By Or Channy | Project manager
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 recognize 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 report
Since the project was established in 2008 till present, there have been 276 trainees from marginalized communities around the Northeast of Cambodia and around 53% of trainees are female. Based on our records, 85% of these graduates obtained a job in tourism industry in North-Eastern regions and some have obtained careers in the big tourism hub in Cambodia such as Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Most trainees send 60% of their monthly earnings back home to support their families.
Between March to June 2020, Le Tonle was closed to prevent the spread of Covid-19. The decision was made by its management committees. The team managed to keep everyone safe from the virus. On the other hand, there were huge negative impacts on the project. For example, among all of our newly graduated (24 trainees) only 10% of them could find a job in tourism industry while the rest remain unemployed. Le Tonle contacted a big portion of its previous graduates since 2008. 90% of them had lost their job. Donors decided to cut off the further funding for Le Tonle which has caused the whole training to shut down and many of our trainers had to leave the center.
In July 2020, Le Tonle decided to capitalize on the still existent domestic tourism. The management of Le Tonle decided to re-open its guesthouse and café in a very small scale see if domestic tourism could help generate income to support the standby team. The standby team are working really hard in promoting the guesthouse and café as well as keep in touch with all of graduates to update on the job opportunity. We are in an uncertain situation this is because we currently using our little reserve fund from our mother NGOs (CRDT) to support the current team member hopefully the situation will improve soon. Le Tonle was depending on its donor for 80% of its funding source while the remaining 20% was supporting by crowd funding such as GlobalGiving, individual and the income generated from the guesthouse and restaurant.
To fight through this the standby team had taken several activities in the past 3 months. For instance, submitted around 6 proposals to emergency small grants but only 2 were accepted equal to 3k, re-opening its guesthouse and café and cut off many team members include trainers.
Our current biggest challenges
Le Tonle is likely to be paused the project for along time which has never happened in the past from next year. This is due to no funding source from donor and till there is a donor to support our training again. Since tourism is heavily affected there are still a big amount of our graduates lost job and there are not many job opportunities around. The lack of network and capacity to build a new relationship with donor for the project and it is not helping at all since Coivd-19 presence.
Urgent assistance needs
It would help the project to stay alive and make more of a positive impact for youth around here if there is another source of funding to support the 80% (around 80k/year) fund missing and we are the team of Le Tonle are ready to invest our time in preparing proposal and plan as long as there is a connection to the funding source. Therefore, as one our followers and those who like to support the social work please link to any network you know.
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