Siem Reap, KH – From waste land to happy home – 30 Jun 2017

What was an unproductive small piece of land covered by bushes and weeds has been transformed into a beautiful home and garden. This happened because the local community and Peaksneng Tormacheat vegetable garden shop were inspired by MO’s dedication and hard work.

The result was that MO was able to build a small house through the help of contributions from the community and the Peaksneng Thormacheat vegetable garden shop.

MO has already achieved a lot on the small plot. She has built fencing around her home, and is growing a continuous supply of vegetables for eating and selling, raising her own pigs without assistance from the garden shop, and also raising chickens and cows.

The continuous supply of vegetables enables her to earn extra money to buy fish or meat so that her family can have a healthy diet. She also saves money to buy rice and other necessities. The improved diet is giving her the strength and energy for her work because she is less vulnerable to sickness, happy, and less worried about what to feed her family. She is assured of income at the end of the week because the family has vegetables to sell.

MO teaches the children responsibility and to care for and love the plants. She is so pleased to be able to send the children to school, because the education means that one day they can become productive by being able to learn skills.

The vegetable garden brings the family together when they work in the garden, and has created a better life at home by giving a feeling of joy and achievement to the family when they harvest and sell the vegetables.  MO and her family’s efforts have improved the health of the children and grand-children, and also enabled her to pay her grand-children’s expenses when they go to school.

She has faced a number of challenges, so the shop is mentoring her about how to schedule planting of crops for continuous harvesting, and how to guard against the challenge of reduced fertility of the soil. She is also lacking a good source of water, and experiencing threats to the plants that include bugs, insects and stray animals.

MO works with the garden shop team to find solutions to her challenges because she has a dream to improve her water well, see grand-children always going to school, improve their home, and have safe solar powered light at home for reading and studying.