Mekong Plus: a successful NGO working with villagers

I am associated with Mekong Plus, an NGO which works with village women to produce high quality hand-quilted products: cushion covers, baby quilts, tabletop items. There are currently three groups at Svay Rieng province, Rumdoul district, one of the poorest places in the country. I took this photo of Maneth, a newcomer to Mekong Quilts (a branch of Mekong Plus) as Program Assistant, during my first visit there. She is basting a cushion cover which will eventually be sold at Mekong Plus shop outlets in Siem Riep and Phnom Penh. Proceeds of the quilt sales go into cash incomes for the village women, and also to sustain a self-help community development programme: hog raising, building of latrines, biogas plant, and others which are planned and executed by the villagers. These are areas where electricity, good roads, medical facilities are absent and cash for the barest necessities is hard to come by.