Capacity Building

Concern's Capacity Building with Local Government and Communities 'Cab-Cog' programme is based in 18 villages in Thapangthong District, of the central province of Savannakhet. The district is home to members of two ethnic groups, one of which, the Katang, form the main target group of Concern's project.

The main objective of the programme is to encourage development of the target beneficiaries through awareness raising, capacity building and skills training with the wider objective 'to improve, in a sustainable manner, the livelihood security of the poorer people in the target villages'. Concern works closely with the local government staff to enable them to improve their community development skills and to carry on the process on village development long after Concern has phased out from this area.

The villagers and local government officials who live in the Poumaly-Seku sub-district, where the programme is based, have been given training by Concern to better identify, and prioritise, their immediate needs. Concern has been helping the villagers to identify not only their needs but also their strengths and resources. With careful planning, cooperation and very small amounts of financial assistance, Concern and the local residents have proven that it is possible to address many of the villagers’ needs by drawing on the already available resources and working through the villagers’ own strengths, skills and initiative.

Concern's Cab-Cog programme has tried to listen to the demands of each of the target villages and this has meant that Concern has not only looked at new initiatives, but has also tried to help the villagers with improvement of old systems that were in need of upgrading. One such ‘old system’ was the management of the rice bank in the village of Poumaly. The village rice bank has existed here since 1985. The current members of the rice bank committee, Mr. Sepasert, Mr. Vieng Kham, Mr. Southone and Mr. Kham Mane explain what has changed since the village asked Concern for help to revamp the rice bank management.

“The old bank had few clear rules and regulations. The old rice bank was run by only two people and it was not always clear who gave out which loans. Villagers took out loans at random and when they couldn't repay the loan, it was simply written off after a while. The interest was set at 20%, which was quite high and therefore caused people to default on their repayments.”

“Since Concern has been involved there are many more clear rules and regulations. There is now a very clear system for the approval of loans and when people who take out a loan sign they an agreement. The village has three 'units'; groups who have their own secretaries and treasury. People who want to borrow rice from the rice bank have to become a member of one of these units and explain to the unit members why they want to take out a loan. The members of these units approve or reject the loan application of their members and only pass the approved requests on to the five committee members, who then give final loan approval based on the availability of rice in the bank.”

“We received three days training and we went on a study visit to another village where they had a rice bank. The villagers of that rice bank were in total control of it- here, because the system was set up by the government, the government is still somewhat in control, but at least we are now managing the funds ourselves. We are trying to implement all the good points of what we saw during our study visit- we have our own ideas and we have decided not to follow their example totally. The village we visited would not, for example, give loans to people who needed them to survive, but might not be able to pay the loan back in the agreed time. We want to continue giving loans to some people who need assistance, regardless of the payback time for the loan. That's what we feel the rice bank is for.”

"Our rice bank was originally set up with a one-off government fund of 600,000 kgs of rice, without any village contributions. The rice bank has now got only 1,736 kgs left; most of the rice has simply disappeared due to mismanagement and the frequent write-offs of loans. From 2002 we are introducing a village contribution to build up the lending capacity of the rice bank. The contribution will depend on the wealth of each family."

“The purpose of the rice bank is lending people rice when they run out of rice in their stores. This usually happens during the ‘lean season’, just before the harvest. When people run out of rice in their stores they often resort to searching for wild foods in the forest or working for other farmers to earn an income. The problem is that this lean period coincides with a time when a person’s rice field needs a lot of attention, so when members of a hungry family leaves their own land to go in search for food, their next harvest suffers. It is a vicious circle; every time a family neglects their own rice field in order to feed themselves through the lean period, their next harvest will be reduced so their rice shortage during the following lean period will last longer. Making rice available to the families that face shortages during one year, will help them maximize the yield of their own field for the next year."

“The loan uptake depends on the harvest of the previous season. The harvest takes place in December so families start running out of their own rice by September. The amount of loans taken out increases up until harvest time. In September only two families may have borrowed rice, by the end of November most families in the village will have borrowed some rice from the rice bank. There are 32 families in the village and only four can grow enough rice for all family members to last them all through to the next harvest; which means 28 families are usually keen to take out a loan. You can imagine that the rice bank is completely empty by the time we get to December; we often run out of rice before we have given out all the loans requested, that's why we want to try and increase our capacity, so that we can meet the demand of all villagers.”

“Our future plans are, first of all, to continue with the new management system until the villagers will no longer need the loans. We hope to start lending rice to people from other communities, but only if we have enough to fulfil out needs here first. In the long term we could imagine ourselves moving into lending other commodities like fertilizer. These are ideas we picked up on our study visit, we don't know how they will work in the future, for now we just stick with what we do; manage the rice.

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