Training on business strategy

In the northeastern part of Cambodia, there is limited support for local communities whose livelihoods depend on natural resources such as forests and fish. However, it is crucial to provide assistance for the sustainable development of these communities in order to preserve Cambodia’s important biodiversity.

The Culture and Environment Preservation Association (CEPA) is dedicated to ensuring the equitable preservation and protection of Cambodia’s natural resources for the sustainable use and livelihoods of its people. For example, CEPA collaborates with local communities to secure their rights in natural resource management and works towards improving their livelihoods. This is achieved through the establishment of eco-tourism activities and the development of businesses related to the collection of non-timber forest products or the processing of fisheries resources.

One of CEPA’s main activities is to support communities in developing sustainable income-generating activities and establishing businesses, such as those based on fish and agricultural products.
However, these communities currently face challenges in generating profits, and CEPA requires support to gain deeper insights and receive specialized training in business strategy.

The involvement of volunteers from Planète Urgence is crucial because CEPA lacks the necessary skills for this mission and does not have the financial resources to hire a trainer.

The volunteer intervention must cover those topics:

– Analysis of CEPA’s current skills in business strategy/development

– Understanding how value chains function and how to analyze them within their project activities. CEPA supports communities in developing enterprises through the ‘Enterprise HUB’ project. However, they lack an analysis of the value chain for each product (e.g., honey, rattan, vegetables, and agroforestry products like bamboo). Thus, they require support in understanding how value chains function and how to analyze them within their project activities.

Business development, including how to design business plans, collect relevant sales data, conduct market studies, and more. Within the Enterprise HUB project, CEPA focuses on SME management. Nonetheless, the team lacks clear strategy and approach to ensure the sustainability of the business they are developing.

CEPA also intends to strengthen institutional governance within the communities. While they already provide support in areas such as institutional governance, administration management, and financial compliance, they lack formalized documentation and processes for this strategy, especially regarding financial management. They are trying to develop financial guidelines for communities but their team lacks strategic vision to do so. They aim to develop a manual or formalized documentation to enhance their approach to strengthening the governance of Community Forestry (CF) and Community Fishery (CFi).

This first mission will be followed by at least 2 other missions.

Stung Treng is the capital of Stung Treng Province, located in North-East Cambodia on the Sesan River near its confluence with the Mekong River. It’s 376 km from Phnom Penh and it’s 50 km south of the Laos border.
The province is mostly covered by extensive forests, intersecting rivers and streams. Stung Treng includes also the western chunk of the Virachey National Park, considered as a key biodiversity hotspot.
Illegal fishing activities and logging put high pressure on the forest and fishery reserves.

There are some restaurants in Stung Treng, which is a very quiet city with little tourism. Activities during the week-end can be arranged with the community based eco-tourism supported by CEPA.

Malaria and Dengue are present in Stung Treng and preventive drugs for Malaria are recommended.

Time schedule: 8.00 to 12.00 am OR 2.00 pm to 5.00 pm depending on the partner’s availability.

The beneficiaries of the training will be 7 members of CEPA’s team, including 3 women.

Most of the team’s members background is community support, some have notions business development; others have no expertise in this matter.
The English level of the team is low to very good. Some members of the team are fluent in English, while some of them cannot speak English and others can speak just a little bit. A translator will be required to ease the understanding of the training.

The volunteer will be welcomed at Phnom Penh Airport by a member of CEPA’s team and will be transported to a hotel near the airport for an overnight stay.

The volunteer will leave by mini-bus the following day (approx. 7h of travel) and will be welcomed at the hotel in Stung Treng by a member of CEPA’s staff.

On the way back, the volunteer will travel on Friday by mini-bus from Stung Treng to Phnom Penh and will leave the country on Saturday.

Phnom Penh

The volunteer will be staying at a hotel near CEPA’s office in Stung Treng (individual private room, private bathroom)
Breakfast, lunch and dinner will be taken in restaurants nearby.

CEPA’s office includes desks and a meeting room with a video-projector. Volunteer should bring a laptop.