Capacity-Building
Nomad RSI has been long-committed to local autonomy and ownership of its projects. Indeed its India programme now operates as a partnership under the Ladakh Society for Traditional Medicines (LSTM). For Cambodia, great care has to be exercised by Nomad RSI with its Mondulkiri partners, as they are developing from much lower base-lines than most other areas. Any hand over can take place only as and when local actors are ready; although Nomad RSI expects to continue appropriate support for many years. Expatriate expertise will remain essential for aong time for specialist research and original studies, and to assist the few Cambodians pursuing careers in these fields.
The key to successful "autonomy" is to build sustainable organisations and activities through combining voluntary collective participation with ability to generate sufficient income to cover costs. Nomad RSI has therefore designed a "capacity-building" project to do this, with gradual steps towards creating Bunong civil society organizations (CSOs). Nomad RSI’s project to establish medicinal plant gardens involves creating village committees to run them.
Dak Dam may set a pattern for other villages whereby many of the community activists are keen to participate in various CSOs, so some of the people are already joining handicraft self-help associations. In effect this is a village movement for which group cohesion and organization skills will be provided.
The MDG-F CISP project supports handicraft groups in some of the same villages. These have also needed to formalize in to self-help groups for viability beyond the project which ended in August 2010.
The main aim of the “capacity-building” project is to build confidence, skills, knowledge and capacity of Bunong people in order to be more able to influence their own lives and livelihoods. It will do this by facilitating collective strength so that ordinary villagers gain more real choice over their lives and community affairs. The idea is to encourage and facilitate self-help group working in whatever activities the villagers themselves decide as priorities. Although income-generating activities will be important, others that contribute to better village-life will be encouraged equally. Later at an appropriate pace, the members of these groups will federate in to forming officially-recognised Community Based Organisations (CBOs) or a Bunong Business Association.
This project, with the Mondolkiri Resource and Documentation Centre, diversifies Nomad RSI’s range of work, adding new expertise; however the moves are in direct response to needs and wishes of people. The new CBO is so named with the intention of being local to Mondulkiri. It could in due course become Nomad RSI’s formal partner, even taking over operations currently carried out by Nomad’s own staff.
The “livelihoods” element is an implicit component in the MDG-F CISP project. It also presents an opportunity for the CBO to operate independently, as good management of funds advanced to villagers, should create a store of wealth for future family and community activities.