SummaryLe Tonle training guesthouse and restaurant is a social enterprise project of the Cambodian Rural Development Team (CRDT), a non-profit NGO in Cambodia). Le Tonle Training Guesthouse and Restaurant aims to provide free theoretical and practical training to young disadvantaged Cambodians in the area of tourism and hospitality such as front office, housekeeping, cooking, and hospitality. By providing these skills in the short term, vulnerable youths are able to obtain varied and worthwhile careers and are able to live by themselves independently and support their family by sending some of their earnings back home. In the long term, the training is providing an opportunity for youth to develop themselves further in tourism professions and giving them general knowledge, which will enable them to take careers as one of the country's human resources. This will help solve the human development program of Cambodia and lift the poverty rate in the future. According to the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) from 2018, thirty-five percent of Cambodians are living in poverty, especially in the countryside.
Our 8-month training program
Le Tonle's training program is recognized by the Ministry of Tourism of Cambodia under the National Committees of Tourism Professional as a vocational certificate. Trainees are trained by our experienced trainers, many of whom were our graduates from 2008. Most of the training periods are focused on practicing and interacting with the tourism industry by supporting trainees to develop generic competencies such as computer skills and English proficiency.
Progress report a little light is shining after most of Cambodia were vaccinated
The government of Cambodia announced to open the country for the first time and recommend its citizens to learn to live with the situation by practicing the safety recommendation provided by the Ministry of Health of Cambodia. The announcement was made after most population of Cambodians were vaccinated.
After the announcement starting to believe that there was a good sign interim of employment in the tourism industry. Since the professional predicted that 10% of tourism employment will be recovering in the first 6 months. Le Tonle team was observing the opportunity from previous partners and contacted unemployed trainees to prepare their information. Furthermore, our team conducted several activities at the community level. For example, we managed to distribute 24 bicycles to CBET of Koh Preah, conduct many meetings on improving the by-law, conduct camping products for Koh Preah, and print 500 folding maps for the domestic independent travelers to visit the village. We also produced more than Facebook content for the community of Koh Preah, Koh Chang, and Koh Tnoat.
Our current biggest challenges
Le Tonle training guesthouse and restaurant is a social enterprise project of the Cambodian Rural Development Team (CRDT), a non-profit NGO in Cambodia). Le Tonle Training Guesthouse and Restaurant aims to provide free theoretical and practical training to young disadvantaged Cambodians in the area of tourism and hospitality such as front office, housekeeping, cooking and hospitality. By providing these skills in the short term, vulnerable youths are able to obtain varied and worthwhile careers and are able to live by themselves independently and support their family by sending some of their earnings back home. In the long term, the training is providing an opportunity for youth to develop themselves further in tourism professions and giving them general knowledge, which will enable them to take careers as one of the country's human resources. This will help solve the human development program of Cambodia and lift the poverty rate in the future. According to the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) from 2018, thirty-five per cent of Cambodians are living in poverty, especially in the countryside.
Le Tonle training program is recognized by the Ministry of Tourism of Cambodia under the National Committees of Tourism Professional as a vocational certificate. Trainees are trained by our experienced trainers, many of whom were our graduates from 2008. Most of the training periods are focused on practising and interacting with the tourism industry by supporting trainees to develop generic competencies such as computer skills and English proficiency.
The small town of Kratie experienced it first big outbreak of Covid-19
In the past 3 months, the town of Kratie experienced its first biggest outbreak of covid-19. The local government reported between the 25th -28th of August 2021 the average of new cases found around 80 people a day. The local authority had shut down the market for 1 week and continued their mission on the covid-19 test to hundreds of people. The town went quiet and most businesses laid low. It was fortunate that none of our graduated students got inflicted.
The number of employment of our graduates has not changed. It was good to hear that some of them were having a good time with their family at the farm during the rainy season. One of our graduates managed to find a job during this difficult time at one of the guesthouses located around 250km from her hometown as a housekeeper. Theary mentioned it is a bit scary to work during the covid-19 but she had no choice since she needs a job to support her family. She needs to maintain her hygiene as much as possible. It is said that she won’t be able to visit her family more often than before because she is afraid that she may bring the virus to the family.
The team of Le Tonle had spent some of our time conducting some community capacity development in tourism. We were trying to make our time as useful as possible. It was challenging to gather during this time but at least we did something.
Our current biggest challenges
Summary
Le Tonle training guesthouse and restaurant is a social enterprise project of the Cambodian Rural Development Team (CRDT), a non-profit NGO in Cambodia). Le Tonle Training Guesthouse and Restaurant aims to provide free theoretical and practical training to young disadvantaged Cambodians in the area of tourism and hospitality such as front office, housekeeping, cooking, and hospitality. By providing these skills in the short term, vulnerable youths can obtain varied and worthwhile careers and can live by themselves independently and support their family by sending some of their earnings back home. In the long term, the training provides an opportunity for youth to develop themselves further in tourism professions and give them general knowledge, which will enable them to take careers as one of the country's human resources. This will help solve the human development program of Cambodia and lift the poverty rate in the future. According to the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) from 2018, thirty-five percent of Cambodians are living in poverty, especially in the countryside.
Our 8-month training program
The Ministry of Tourism of Cambodia under the National Committees of Tourism Professional recognized the Le Tonle training program as the vocational certificate. Trainees are trained by our experienced trainers, many of whom were our graduates from 2008. Most of the training periods are focused on practicing and interacting with the tourism industry by supporting trainees to develop generic competencies such as computer skills and English proficiency.
Progress report hope there will be no other time harder than this time! The 20th of February 2021 was a nightmare for us as Cambodians and the team of Le Tonle. It was an event that we scare and don’t want to happen. Unfortunately, it is happening to us right now. The community spread of Covid019 is giving us even the harder time to fight with limited resources. Phnom Penh city is locking down and travel across provinces is banned. Tourism? Kind of dead at the moment including domestic. At the same, one of our landlords decided to increase the renting fee to 100%, which is not understandable. This gives us no choice but to eliminate one of our buildings since we cannot afford it. The good news it will still want Le Tonle to restart after the pandemic and we thought more training regarding technology will be included in the training to respond to the Cambodia industry 4.0 era (technology skills). Therefore, we are keeping the reputation alive and maintain one staff to do all of this work. Our current biggest challenges
1- We need to re-strategize Le Tonle. However, we have no capacity in doing this.
2- Need to find a way to respond if covid-19 is not ending in the 6 months as it might the end of our reserve resource
Summary
Le Tonle training guesthouse and restaurant is a social enterprise project of Cambodian Rural Development Team (CRDT), a non-profit NGO in Cambodia). Le Tonle Training Guesthouse and Restaurant aims to provide free theoretical and practical training to young disadvantaged Cambodians in the area of tourism and hospitality such as front office, housekeeping, cooking and hospitality. By providing these skills in short term, vulnerable youths are able to obtain varied and worthwhile careers, and are able to live by themselves independently and support their family by sending some of their earnings back home. In the long term, the training is providing an opportunity for youth to develop themselves further in tourism professions and giving them general knowledge, which will enable them to take careers as one of the country's human resource. This will help solve the human development program of Cambodia and lift the poverty rate in the future. According to the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) from 2018, thirty-five per cent of Cambodians are living in poverty, especially in the countryside.
Our 8-month training program
Le Tonle training program is recognized by the Ministry of Tourism of Cambodia under the National Committees of Tourism Professional as vocational certificate. Trainees are trained by our experienced trainers, many of whom were our graduates from 2008. Most of the training periods are focused on practicing and interacting with the tourism industry by supporting trainees to develop generic competencies such as computer skills and English proficiency.
Progress reportWe are not giving up yet, we are still fighting against the crisis of Covid-19
Mid December 2020 was our taught discussion among the Management Committees (MC) member regarding the progress of Our Le Tonle vocational Training Center since the land lord would like to increase their rent back to normal after a while discount. Some of MC member wanted to close down the operation of Le Tonle since it is becoming hard for us to hold up while some still want to keep it legacy. After, one of discussion we decided to keep it. Fortunately, we managed to re-negotiate the property owner to keep the same discount leasing cost. The training is closed. We are still running our guesthouse so that reputation remains a live till the good old comes back. We did not encounter any funding luck in the past three months but we managed to find a few more jobs for our lost job employees and graduated trainees. There were four of them found a job. Two of them are working direct in tourism industry in the Capital city of Phnom Penh while the other are working as a sale person in sunglasses shop and tech company. We managed to allocate some of our standby team to engage in community capacity development project. So far, they had been breaking their limit in the industry to conduct training for Community based ecotourism sties on food & hygiene preparation and bookkeeping. It was nice to get busy during the low tourist season.
Response to COVID-19
We are not forgetting about Covid-19, therefore personal hygiene and adapting new living style are still our agendas. We are now is preparing for another domestic tourist promotion and meeting different people for any funding opportunity. Again, the employment opportunity in tourism is up and down but we are still hunting for the opportunity for our trainees and forwarded them some new skills may help beside tourism.
Our current biggest challenges
Our hold up the guesthouse will last till mid 2021 only, our next journey will up to the next decision of the management.
Summary
Le Tonle training guesthouse and restaurant is a social enterprise project of Cambodian Rural Development Team (CRDT), a non-profit NGO in Cambodia). Le Tonle Training Guesthouse and Restaurant aims to provide free theoretical and practical training to young disadvantaged Cambodians in the area of tourism and hospitality such as front office, housekeeping, cooking and hospitality. By providing these skills in short term, vulnerable youths are able to obtain varied and worthwhile careers, and are able to live by themselves independently and support their family by sending some of their earnings back home. In the long term, the training is providing an opportunity for youth to develop themselves further in tourism professions and giving them general knowledge, which will enable them to take careers as one of the country's human resource. This will help solve the human development program of Cambodia and lift the poverty rate in the future. According to the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) from 2018, thirty-five per cent of Cambodians are living in poverty, especially in the countryside.
Our 8-month training program
Le Tonle training program is recognized by the Ministry of Tourism of Cambodia under the National Committees of Tourism Professional as vocational certificate. Trainees are trained by our experienced trainers, many of whom were our graduates from 2008. Most of the training periods are focused on practicing and interacting with the tourism industry by supporting trainees to develop generic competencies such as computer skills and English proficiency.
Progress reportFighting through the pandemic was taught
Since March 2020 when the outbreak of Covid-19 reached to Cambodia, our training center had closed. Action was taken to keep everyone safe and prevent further spread of the virus. 80% of our team had to leave due to there was no funding. These included trainers and staffs at our practicing guesthouse and restaurant. There are very few team members remaining in place to keep the project alive and hopefully till the end of the Covid-19 and receive fund to continue our work. This team called the standby team some of them are working full time while some are working full time. The expenses of the utility renting is ongoing (40% discount by the owner) and the salary for the standby team are still applying as they are working on training program development, mentoring the previous trainees and those who had lost their job, finding job opportunity and working proposal development for funding opportunity. We were struggling in seeking for grant to support the utility and the standby team. Below were actions taken by us to solve this problem.
1- We proposed six proposals to relevant partners asking for help during the pandemic with the value of 30,000.00 USD totally. Unfortunately, only two of our proposed succeed with the value of 3,000.00 USD. Among these two one was GlobalGiving.
2- Recently, we had just summitted another proposal to our last year donor who supported us on the training program. However, the proposal was not shortlisted.
3- We decided to re-open our guesthouse in July to accommodation expat and Cambodian traveler. Sadly, there were not many tourists visiting to the town.
Trainee employment
Till today 90% of previous trainees had lost their job in tourism due to industry close down. Most of them return home to help their family in agriculture while some are trying to find job in a different industry such as technology store, local restaurant and factory.
Response to COVID-19
Below are our method responding to Covid-19 at the moment:
o Conduct on going meetings and update on personal hygiene to trainee and working team.
o Double the hygiene management regarding Le Tonle guesthouse and café
Our current biggest challenges
Not sure if the center can survive till the situation back to normal and the team kind of running out of option to try.
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