How Did This Development Effort Happen
After two years of successful school sponsorship, Bruce Lasky, Sakkony Yeang, and a range of economic development supporters are taking the next step to bring sustainable solutions to the larger community of farm families in the Pursat region of Cambodia.

In 2002 Trond Gilberg became the dean of the School of Social Science at Pannasastra University, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Bruce Lasky is on permanent staff as a Law Professor. Pannasastra is a bachelor and masters degree academic institution based completely on a North American model of education. All courses are taught in English and it is the belief of many that this institution is training many of the future leaders of the Khmer nation. Trond and Bruce will be the Regional Directors for Living Wage and will help build the Living Wage model of fair trade cooperation for Southeast Asia. With the help of another very active teacher, David Pred, and a Cambodian teacher, Sakkony Yeang, the model will be called "Sustainable Cambodia" and will be modified until Living Wage can apply the appropriate elements to other developing areas. The immediate goal is to bring fair trade goods to the west and help the poorest of the poor in a very poor country sell value-added products. Ultimately the goal is to coordinate with the fair trade and responsible tourism movements in North America and diversify this region's products, skills and services to create true sustainability.

SUSTAINABILITY: Currently people in the Pursat region produce and sell primarily raw resources to each other, other regions and other countries.  Prices for raw resources are at a subsistence level. Moving to the capitol to work at a textile mill pays more, but at a dollar a day, you have to relocate from your family and village safety network and live in an industrial zone with terrible living conditions and problems. Cambodian authorities are trying to move the poor back to the rural area, since there are not enough jobs. The goal in this rural region is to create new kinds of local production, knowledge, language skills, computer training and the repackaging of farm crops to diversify the local economy and create value added goods and services. Products and skills that have a higher value than the local subsistence standard can be sold to people in other regions or countries. Bringing foreign currency into the local economy can create an infusion of wealth with multiplier ripple effects for the entire local population, if the wealth is dispersed to many family level producers and not concentrated in one producer. Concentrated wealth does not disperse well into local economies, so direct payment to the smallest level of ownership and production is a development success requirement. Developing skills, local services, living wage products and responsible tourist services will be the expanded development goal. Living Wage is starting immediately with handicrafts since people make them already, but that market can become saturated and we want to quickly move beyond it to diversify revenue to the region. An organization that can purchase directly from the small producer and gather products and producer information for local tourist sales and fill export containers is necessary.

SKILLS: The internet has made services global and the service economy is the fastest growing sector in western nations. It would be naive to think that a large dynamic western service sector will not develop as an unfair unfree multinational corporate service system in Asia. Living Wage wants to be ahead of the inevitable globalization of the skilled labor and service economy by creating a system of fairly traded services.

Language and Computer skills developed at the Sylvia Lasky school can be used to do the following:

1. Computer and English classes will teach children and local poets how to make "cards with real meaning", etc. for sale in Living Wage stores and cafes. Living Wage also needs a "card for products with real meaning"  for each fair trade product sold. These product cards will illustrate a cultural connection between fair trade products and producers. The cards should have: a picture of the producer, a short biography of the producer and family dependents, a description of the conditions of production and a small map with description of how to find the producer. These cards and short stories could be available in the Fall of 2003 in both downloadable form and printed on locally made organic paper for export.

2. Students can practice their computer and English skills while documenting written and oral histories of "elderly people" - a group that survived the Khmer Rouge but is rapidly aging - this has both commercial and academic purpose. Western researchers and producers of documentaries, books, etc. may pay for these oral and written histories if documented at current historical and sociological research standards. Perhaps an investor will use these histories to make a series of documentaries available to stores or on-line sales. Using new skills and technology to document ancient culture and people has multiple values!

3. Computer software students can design label and packaging for fair trade handicrafts or other value-added production. Packaging and labeling can be for domestic use, for export products or for import repackaging services.

4. Build a local and nationwide version of the Living Wage and World Traveler e-guide book. Living Wage can merge this information into its traveler generated guide material. The better the local guide, the more tourists will visit an area. If a high standard is reached - a Cambodian office could be the final editors and coordinators of the Cambodian Living Wage e-guide pages.

5. Translation of information between the two languages and recreation of western websites into Khmer are valuable.

6. Website design, and maintenance.

7. Data Entry for Western and local clients.

Other Services We Need to Develop- These services are needed for Living Wage Fair Trade Export and can be stand alone, worker-owned cooperative businesses that can take on outside clients:

1. Export - customs clearance.
2. Moving and Delivery - in Cambodia.
3. Warehousing for Imports and Export container assemblage.
4. Packing, labeling, packaging of products for export.
5. Business Development Consulting - from exploration to production cycle.
6. Accounting, tax and management consulting services.
7. Grameen, short-term, export, bridge and micro-loan programs with consulting services for venture capital to finance business cooperatives and development.

How do we Develop these Services
Graduate students from Pannasastra University, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia could help develop domestic cooperatives similar to that of foreign service firms. They can then manage these services once they graduate. If they graduate and return to a rural community they can bring services or representative offices home. These service cooperatives should be worker owned and operated and can spread throughout Cambodia as they become viable. In fact the following are services provided by American companies operating next door in Vietnam: laboratories, IT computer, surveys/market research, real estate sales/property management, insurance sales, business development/import/export, e-business/tax/accounting, website/software development (we will stop here, you get the idea - skipped some and only went through companies that started with the letter A). Look in your phone book and you can see thousands of services that will be in Cambodia in the next ten years. Some of these services will operate in Cambodia only and will be used primarily by businesses, travelers, western expatriates and wealthy Cambodians, but some will relate to western counterparts and be import/export oriented with western income.

Why Services? $10 Billion is Why
Living Wage would like to use this fairly traded services model in many developing countries and make them a part of the fair trade movement. We would like to do it proactively so that the fair trade movement doesn't have to play catch up as we are with production and handicrafts. U.S. technology companies now pay foreign firms $10 billion a year to handle data entry, analysis, customer service and computer programming. "Financial services companies expect to transfer 500,000 jobs or 8% of industry employment to foreign countries over the next five years" ($30 billion in 5 years) according to management consultants A.T. Kearney. Living Wage believes we can beat the inevitable globalization of the service economy by creating in advance an intentional system of fair trade services.

Domestic Services
Maid, house cleaning, drop off day care, yard maintenance, etc. bring extremely low pay and poor condition in developing countries. This practice will continue because of the masses of desperate unemployed people in urban areas. But a process of "Comodification" is and will continue to take place in developing countries, just as it did when extended and nuclear western families transformed into the young professional family structure prevalent in the west. Comodification is a process that turned traditional live-in-servant and traditional "housewife" duties into paid positions. These low skill workers can participate in a cooperative with a manager, which introduces professional standards and training and can be marketed as a professional worker owned service. This creates value added services, ends servitude and gives people pride and independence. Even unskilled service work can receive higher pay with the the transformation of servant jobs into professional service commodities. Start in Phnom Penh where many foreign expats live and expand when another area becomes viable.