Soum Son Seun Jai - Community-based Food Security and Economic Opportunities Programme

The main target group consists of ethnically diverse poor rural households. The two primary sub-groups are:

• Highly vulnerable, food-insecure households with limited capacity to enter the market
• Poor households that are moderately food-secure and have a greater potential to enter the market.

Both categories share a common livelihoods system based on rain-fed cropping, raising livestock, collecting forest products and wage labour. Youth will be also part of the target group; they will be involved in mentoring activities through linkages with agricultural universities and ethnic schools.

The goal of the programme is to contribute to the reduction of extreme poverty and hunger in the two provinces. The development objective is to ensure sustainable food security and income generation for the rural poor in the target villages.

The programme will develop new pilot approaches to creating integrated farming systems and links to markets. These two components are closely interconnected, since the target group lacks access to services promoting enhanced subsistence farming or marketing of cash crops, and is at a disadvantage when contracting with traders. In this context, an integrated and flexible approach is essential to address location-specific challenges among the rural poor.

Capacity building, knowledge management, community-based natural resource management, farmers' organisations and gender mainstreaming will be integral to all programme activities.