Note: Early in 2020, in the opening weeks of the Covid pandemic, we very reluctantly decided to close our Rural Assistance Program in response to the Cambodian government's decision to close the nation to most overseas travelers. Those travel restrictions meant that we would be unable to do the regular site visits which we felt we essential to insure the quality of this program. We have kept the post below as a record of all that this program accomplished toward improving the lives and livelihoods of the farmers and their families in our program's target area.

Late in 1998 we formed a partnership with the then newly established Cambodian NGO, CEDAC, with the aim of improving the lives of peasant farmers and restoring the ecological balance in a targeted area of the countryside through extensive planting of trees. Investigation of the wide variety of problems and challenges facing the farmers in our target area led us, step by step, to broaden our program to include the efforts described below.
We started in January 1999 with just two very impoverished villages in the rural Baphnom District of Prey Veng Province. Now, more than 16 years later, our program encompasses an area including dozens of villages spread across not only Baphnom District, but also the adjacent districts of Kampong Trabek and Preah Sdaech.

Below we describe some of the key components of our program.