but they looked a bit like big crayfish to me - sorry Alex M, I am not good on my fish identification!

They get told how to look after them and how to build a pond and feed them – and this family said  today that they have been breeding and have enough to feed their family as well as to sell and make some income – from which she has also brought a couple of pigs which they raise for selling at the market as well.

Small but affective

Other projects in IBECP are ‘Chicken raising’ which I a am visiting tomorrow, Multi-Cultural Life skills which includes teaching the children traditional Khmer dancing and Civic awareness life skills – informing them about drugs abuse, domestic violence etc and how to deal with these kind of issues.