It is not always nature’s behavior that makes us take emergency action, sometimes people themselves can shape a disaster. In the villages of Poung Peay and Phnom Penh Thmey, land disputes recently caused a great catastrophe for its inhabitants. By securing a memorandum of approval from the court, a land owner had the 237 families of the villages evicted from their homes by force. Houses were reportedly burned down, destroyed and many people became homeless overnight.

To assist the families who suffered from this land dispute, CWS distributed rice and mosquito nets for people to survive the hardships following the disaster. Finally, after many weeks of uncertainty, the local authorities, -with the support of a coalition of NGO’s-, were able to arrange free plots of land for all affected families. CWS’ aim is to always strive to give hopeless people hope and return vulnerable people their voice. Our emergency relief program should therefore be seen as the first step in reclaiming those things that have been lost through disaster.

Case story: 50kg of Rice Can Make a Difference

Many areas of Cambodia suffer from severe drought every year; this particularly causes problems in the poorest communities. Mao Savoeun and his wife Heng Saran, farmers from the village of Bos Sangkhor, are a typical example of how things can turn from bad to worse. After many years of barely surviving on their 0.1 hectare of land, disaster struck when the rain did not fall during the rice planting season of 2005. As a consequence, their land started to dry out and in order to get water, Savoeun had to dig a 2 meter deep well with his bare hands. To get the water to the land, he had to hang upside down into the well to fill a small pot which his pregnant wife would then use to water their seedlings. Unfortunately, the water in the well was not sufficient to grow their crops with, and their harvest turned out to be very meager.

Because Mao Savoeun was not able to grow enough food for him and his family, he decided to cross the Cambodian-Vietnamese border in search of day labor. This also did not turn out well. Despite the fact that he worked from early in the morning until late in the evening, he never earned more than a dollar a day, placing his family in a very desperate situation. With choices running out, he was finally forced to borrow money from a private money lender who charged him so much interest that life only became more miserable.

Fortunately however, Mao Savoeun’s family was selected by CWS in May 2006 as one of the poor families to be included in the emergency response program. As a consequence, they were supplied with a water pump, 50 kilos of rice and 6 cans of fish which changed their lives enormously. Because they did not have to be concerned about food for a couple of months, Mao Savoeun and his family were able to restructure their lives and make a new start. They diversified their crop, and Mao Savoen started a business as a palm sugar maker, something which would not have been possible without CWS’ emergency relief intervention.