Concern and wood working for people

The 450 acre community forest owned by the residents of five villages in the Chuk Sor area, sixty miles north of Phnom Penh in Cambodia, was developed in collaboration with Concern over the last fourteen years. 

To the villagers it is a rich source of nuts, green vegetables, potatoes, mushrooms, bamboo, rattan, small wild animals, building poles, timber, firewood and medicinal plants The forest is managed on behalf of the community by a committee comprised of two elected representative from each of the five villages.

The committee recently gave very practical expression to their concern for an almost destitute elderly couple in one village.  The couple’s small and very flimsy hut was demolished in a thunder storm. The committee provided them with poles from the forest to build a much sturdier and bigger home.  Sadly within a few months the wife died and so the widower decided to go to live with a distant relative in another area.

By rights the house should have been sold and the proceeds kept by the Management Committee to be used in the further development of the forest. Happily hearts won over minds in that the committee let the widower sell the house and use the money to start his new life in his new village.

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