Most people are aware of the direct connection between good health and the ability for a person to prosper. In most developing countries, it is as simple as children being able go to school when they are healthy, and parents having enough time and energy to work in the store, the home, or the fields. Water-borne diseases are the greatest health threat in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province. To that end, Trailblazer Foundation’s Health program primarily focuses on providing clean water to families and villages, and the construction of latrines to help increase a family’s, or village’s, overall hygiene. In Cambodia, a country of approximately 15 million people, there are more than nine million cases of diarrheal disease annually, estimated to cost the nation about $448 million a year. One of the easiest ways to combat these diseases is to provide access to clean water. For Trailblazer Foundation, this includes both digging wells to access water, and constructing bio-sand water filters to purify both surface water and well water (the latter of which is cleaner than other sources, but is still not entirely safe to drink). Next, Trailblazer works with our partner villages to build latrines. Latrines may be Trailblazer Foundation's least glorious project area, yet building latrines is another of our important services - especially when it comes to advancing health in the rural communities where we work. Clean water and latrines tie Trailblazer Foundation directly into a worldwide health strategy known as WASH. WASH stands for "Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene," a group of interrelated public health issues which are the focus of many international development organizations (especially in many Asian countries, like Cambodia). WASH programs are widely considered to hold great potential for improving health, life expectancy, student learning, gender equality, and other key benefits in developing countries. For Trailblazer, WASH is a complementary framework to our focus on using water projects to advance sustainable community development as a whole.

Along with clean water and reducing diseases (see Health program above), food security is one of the highest priorities for any human. Malnutrition is a leading cause of sickness and death in Cambodia (as with much of the world). Compounding this issue is the fact that low agricultural productivity often means there is little, if any, surplus from the family garden to sell as income, and low income leads to continued poor nutrition and poor health. The most direct route to countering these threats is regular access to beneficial foods. Trailblazer Foundation’s Food Security program is focused on improving the quality and quantity of food our rural partners eat, thereby reducing the villagers’ hunger and poverty. Through discussions with our local village partners, Trailblazer knows that most villagers want to learn how to grow crops and raise animals that will provide their families with a greater diversity of foods, ones that are plentiful and nutritious. To that end, we will combine our agricultural trainings into a comprehensive “Homestead Garden Training,” which will focus on the basics of growing crops for personal/family consumption. Trailblazer’s Cambodian staff conducts the trainings with 10 to 15 participants for each training course, which take place in the villages where the participants live. Much of the information we provide to the trainees comes from what our staff has learned through our on-site agriculture research and development test plots. As part of this process, Trailblazer also provides wells - through our Health program - to a percentage of trainees who don't already have one. This provides these farmers access to water for their enhanced and/or expanded agricultural activities. Many of the rural farmer trainees who already have wells, received those wells from Trailblazer's Health program. At the conclusion of each training, graduates receive some supplies and/or educational materials to help them incorporate their new skills and knowledge into their on-going agricultural pursuits. These “start-up” kits for comprehensive Homestead Garden training include: A hoe head Soil Preparation and Management, Organic Pesticides and Fertilizers: printed educational materials. Horticulture, Composting, and Earthworms: printed educational materials, and seed packs for new crops. Trailblazer identifies workshop participants, and those who receive a new well, through two avenues: [1] the annual local government assessment of village needs (see "Our Strategy" under "About Us"); and [2] by our Cambodian staff visiting with village chiefs and interested villagers to identify which farmers are best suited to participate in a training. This latter determination is largely based on the nutritional needs of a farmer’s family, and the motivation of a farmer to attend the workshop and institute the skills and knowledge s/he gains. Trailblazer is committed to addressing food security in the Siem Reap province, because it is one of two provinces in the country that the World Food Program and the Cambodian government have identified as being significantly poor and food-insecure, Therefore, we know we can make a difference for the better.

Once Trailblazer has helped our village partners secure abundant clean water and sufficient nutritious food (through our Health and Food Security programs), the next step for our adult constituents along the progression from “survival to sustainability” is to support them in establishing livelihoods – jobs, a source of income. A little more than one third (38%) of Cambodia’s approximately 15 million citizens continue to live below The World Bank designated “international poverty line” of USD $1.90/day. In Cambodia’s Siem Reap province, where Trailblazer focuses its efforts, and one of the three poorest provinces in Cambodia, 45% of the people live in poverty. The average wage of rural villagers in Siem Reap province is less than USD 25¢ a day, or less than USD $2 a week. However, it is important to remember that, when discussing the average income, we need to differentiate between those people living in the town of Siem Reap, and Trailblazer’s constituents who live in the villages outside of town. One of the great ironies about life in Siem Reap province is that, while more than two million tourists travel through Siem Reap town each year to experience Angkor Wat, very little of that economic influx makes its way into the nearby rural villages. Without some sort of technical and financial support, these rural communities cannot develop beyond a level of subsistence, and remain in a state of poverty where they struggle to merely survival. To address this issue, Trailblazer supports our partner villages in managing their own local “Village Fund” micro-finance programs. Through this effort, we provide technical and financial guidance for villagers who wish to start or expand a new small-scale business, or turn a craft into an income. Strengthening and Expanding Our Village Funds One of the greatest challenges to economic development is access to capital, even small amounts of funding. To address this, Trailblazer helps rural communities establish a Village Fund, an innovative approach to microfinance that enables villagers to get the capital they need to start or grow a business. Loans are given to villagers to support such enterprises as buying livestock, or fertilizers for their crops, securing medical care, starting a small business, or purchasing a motorbike or bicycle so they can have better access to work and school. Since Trailblazer was founded fifteen years ago, we have helped launch 24 Village Funds. Each Village Fund is owned and managed by that village, and makes loans to both savings groups and individuals within the village. Trailblazer Foundation’s role is to encourage and mentor our partner villages in developing their fund. Additionally, Trailblazer requires that each villager who receives our assistance in other areas (wells, water filters, latrines, etc.) make a small contribution to the Fund – thereby ensuring our work helps provide the capital for these Funds (instead of Trailblazer providing the capital). Each year, Trailblazer provides trainings to communities who either [1] want to start a new Village Fund, or [2] need further training on how to manage their existing fund. These trainings address overall fund management, loan management, and transaction management. Each year we expect more villages will decide to establish a Village Fund. Villages with whom Trailblazer is already working will be more likely to establish a new fund, because – as explained above – they can use payments for Trailblazer’s products and services to build up the new fund’s cash reserves.

So much of what Trailblazer Foundation does, as a rural community development NGO, is focused on breaking the cycle of poverty. One way to break this cycle of poverty, especially on a generational level, is to ensure that children have the opportunity to go to school. This is an almost daily practice that most of us take for granted for our kids. However, a formal education is not always an option for families living in Trailblazer’s geography of focus. Although constructing new schools has not been a main focus of Trailblazer Foundation’s work since our inception, at the conclusion of 2019 we will have completed the construction of 9 school buildings, and 2 libraries. These schools have been well-received enough – by local villagers and the Cambodian government alike – that in a Fall 2015 meeting, Trailblazer’s Board of Directors voted to include school construction as one of our four major programs. This is a fitting decision, given that the organization’s first project ever, in 2004, was building a school. As we have in the past, moving forward Trailblazer will build schools in response to a request from District officials, as part of the District’s Integrated Workshop process (see "Our Story" for more details). When we complete the construction project, and as part of the school inauguration ceremony, Trailblazer signs the deed over to the appropriate government agency. This is how we ensure the school can fully launch, and stay open for the local students. The government is then responsible for providing the teaching staff, paying the staff, and providing the Cambodian curriculum. Additionally, because our schools are government schools, they qualify for food support through the United Nations World Food Program (thereby addressing, at least in part, another programmatic area of Trailblazer’s – food security). Finally, Trailblazer works to reduce another barrier to education by providing hundreds of bicycles to our partner villages, so students can travel to schools within their district. This is particularly true of students in Junior and Senior High School, as not every village has one of these schools (they are often shared between villages). Without a bicycle, many students would simply drop out because their secondary level school is just too far away.