Be the Change Network

By George Grady Grossman

Phnom Pehn, Cambodia. April 29, 2008 local time.

Cambodia has been a whirlwind of excitement for me on this trip. First it is the rainy season so every afternoon and night it rains as you’ve never seen in the American West. One night the thunder was crashing instantly after the lightning flash. Amazingly the power in Phnom Pehn never failed. Secondly, without Kari here to be my crutch, I’ve been forced to really work on my Khmer language skills and let’s just say I’ve gotten a lot of blank stares.

Today I met with Aurelien Herail, a biomass energy expert from GERES and Tong Chantheang, the General Secretary of the Training Unit of CEDAC. Along with Yoen Soek, our Country Director, and Savin Oeun, our Program Coordinator we discussed each of our organizations missions concerning renewable energy and biomass briquettes and ways to form partnerships. GERES offers us technical skill and research beyond our expertise and is willing to help test the quality our our briquettes. Third party independent testing will be valuable for marketing our “Smart Choice Fuel” as a viable alternative cooking fuel to charcoal and woodsticks. CEDAC has expertise to help us with the development of our training workshop. Although the particulars were not worked out the basis for working together has been established. CEDEC also wants to publish out story in their quarterly review called “Green Fire.” This will be more publicity for our alternative cooking fuel as well as our model of life skills supporting education.

Tomorrow I will be heading to Chrauk Tiek to spend 4 days at the Grady Grossman School. Supposedly the roads have been fixed since our trip in January. But only time will tell.

I am excited to meet the three new music teachers and see if the new “Peter Pisay” Library is complete. And the big question is how do we dry a briquette in the rainy season.

More to come so subscribe and stay tuned.