Surprise discovery during monitoring visit

One of my responsibilities in the CHAD program is to monitor and support ongoing project groups.  Sometimes these visits are a headache as we negotiate why the group acted in contradiction to the by-laws that they themselves wrote.  Sometimes there are surprises and joy when a group moves beyond project limitations to use the resources to reach out and meet real needs in their community.

Last January when Mrs. Sophal and I stopped at the Raksmey church in Kampong Thom province to audit the records of the rice-bank, we didn't know what we would find.  There are provisions in most of the by-laws, especially for rice-banks, to account for loss and other costs.  Rain can creep in or rodents can get at a bag or a particular family just can't repay this year.  Typically if the loss is less than 10% we assess the situation, but don't give them too a hard time.  So we wanted to know what was going on when this group in Raksmey was down by 500kg.  They hadn't had any loss for the previous two years and had an excellent track record of full repayment even with a community establish interest rate that is on the high end for this type project. 

That is when we heard about the fire in a neighboring village that destroyed seven families homes.  On a subsequent visit to the area, Mr. Thy and Mrs. Sophal interviewed the leader of the group, the story is on the CHAD blog

Rice-bank project groups are designed to help communities come together to cooperatively store rice so that the poorest in the community will not be at the mercy of seasonal price inflation even though as individuals they are unable to grow and store sufficient rice to meet their food needs for the entire year.  If the recent disasters in Japan and Haiti and elsewhere have taught us anything, it is that we must rely on our neighbors in the imediate aftermath of a crisis. 

This story demonstrates that rice-banks are also a way to build resilience within a community to be able to respond to disasters immediately and to help each other.  I was inspired and I hope that you will also be.