Action for Development-SfC in Cambodia Majority of Cambodian people, especially the poor in rural area whose livelihood relies on agricultural production and most of themare particularly affected by various natural hazards such as strong wind, storm, flash flood and drought. Most of smallholder farmers in Cambodia are vulnerable to natural hazard impacts. Kampong Thom province is the most natural disaster affected province as other provinces in the country.  31% of family use water from well, there are 18,262 wells are available in the Kampong Thom (source: data of department of planning 2015). Under Ground water level is higher particularly in most of village situated along Sen River Bank, which range from 10 to 30 meters deep. Most of people in the rural area of Kampong Thom face shortage of water for domestic use and water supply for farming in the dry season.
The project calls Women Empowerment in Economic and Resilience to Climate Change ( WEERCC), seeks to address the above issues/problems through promoting women and youth to involve in saving and support them to gain access to more financial services in their community. Saving for Change group will be used as a platform and mechanism for women and youth to mobilize resources and dialogue and raise issue and needs to sun-national and nation government bodies and private sectors.
Overall objective of the project is to empower women to be self-reliant to overcome climate change and economic shocks. Specifically, the project aims to increase incomes of selected women through agricultural and non-agricultural productions and empower women to actively exercise their rights in socio-economic and resilience with climate change.  The project will cover 70 villages 13 communesin 03 districts (Baray, Prasat Balangk<(>&<)> Sandan) in KampongThom province. There will be total 122 SfC groups, including the 44existing groups and 78 new groups, equally to 2,248 people will be benefited from SfC activities. Total 290 households amongst total 122 SfC group members will practice home gardening and commercial farms activities respectively through capacity building on agricultural techniques. Total 300 households have access to indoor pipe water supply system for their use domestically and at least 150 SfC members, especially women will be trained on community-based-enterprise development and women leadership skills. The network of accessing market information will be facilitated through trade fair at province and private sector platforms.
 To meet this project expectation, AFD, in collaborating with Oxfam, other NGOs, Government line department and private sector, will provide capacity to saving for change group members. Those training courses will be C-BED, Adaptive Agriculture techniques; leadership, concept of EPRP and facilitation skills to cultivate women <(>&<)> youth leaders; and digital platforms to link market information via youth network or mobile phones, facebook/messengers in order to promote agricultural products to market. SfC members will be selected to be women farmer champion to represent at commune, district and provincial level. They will be actively involved in CIP/CDs/District Integration Workshop, participated in farmer forum at commune, district, provincial and national levels.
More importantly, AFD will collaborate with PCDM and other NGOs in Kampong Thom province to facilitate developing and updating EPRP plan for target district and commune; and will actively coordinate works with Banks or MFIs to engage saving for change group to gain access to financial service at MFIs and support at least 30% of saving for change group to possess group bank account for their group at MFIs at their local. This project also will facilitate with provincial department of rural development, local authority and saving for change group members to build 03 pipe water system for domestic use in 3 communes in Sandan, Baray and Prasat Balangk district. AFD will define village where could be possible for piloting this pipe water system with local authority in commune level respectively and facilitate in mobilizing resource with commune council, SfC member#s fund, and seed for funding source from other NGOs and PDRD to build the pipe water system.