OUR HISTORY
Community Advancement Organization (CAO) is a local NGO that localized from Mekong Plus Cambodia Organization. The team has more than 11 years’ experience in Rumdoul (see the Mekong Plus website: http://mekongplus.org/en/) CAO has been registered with the Ministry of Interior of Cambodia by May 7, 2020, and based on Rumdoul district, Svay Rieng province, Cambodia. Svay Rieng province is one of the poor provinces in Cambodia: the lack of water except during the rainy season is the main problem. Community Advancement Organization continues the mission of Mekong Plus Cambodia started in 2009 with the main goal of reducing acute poverty. One major problem is poor agriculture production, which results in massive emigration for many months every year. We estimated, at the beginning of the project, that 80% of households would send at least 1 adult for work in other provinces and in Phnom Penh. This creates severe health and social problems and affects the education of the children.
More than 10 staff are based in CAO and work for developing their community. This is a multidisciplinary team: agronomy and livestock, health and education, employment, environment… CAO believes in an integrated approach. This allows CAO to mobilize every household and ensure strong local participation. This participation of all is key to success. Therefore all activities must also be at a very low cost.
Our Executive Director
Ms. Yann Kosal is the Executive Director of the Community Advancement Organization (CAO). She has been work with Mekong Plus Organization for more than 10 years on community development. She still a lady leader that strong and good commitment and work hard to build good teamwork to engage with poor families in rural to increase their income and living standard in the future. She always said our value is “Go towards people, live with them, learn from them, like them, begin with what they know, build from what they have, so when it will be done, they will say “WE DID IT OURSELVES”.
She is born in 1986, in Kandal Province, Cambodia. She is a graduate of an agriculture university. She has a veterinary diploma. Mékong Plus is his first working experience. Her first job with Mékong Plus was to follow-up families, provide treatments to animals and technical training. She has a veterinary background, so she never learns or thinks about management, but Bernard, the CAO, gave her 3 months to test and she succeeds. In 2012, Mékong Plus promoted her to be a program manager. She had also the chance to get experiences and learning from other NGOs in other countries. She went to India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. She learned about management, agriculture technicians, and employment. She will also marry that year. Today, she is the head of a team of ten people, as program manager, in Rumdoul district.