This paper is produced on the basis of the on-going work of the Analyzing Development Issues Centre (ADIC) in collaboration with DC Research team working in Dak Dam commune in Mondulkiri Province, Cambodia, since 2013. It is aims to illustrate a different model of development that takes into account the active involvement of the communities for long term social, economic and environmental development. The paper begins with examining the mismatch of development approaches, followed by the concept of going with the flow of community life (GFCL) in participatory action research (PAR) then the emergence of community-corporate partnership (CCP) concept; its relation to social enterprise, and stock taking of CCP in its current practice in the communities. Different approaches to development interventions in Cambodia have been tested to examine if they offer greater chance of ownership, benefits, and sustainability to the people or communities. Often, the claim of the intended beneficiaries to the approach comes nil when these factors are brought in. In one instance, community people were urged to advocate for their rights and access to land and forest resources when these were encroached on by powerful individuals or companies. Community people’s motivation comes to despair when the intended achievements end up beyond their reach. On the other hand, there are approaches such as the community forestry program that seeks to improve livelihoods in line with environmental conservation; however, the outcome is not realized because of the dependency on external support and the lack of subsidy to those who sacrifice for forest protection. This paper argues that there is an alternative to build a strong individual or household economic base before they effectively start engaging in protecting their resources. This lends itself to the concept of community-corporate partnership (CCP), which taps into available resources such as land from community people while capital and technical inputs come from outside for collective production that is based on mutually agreed principle of shared benefits and losses. Cases of coffee, pepper production and a few other cash crops are being experimented over the past year with indigenous people in upland Mondulkiri Province. Over the period, there have been manifestations of shared understanding, trust, control of processes and challenges, which indicate a promising path to long term benefits. This has long term potential for strengthening community solidarity for defending their rights to land and natural resources they presently depend upon for their living.

1. COMMUNITY-CORPORATE PARTNERSHIP:
CASE OF CASH CROP PRODUCTION IN UPLAND CAMBODIA
Dane SO*
, Il OEUR, Dina THOL
Analyzing Development Issues Centre, Cambodia
*Corresponding author: danenakvy@gmail.com
Abstract
This paper is produced on the basis of the on-going work of the Analyzing Development
Issues Centre (ADIC) in collaboration with DC Research team working in Dak Dam
commune in Mondulkiri Province, Cambodia, since 2013. It is aims to illustrate a different
model of development that takes into account the active involvement of the communities for
long term social, economic and environmental development. The paper begins with
examining the mismatch of development approaches, followed by the concept of going with
the flow of community life (GFCL) in participatory action research (PAR) then the
emergence of community-corporate partnership (CCP) concept; its relation to social
enterprise, and stock taking of CCP in its current practice in the communities.
Different approaches to development interventions in Cambodia have been tested to examine
if they offer greater chance of ownership, benefits, and sustainability to the people or
communities. Often, the claim of the intended beneficiaries to the approach comes nil when
these factors are brought in. In one instance, community people were urged to advocate for
their rights and access to land and forest resources when these were encroached on by
powerful individuals or companies. Community people‟s motivation comes to despair when
the intended achievements end up beyond their reach. On the other hand, there are
approaches such as the community forestry program that seeks to improve livelihoods in line
with environmental conservation; however, the outcome is not realized because of the
dependency on external support and the lack of subsidy to those who sacrifice for forest
protection. This paper argues that there is an alternative to build a strong individual or
household economic base before they effectively start engaging in protecting their resources.
This lends itself to the concept of community-corporate partnership (CCP), which taps into
available resources such as land from community people while capital and technical inputs
come from outside for collective production that is based on mutually agreed principle of
shared benefits and losses. Cases of coffee, pepper production and a few other cash crops are
being experimented over the past year with indigenous people in upland Mondulkiri
Province. Over the period, there have been manifestations of shared understanding, trust,
control of processes and challenges, which indicate a promising path to long term benefits.
This has long term potential for strengthening community solidarity for defending their rights
to land and natural resources they presently depend upon for their living.
Keywords: Cash Crops, Community, Corporate, Partnership, Cambodia.
Introduction
With peace and reconciliation in Cambodia in the early 1990s, newly-organized government
agencies-and development actors within and from outside begun work to rehabilitate the
ravaged situation of the country (ADB, 2015). This followed the relief and humanitarian
work of the 1980s and the setting up of the central government after the UNTAC period.
Reforms in the public sector and partnership building began in different sectors. By the mid-
2000s, when a more strategic direction was adopted (the CMDGs), funders encouraged

2. adoption of the rights-based approach. Several international NGOs localized or partnered
with local NGOs to focus on capacity building, service deliveries and advocacy work. It is
also a period when pressures were made against civil and political rights activists and
advocates. Government provides services through different apparatus, through the ministries
and especially with newly set up local government units. At the same time, laws and
development policies were adopted to facilitate the incoming of other actors including the
private sector and non-government organizations. (Bañez-Ockelford, 2010.)
International assistance to Cambodia between 1992 and 2007 amounted to 7 billion USD.
The large number of international NGOs into the country stimulated the emergence of local
NGOs that engaged in implementing INGO projects or foreign-assisted programs, such as the
UN, USAID, and WB-ADB. Thus, Cambodia has the largest number of NGOs in the world
compared its population. But since the mid-2000s, NGOs became less luxurious in funding
and now compete for funds while international assistance flowed more into government
programs (Lyne, Khieng, and Ngin, 2015). NGOs number 1,315 in 2012 while hybrid forms
of civil society, known as sub-national NGOs and community-based organizations (CBOs)
comprise about 25,000 in Cambodia (Ou and Kim, 2014).
Myriad of strategies and methods were adopted by NGOs: some work on training and
building the capacity of communities and engage them in production; some have worked well
to link communities to markets; while others have not done well for they focused much on
the knowledge and skills. Other NGOs have built the soft skills in leadership and advocacy
for communities or NGO staff. Some drive the process of advocacy themselves; others
engaged local community leaders to take part. A Cambodia Development Review article in
2014 points out that donor priorities tend to focus more on getting the projects done rather
than aiming for impact; hence, were more accountable to donor agencies than to the
grassroots communities. At the same time, CBOs normally established by NGOs have less
certainty in sustainability and rely much on NGO funding support (Ou and Kim, 2014).
Moreover, it appears that the approaches that engaged the communities for local development
and advocacy have reached a saturation level. There have been many questions regarding the
sustainability of such initiatives. It was found out that some NGOs working with
communities after 10 years have done little to bring people‟s participation in the process.
There were some complaints from communities regarding the effects of the advocacy efforts;
after having put so much effort, they got exhausted or their family‟s need for labor demand
that they focus on their own household economies. The use of NGO-defined planning format,
such as the logical framework or log frame, is instrumental mainly for donor agencies and
understood to belong to the NGO itself rather than the community, especially with the
absence of or minimal community participation (Nee & McCallum, 2009).
Much of the interventions of NGOs were externally designed for the reason that local
community members and their leaders have limited capacities to engage with big or complex
issues. This rationale retained an external approach and process of development that continue
to dictate the agenda of the communities. Another school of thought saw this as mismatch of
the realities on the ground on the community pace and needs versus externally-designed
interventions; a contrast to a certain extent. Analyzing Development Issues Centre (ADIC)
tried a different yet unique process known as Going with the Flow of Community Life
(GFCL) in the Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach. The idea is that development
workers can take a serious part in the daily life of community people to learn from their
livelihood strategies, social life and level of resilience by using active listening and from time
to time raising critical questions for them to reflect.

3. Going with the Flow of Community Life and the Root of
Community-Corporate Partnership
PAR is a broad concept with many elements in it, but a special one is its cross-cutting aspect
of Going with the Flow of Community Life (GFCL). It runs across all other aspects of PAR
process including identifying, analyzing, questioning, implementing and reflecting. Although
it goes in line with the current development thinking, this concept coined by the ADIC team
emerged from its real experience of working with indigenous people in the Northeast
Provinces of Cambodia since 2013. It is important to be integrated by staying within the
communities, having interaction and raising relevant questions, as way to improve their
thinking-- individually or through an informal group environment. The primary researcher
does not come as an expert but must have the skills and knowledge to be able to help
community researchers or co-researchers whose specific roles should be defined while being
part of the research processes (Wimpenny, 2010). As an outsider with the right attitude of a
learner, we can learn a lot from this dynamic through active listening to people more than
doing the talking and engaging with them in activity. This is in line with the idea of „do with‟
rather than „do for‟ as the latter implies dependency (O‟Leary and Meas, 2001, p.v)
There are several advantages in adopting the GFCL concept. One is that development
practitioners would know a lot from the community and gain deep trust with them; it has a
greater potential for mobilizing community for analysis of a particular issues for action and
reflection. More importantly, as there is no need to have any form of organization but rather a
natural form of gathering or one-to-one informal chat, it puts off pressure on community
people to come to an event without any clues and on staff who need to run around preparing
logistics and doing the facilitation work. Finally, development practitioners can work at the
people‟s pace and on their willingness or readiness to join, thus achieving a genuine
empowerment process in the community. However, there is at least a disadvantage for this
process as it works against donor‟s priorities and rigidity (use of logical framework and
focusing on getting the work done), since moving at the people‟s pace is a quite slow, yet
rewarding process.
Placing Community-Corporate Partnership in the Context of Social Enterprise
ADIC‟s experience with the GFCL brought out a community friendly forum as the venue for
community decisions on what to do on issues that affects them. This was applied to issues
like the threat of land grabbing, encroachment and logging, as well as community boundary
conflicts. Yet, there was a question on how to improve livelihoods, especially with their
gains of having lands returned to them from their protest against the economic land
concession companies. One idea was to promote community collective farm (CCF). The
indigenous people already engaged in some form of collective labor, especially in common
property resources. However, this was limited to subsistence or traditional agriculture. The
community-corporate partnership (CCP) or partnership farming concept came from this. The
concept is about sharing agreeable benefit between community people and outsiders will
invest in new crops production along with technical support and marketing. The community
provides the land resources and the partnership will be an opportunity for the community to
learn innovative agriculture, produce, process and sell their products to the markets. This is
expected to generate income while at the same time allow the community to protect their
individual lands rather than to sell it out and to protect and sustain their communal land
space—if the community realize the value of their common resources for practical livelihood
and its intrinsic cultural and environmental value, then they would more likely protect land
and forest resources. The concept retains the friendly forum for exchange of ideas and
knowledge, and experiences. Community people have the power to make decision because

4. they are the owners of the land who has 50% of earning and decision making power. Now,
there is increasing demand from the community people. We have gained strong technical
support from local expert who has tested their crops in the areas.
The idea of reviving these farms is not only for improving their resilience in the face of
climate change which impacts their crops such as rice, but such community farms offers an
unconditional platform where inclusive development would take place: such as the discussion
of land rights and food security. Obviously, they have made use of the space for multi-
stakeholders (police, community leaders, commune councilors, and youth) to freely join the
discussion without having no-one to invite anyone. In that sense, they felt so comfortable to
talk about their lives, issues, and challenges as well as to find way for collaboration. Unlike
the conditional platform where people are invited to join to follow the agenda of the
organizers, this offers them to develop agenda, talking freely and making their own
conclusions. The role of staff was to listen to them and raise critical questions when
necessary for people to consider the advantage and disadvantage of the decision, and share
information when necessary. Such role has been able to create awareness of people‟s hidden
potential to take own initiatives.
The CCP concept is linked to the ideas of social enterprise (SE) amongst the NGO
development initiatives. Social enterprise refers to an organization that has social objective
by bringing benefits for community, in other words, the emphasis is more on ethical integrity
and social value than profit (Ty and Anurit, 2009; Lyne, 2012; Khieng, 2014). It is a business
venture that seeks to address social issues, especially in countries where are not responsive to
societal needs and issues. It is known as new problem-solving tool different entities including
public organizations, private organizations, and civil society (Ty and Anurit, 2009; Yonus,
2011). It composes of diverse strategies for addressing problems and opportunities in society
(Gonin, Besharov, Smith, and Gachet, 2012).
The concept has been around over the past two decades within the circles of academics,
practitioners, and donors aiming to learn about nonprofit‟s uptake of „market-based
approaches‟ in order attain social goal. It drew significant attention within the non-profit
sectors in developing countries for they have confronted funding decline and the urge for
NGOs to become self-sustaining (Ty and Anurit, 2009).Cambodia development actors
including NGOs may be in the situation to get away from foreign domination given this
alternative. The lack of independence and on-going domination of external priorities implied
the lack of sensitivity to local context and values. For long term sustainability to take place, it
is important to use people-focused, inclusive and environmentally harmonious approaches,
and social entrepreneurship certainly has a role. However, there are potential risks for such a
shift by the fine line between nonprofit and for-profit organization status that may affect
NGOs‟ credibility (Hutchinson, 2007; Khieng 2014).
Social enterprise is on the increase in Cambodia despite its unclear legality. The Cooperation
Committee for Cambodia (CCC), an influential umbrella and development think-tank
describe „a shift toward social enterprise programs as a new, more sustainable development
model‟ (Khieng & Dahles, 2014). Most SEs was established by or was a conversion from an
NGO and registered at Ministry of Interiors; some others registered with the Ministry of
Commerce was seen to be more profit-oriented. Income earning is a key outcome of a SE
strategy for long term survival but its main purpose is social value.
A research study found out one third of the interviewed 43 NGOs combined both social
mission and market demands/opportunities, and only 2 for market opportunities. The study
also indicated five broad models of SE in East Asian region. First, non-profit trading
organizations are characterized by those looking for other sources of income or seeking to
achieve financial sustainability through delivery of social services (except work integration).

5. Secondly, work-integration social enterprises are referred to as the provision of job
opportunities with training and/or employment services. Third, non-profit cooperatives are
about the collective self-employment and innovative responses to unmet needs based on
cooperative tradition. Fourth, non-profit-for-profit partnerships is where private companies
(or company foundations) supporting non-profit organizations or joint initiatives with a social
mission. Fifth, community development enterprise focuses on multi-stakeholder partnership
(non-profit organization, for-profit organization, and public) promoting participatory local
development. It is interesting that Cambodia SEs run across in all categories. (Lyne, Khieng,
and Ngin, 2015, p.9).
Khieng and Dahles (2014) concluded in their study that social entrepreneurship in Cambodia
catalyse the sprung up variety of grass-root organizations such as social enterprises,
cooperatives, farmer associations, women associations, saving groups, self-help groups,
community enterprises, micro and small businesses and socially responsible businesses.
While they share similar activities of goods and service provision, these are generally seen as
locally driven activities for local needs. Given the local resources dependency with social and
economic objectives, they are seen as different from the traditional NGOs highly dependent
on grants. Given the entrepreneurial nature of these groups, they adhere to promotion of
transparency and accountability, and governance, by a functioning of board. They are
obviously small in scale. It is believed that they may bring a key consequence of altering the
feature of non-profit organizations in Cambodia. They may not reprise the NGOs that lack
downward accountability but rather more to the funding partners. The study further suggest
that due to consequence of commercialization among NGOs in Cambodia, policy-makers
should take into account legal framework for the rise of the non-profit sector, such as social
enterprise and similar ones.
When the CCP concept is placed in this debate, it falls in line with the last three categories
for it encompasses the cooperative nature, joint initiative, aim of promoting social value,
multi-stakeholder partnership arrangement, and promoting strong governance structure. It
shares the purpose of focusing on social value than profit and in moving away from the aid
dependency syndrome. It is rather unique for it empowers local communities to make
decisions in the joint venture and share equal benefits, and hence it signals a high chance of
self-reliance. In fact, ADIC and DC Research, as agencies devoted to development research
and its current staff in support of the CCP initiative, will not transform themselves into the
business entities; instead the CCP and its supportive apparatus will locate their own refuge.
The Idea and Principles of Community-Corporate Partnership (CCP)
Community-Corporate Partnership (CCP) aims to redistribute the resources and benefit
through a win-win strategy for sustainable development goal. It is an approach to community
empowerment that leverages local resources for long term development. It attracts private
individuals and private sector to partner with the community to serve the long term interest of
contributing to social, environmental and economic development. It underscores a situation
where the communities who own large land areas but with few financial resources are served
by the better-off people or companies who have the financial, technical and market resources.
It seeks to move away from a conflict of interest—ownership and control-- to one with
common interest—joint use for shared benefit. In this case, it demands that the relationship
would only last if there is a trust building process. It implies a paradigm shift where
development practitioners‟ graduate from the rhetoric and fully integrate with the community.
CCP promotes small landholders with the intention to promote their culture and protect land
and natural resources management. The land owner could gain knowledge of agricultural
techniques and the necessary resources to improve livelihoods to secure family livelihood.

6. There are two important partners in a CCP: one, the community people who are the owners of
land; the other is the shareholder—either as individuals or grouped as a corporation--whose
main interest is the social objectives. A contract between these two is developed based on
duration of plantation preferred by the community themselves for marketable crops such as
pepper and coffee. We designed two types of contract arrangement. The first is for a short
term five-year partnership which involves the community to set up small plots (suitable for
some 30 passion fruit samplings and below). This short duration partnership would first build
trust between the partners before scaling-up for a long-term partnership. The production farm
is near the community partner‟s residences or as a backyard farm to grow the crops. The
outside shareholders provide the capital and technical support and eventually purchase and
market the products. The long term one is an eighteen-year partnership which involves the
community to allocate a larger area of land from one hectare or more under similar support to
that of the short term one. There are three models of partnerships including individual land,
renting land & collective land. All inputs, materials, agricultural equipment is to be handed
over to land owners by end of contractual period.
There is a third type which we have yet to fully develop and implement. It entails common
property resources—such as community protected areas which are larger in land scope. The
idea is for a bigger program, such as a package of eco-tourism services that merges livelihood
with long-term protection of the resources but demands larger investments. The Dak Dam
communities have such common property resources with waterfalls and rich biodiversity.
Based on the above, CCP is different from the concept of corporate social responsibility
(CSR) and public-private partnership (PPP) on its nature of arrangement and the extent of
benefit sharing. CSR, as a voluntary mechanism, enables ethical and responsible business to
take care of environmental issue and provide benefits to community, while still retaining
profit for the company (Ismail, 2009; Young and Limjirakan, 2011). Also, there is a concern
on the use of CSR when business operations these days run across the globe (Ismail, 2009).
Another mechanism is known as public-private partnerships (PPP) which involve a joint
arrangement between a public agency and state entity with one or more private entities for a
common purpose, mainly for profit, and with some level of knowledge transfer to state actors
(Young and Limjirakan, 2011). While the CSR operates on its own and allocate some
benefits to community, most decision is not transparent or hidden from the community. CCP
operates in a partnership manner which shares the benefit and decision making power with
communities; let alone PPP has nothing to do with communities, at least in principle.
Stock Taking
Progress in Cash Crop Production, and Potential Market Links
The Dak Dam communities where the Bunong indigenous people live are situated on upland
areas of about 800 meters above sea level. The area is endowed with cool temperature and
rich natural resources, including forests, green slopes, springs that provide water year-round
along with several waterfalls. The green slopes abound with pine trees introduced earlier
through land concessions. Also, it has fertile red soil which offers excellent condition for
agricultural production, not to mention the beautiful landscape as a source of touristic
attraction. The CCP initiative began in Dak Dam‟s fertile ground in mid-2015 after an
experiment with five hectares of Community Collective Farm (CCF) for growing pepper and
coffee. The development practitioners-cum-investors along with friends and relatives started
out with two households focused on two hectares as coffee farm, located about some 3km
away from owner‟s home, and about one fourth hectare for pepper close to the residential
area. Each owner has taken care of the farm well while investors closely monitor and make
joint decisions through regular monthly visit to the farms.

7. The area experienced prolonged drought from February-May 2016, somewhat resulting to
slight dwindling of coffee trees until a water pump was set up to bring water from the nearby
stream. However, it was not sufficient enough to spread out two hectares which demand more
connecting tubes. Fertilizers were used in the beginning and made the coffee trees stronger.
After the drought, the team applied a new type of fertilizer with adverse effects on tree
growth ability to some extent. With the advice of local expert to change the mix, the trees are
gradually flourishing and promising prolific fruition for harvest comes December. Unlike
coffee, black pepper has grown very well since the beginning because of the regular tending
and watering after the pond was dug nearby for pumping when necessary. It is branching off
and has drawn interest of other shareholders to invest. It is estimated that both coffee and
pepper will have reached maturation and provide maximum yields in 2018.
Type of Crops and its Return on Investment
No
Typeof
Crops
YearStarted
Village
Numberof
Households
LandArea
(Hectare)
Harvest
duration
(Month)
Total
investment
(USD)
TotalEst.
Income/year
(USD)
1 Pepper 2015 Poules 2 0.25 20 7,000 20,000
2 Coffee 2015 Poutreng 1 2.0 36 6,000 9,000
3 Avocado 2016
Pouless &
Poutreng
5 3.0 36 9,000 30,000
4 Coffee 2016
Pouless &
Poutreng
4 3.0 36 6,000 13,500
5 Pepper 2016
Pouless,
Poutreng &
Pouchob
10 0.5 20 14,000 40,000
6 Passion fruit 2016
Pouless,
Poutreng &
Pouchob
25 4.0 6 20,000 100,000
7 Banana 2016 Pouless 1 1.0 12 1,500 3,000
8
Mixed fruit
& vegetables
2016
Pouless &
Poutreng
5 3.0 36 10,000 40,000
Grand Total 53 16.75 - 73,500 255,500
Due to current good market demand for crops like passion fruits, avocado and other crops,
farm land areas were expanded in June 2016 to 16.75 hectares and which has already
accumulated the estimated investment capital to operation of USD 73,500 (seventy three
thousand and five hundred US Dollars). It expected that taken altogether, the yield would
bring an annual gross income of USD 255,500 (two hundred fifty five thousand and five
hundred US Dollar) in cash value. It was observed by the community people that outsider
investors came to purchase land in the area for similar cash crop production. This encouraged
community people to continue to expand farmland for more production. Markets for the
products were identified and linked with in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and other potential
touristic provinces. Seventeen coffee shop branches in Phnom Penh are ready to purchase the
products and local experts in processing passion fruits into juices have already tested and
look promising. The question now will be to what extent community people and investors
could gain earnings from these investments and how the market fluctuation may affect the
ability to purchase these products. We trust that until 2017, new requests for partnership from
the community will be more than triple, therefore needing additional investors.

8. Shared Trust and Decision Making Processes
The relationship with the Dak Dam communities can be traced back to 2012 when Analyzing
Development Issues Centre (ADIC) did research work on land use change and food security
that compared data between 2002 and 2012 (Hak et al., 2015). In January 2013, a project to
mobilize community people through Participatory Action Research (PAR) as in Figure 1 was
started by the research team. This enabled the development practitioners‟ staff to reflect on
development trends and changes and to build relationship and understanding of Bunong
indigenous culture. However, in the initial stage the practitioners of ADIC tend to use the
supply driven process, meaning that community people are invited to join events or activities.
This put pressures on the community people who have to abandon their time for the farms to
join the event while the practitioners run around to inform or invite people to attend. After all,
they both become exhausted and agenda points between them usually mismatch.
Realizing the above challenge, ADIC team has shifted to a more demand-driven process of
GFCL in PAR which fostered intimacy between practitioners and community people. As the
figure below indicates, the practitioner joins the community crop growing activity and listens
to story of their life. Such activities have been enriching as both sides to understand each
other over time. When any collective activity with community is required, community people
mobilize themselves and instead start inviting practitioners to join their action or initiative.
As a result of GFCL, the community collective farms for coffee, pepper and other crops
where community people pooled resources along with partial grant by McKnight Foundation
through Southeast Asia Development Program (SADP) emerged in Dak Dam communities
and has consequently deepened the mutual trust.
Figure 1: PAR Cycle Figure 2: staff and famer grow coffee
GFCL in Dak Dam commune of Mondukiri Province in Cambodia enabled the ADIC team to
learn the traditional practices such as collective rice growing which was being abandoned.
Through the reflection, the community started reviving it but focused on cash crops that have
good market demand. In 2014, they introduced the idea of community collective farm (CCF)
that engaged on growing cash crops such as coffee and pepper on the collective land. They
organized the shifts to take care of these crops. There was initial fund support for the
initiative but the community people mobilized funds among themselves. In short, the re-
emergence of CCF meant that GFCL enabled the people better understanding of community
culture leading to a revival of such practices. The innovation lies in its focus on cash crops
suitable to current market demands, instead of subsistent rice production.
An on-going discussion with community people lead us to understand that while CCF cater
the needs at community level, an alternative is need for household or individual level. Coffee
and pepper were identified as preferred by the community people but they hesitated as this
kind of investment can be costly. They learned from one another about the big investment

9. needed for the pepper plantation that cropped up in lands adjacent to their communities. The
PAR process allowed them insight of this crop investment through an exposure visit to a
nearby farm of about 7 km away from the commune center. The community people who
joined got interested when they found that the cost of investment was three times lower than
they expected. Most of materials for investment were found nearby their homes, particularly
pepper poles. When organized in such informal way, PAR stimulated the discussion and
sharing of ideas, and hence trust was even deepened.
Because of the collective nature of CCF that somewhat involves some sense of uncoordinated
process of caring and apathy, the dialogues between the community people and ADIC team
went on to explore something that would benefit directly the individual or the household
economy. The idea of making use the land of each household to be more productive and
shared sharing-scheme with outsiders who have capital to invest came into the picture in
2015. An understanding came out that the scheme can promote economic development of
individual and households. It also can mobilize community people to take part in it; it creates
a friendly forum at local level for exchange of ideas and knowledge, and experiences in doing
what can work well. By engaging in this, community people have full power to make
decisions because they are the owner of the land—they share 50% of earnings and at
advantage in decision-making; the shareholders (ADIC staff and outsiders) are only share-
holders on short-duration, thus lesser power. Therefore, any decision to invest in the land
entails active discussions and their consent (in line with the principle of free-and-prior
informed consent (FPIC) before the next move through the processes.
The results from our rapport with the community and the promising benefits from CCP was
that more local people became interested and willing to participate with our project, as shown
in table above. This project expects to raise awareness of the importance of natural resource,
especially land among the indigenous Bunong. This approach is different from the general
measures that many civil society groups have applied with indigenous communities to protect
their resource. From our experiences working with the communities, we believe that the only
effective way to protect natural resource is the active participation from local people. In order
to do so, we need to improve their economic condition so that they can feel secure to do their
protection tasks. Cultivating their land is also another measure to increase their land tenure
security in the context that outsiders are interested in buying fallow land of the community.
Conclusion and Future Prospects
CCP has the same emphasis as the concept of social enterprise but its strategy is distinctive
from some reviewed cases for it empowers local community who own their land to make
decision on an agreeable footing with the investor. Despite it has been introduced very
recently, this concept may galvanize many individuals and small private investors. Slowly,
more individuals and private investors have approached CCP team to take part as
shareholders. At the same time, more community people have now approached us to include
them in the scheme. Apart from the efforts of stakeholders in production and processing of
the products, linking with existing markets for coffee, passion fruits and its processed juice,
avocado and chestnut fruits have already been made in two major city hubs such as Siem
Reap, and Phnom Penh, and later Sihanoukville. More promotional activities have been
intensified and it will continue to do so in years to come through individual and group
approach in order to reach to a wider audience. Another promising avenue of this concept is
that it will continue to be the source of inspiration of community dialogues to build social
relationship and solidarity, which is fundamental to address the challenges facing them now
and in the future, especially from the angles of food insecurity, land rights abuses, and
climate change impact.

10. References
Bañez-Ockelford, J. (2010). Reflection, Challenges and Choices: 2010 Review of NGO
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