Cambodia Credit Union Outreach Program: Building Capacity

The Cambodia Credit Union Outreach Program: Building Institutional Capacity is a three-year project funded by CUFA with in-kind contributions from development partners.

The overall goal of this project is to provide technical assistance to individual community finance organisations, Cambodia Community Finance Network (CCFiN) and Community Based Microfinance Organisations (CBMIFO) - to build capacity and trust in these organisations through skills development to achieve financial sustainability and becoming a representative credit union or credit union league/federation.

The project has been established to resolve needs highlighted in “The Community Finance Sub-Sector Blueprint (2006)” that identifies inadequate capabilities among practitioners/leaders of community finance institutions (CFI).

The Blueprint (and CCFIN staff) identifies defined training components as being the most in-demand among CFI leaders and will be used to form training curriculum.

CUFA has registered as an NGO and setup a training centre in Phnom Penh. Permanent in-country technical assistance personnel from within the Australian credit union movement have been recruited and local translator, administration and security staff employed.

The project budget allows for 1,580 training days per year enabling a large proportion of CCFIN/CBMIFO representatives to be trained. The idea is to train key management and leaders within each organisation so they can go back to their communities and deliver training to their own staff.

By providing CFI leaders with this technical assistance we are developing their management capabilities, which will in turn help professionalise their CFIs and strengthen the abilities of their staff to provide members with reliable services and trustworthy leaders.