In July 2019 while at a friend’s farm in Banteay Meanchey Province Cambodia I was introduced to a Jamaican Cherry (Plai Cher Krahop)- a small pinkish-red berry without a pip growing on a tree and sweet in taste. Upon my return to Samrong that same week, I found myself noticing the tree everywhere- and had […]
reposted from: https://studentsunionucl.org/articles/best-thing-during-challenge-was-getting-to-work-with-people-from-so-many-different Mya is a first-year student studying Human Sciences at UCL. She took part in UCL’s first ever Charity Consultancy Challenge, which ran over the course of one-week back in June. She told us about the skills she gained from it and how she and her team managed to create a period pad […]
75% of women in Cambodia do not have access to sanitary products. 33% of public schools do not have toilets. This can be because supplies are limited, sanitary products such as pads can be expensive and whats more, they can also lead to plastic waste. Whats is the solution?
Hi my name is Lucie and I have been traveling around SE Asia to discover about natural farming. Through some contacts at OrganiKH Farm, I made a stop at the Green Shoots Agri Tech Center in Samrong. As I was mainly visiting permacultural or organic farms which are more family run farms, I wanted to […]
By Léonie Regnault who is volunteering in Cambodia from Dec 2019- March 2020 It has been one month since I arrived in Cambodia and more particularly in Samraong, Oddar Meachney to work on Green Shoots Foundation Agritech Centre. I landed in Siem Reap in the beginning of December. I left the cold and rainy France […]
The countdown on my computer screen tells me it is exactly 343 days since the Agritech Centre Launch, on 20 December 2018. A hot, sunny day in Samrong when 90 guests descended on to the recently completed site, experiencing a monk blessing, taking a site tour and enjoying a three course lunch. The days that […]
Greetings from the Green Shoots Agri-Tech Site! Already referred to as “Mondol Kasikam” by the locals. This blog is long overdue as I have paused numerous times to encapsulate my emotions from when I first arrived on site and took in everyone’s hard work … to when I got stuck into the work myself until […]
Well, what a month this has been! Even though my days are nowhere near over yet, they are now numbered, and I must muster one determined effort to create the last three weeks of blogs of two truly remarkable and unforgettable years and sign-off Myanmar-style for the last time. As usual they are super-late, super-frenetic, […]
You might ask how any sane-minded blogger can prattle on for so long about so little and leave the reader no wiser about anything? Beats me too, but again I regard this as a gold-medal winning formula as at the end of the day there’s space on the page to fill and, unlike any author […]
Keeping with my pledge of last week, I’m going to get straight into the “what on earth would be the reason for coming out here” bit when you’re superiors keep informing you that what lies ahead is a promising and stratospherically rising career to your final position whether it be head poncho doctor, nurse, pharmacist, […]
So herewith the first of another super-late series of epistles charting a smattering of my fondest moments, both significant and trivial, from the archival footage of the 5 weeks of blogs that have somehow got misplaced lest they be forgotten in the deep recesses of my rapidly involuting grey cells. And as I start this […]
With thirty-six weeks of my Myanmar odyssey under the belt, herewith is my thirty-third blog: the missing three may wing their way into an e-mail inbox at some point, but then again, they may not! They always say pictures speak louder than words and so I’m kicking off this epistle with exactly that, albeit completely […]
So, after my pictorial debut week sneakily sliced salami-style into two to bulk up the seemingly bottomless viper-pit of missing blogs, we are now back onto familiar territory: general waffle, medical vignettes, preaching the Lord Kitchener ‘country needs you’ mantra, and then back onto life in Myanmar with another hopefully amusing series of titbits as […]
Our time in Samrong has passed by very quickly and we are sad to say that this is our final post. Our focus for our last week was to conduct a number of meetings with the projects preferred contractor to discuss the project scope and expectations. These conversations will be continued by Green Shoots, CIDO […]
Week 2 and the deeper we immerse ourselves into the project the more absorbing it gets. From seeing early progress onsite, having discussions with a local contractor and seeing images shared by the Green Shoots team of bamboo screens being trialed in London – it’s exciting to think of what the Agri-Tech Centre can be. […]
Inspired by Green Shoots’ focus on economic empowerment and capability building to prevent and relieve poverty, we have arrived in Samrong town in North-west Cambodia to apply our experience in Architecture (Kate) and Human Resources (Cory) to assist with the development of a new Agri-Tech Training Centre. Green Shoots has been partnering with CIDO on […]
Who/What: Green Shoots Foundation has launched a *new* overseas volunteering program with Socially Active Workshop Architecture (SAWA) and Brixton-based architect firm Squire & Partners called: DESIGN +TRAVEL, BUILD CAMBODIA. It forms part of our Food, Agriculture & Social Entrepreneurship program in Cambodia. The focus is on skills for rural development (horticulture/climate change and livelihoods). In […]
We’ve been very busy for the last week and a half, but here’s our final update! After finishing all of the compression testing, the earth block production went into full swing. Based on our compression test results, we agreed to produce 3 different earth bricks consisting of 6%, 8% and 11% cement and use these […]
This week has been exciting and we have some great progress to share! From having just the outline of the shelter prepped last Friday, with the help of the team at CIDO we managed to not only complete the shelter build but also our field compression testing and start on the brick making! The shelter […]
Focusing on our first task, the earth blocks, here is a quick run through of what we achieved so far. With the office closed on Monday and Tuesday for the public holidays celebrating King Norodom Sihamoni’s Birthday, we picked up where we left off last week on Wednesday. The big focus for us this week […]
Hi our names are Sakshi Sircar and Tom McIntyre, and we have come from chilly Scotland all the way to sunny Samrong to work with CIDO and Green Shoots for the next four weeks. CIDO and Green Shoots are embarking on an exciting project to build an Agri-Tech center to help them better facilitate the […]
There are many things that slip me by and snakes in the grass is one of them, mainly because except for the not-so-scary adder they don’t present a major public health hazard in the UK. Certainly, as far as I can remember how to deal with a green mamba snakebite is not part of the […]
Unless you’ve experienced it, and seeing the pics is definitely not an alternative, the Burmese New Year ‘Water Festival’ or Thingyan is an absolutely crazy time when you have to submit body and soul, but especially body, to the combined equivalent effects of being hosed down at a student ‘demo’ and being in charge of […]
Not to break the habit of a Myanmar lifetime this blog is now five weeks late and so, if there is an avid reader whose life feels empty without reading this, then I’m truly sorry for you. Now, when it comes to heat I have several levels; factor 50 heat, flip-flop road-sticky heat, and when […]
Although blogs have an unerring tendency to focus on the important, unusual, or amusing, it’s the everyday mundane ones that I probably will remember most fondly when I do eventually draw an unhappy line under this wonderful chapter of my never-ending career and move on to greener pastures.
The hardest thing about writing a blog is making oneself do it. I’ve now been in Myanmar 24 weeks but in the last ten months have managed only 19 blogs. Two have been lost in the ether of laziness or more truthfully, the fact that I’d exhausted my capacity to say anything newsworthy or entertaining, […]
Architect, Edward Dale-Harris reports on making Compressed Earth Blocks- a more sustainable option to bricks. Not only do they keep the room cooler, the emissions from brick making are extremely high. Compressed Earth blocks also have a quicker drying time, making them more efficient and they use readily available materials- rather than costly cement which […]
I felt the biggest challenge on 10 November 2017 would be the smooth running of our fundraising event in Brixton- however, that was until I had to parallel park outside the venue! A few months in planning, the fundraising event was to unveil the designs architect firm Squire & Partners had been working on for […]
Trifle late with the blogs so you, whoever you poor souls might be, have three to catch up on as quickly as I can write them. So here I am back in Yangon, refreshed after a 6-week break summer back home being a retired but not too inactive pensioner, returned, reinvigorated and ready for action, […]
The week before I started repeatedly checking the weather forecast. Organising an outdoor event in October has its drawbacks- and on Thursday it went from being clear skies to overcast. Soon, rain was to follow. However, that was not going to come in the way of Green Shoots and Bandstand Beds joint fundraising picnic, A […]
It is coming up to three years since Green Shoots Foundation held their first teacher training, or Training of Trainers session, in Samrong town, Odar Meanchay Province NW Cambodia. Part of their Agriculture Skills in Public Schools (ASPUS) Project. I first arrived in Samrong in October 2013. It was small, nondescript and dusty- however; in […]
‘Google Image’ Putao and you see an idyllic town at the foothills of the Himalayas, far from the madding crowd with undulating hills, see-through blue rivers, snow-capped peaks, and seemingly perpetually bathed in glorious sunshine. Lest you be fooled, this is not the sort of destination in the Abercrombie and Kent brochure for would be […]
They say the British always talk about their bowels. I must admit to being culpable of this habit and so I promise to make this an (almost) tummy-related free blog. The trouble is that there is an embarrassment of riches for the ID physician, everything from simple malaria to Zika and dengue, from filariasis to […]
Week 11 and what a week. The breathtakingly tropical storms with accompanying health warnings of last week have been replaced with the tropical super-humid conditions typical of June with the cold shower in the flat working overtime. My children who have forever challenged my love of showers would be deeply proud of the speed with […]
Week 10 Now normally Saturday morning is blog-time in my Western paradise, the Myanmar plaza. However, instead I was scaling what was rather exaggeratedly called Hpa Pu mountain (it took about 45 minutes to climb): views of course stunning. But weather changes with the blink of an eyelid here and I was soon in the […]
Thank you for your interest in helping raise funds for the Big Give Christmas Challenge 2017! We at Green Shoots believe FUN-draising can be, well, really fun! While long-term fundraising involves meetings, application forms, and lots of admin, raising money for the Big Give challenge each year allows us to be a lot more creative.
Week 9….or 10 – have forgotten It’s been a busy week in many ways. However, underpinning every activity is preparing for the ever-present humidity of over 90% and the occasional dump of what seems like half the Indian ocean in a couple of hours. Now, this is where the umbrella performs its second important function, […]
Final week and reflections: Well, these past four weeks have been quite a rush. We arrived in northwest Cambodia one month ago and had no idea what to expect of our experience living and working there. It took us some time to get acclimated (especially our stomachs) and learn our way around town. Our Khmer […]
This past week has been very full as we had 2 full-day trainings on Wednesday and Thursday with around 40 teachers total. We set up the first day in an outdoor covered space behind the CIDO office. We expressed our gratitude to teachers for the important work they’re doing to educate the next generation about […]
Hello, my name is Katie Erwin and my partner Kyle Brolis and I have just begun our short mission with Green Shoots and their local partner CIDO in Samrong, Cambodia for one month. We’re here to learn about and evaluate the Agriculture Skills in Public Schools (ASPUS) Program as well as to provide training to […]
