The countdown on my computer screen tells me it is exactly 343 days since the Agritech Centre Launch, on 20 December 2018. A hot, sunny day in Samrong when 90 guests descended on to the recently completed site, experiencing a monk blessing, taking a site tour and enjoying a three course lunch.

The days that followed have been challenging and exciting. Our operations manager has spent nearly 4 months in Cambodia, working with our staff and a whole host of volunteers to get the AgriTech Centre running. To date we have four thriving green spaces, a regular traffic of approximately 80 secondary school students per week and around 10 farmer entrepreneurs accessing our services. Besides green spaces we also run mini projects such as frog raising, composting and eco building to demonstrate rural enterprises. Last but not least, in 2019 we received immense publicity for the project and the venerated award from AJ 100 for “Collaboration of the Year”. The image below shows the transformation we have achieved.

Our long-term vision is to create a close-loop on site. Which means utilising waste as much as possible and relying seldom on outside inputs. A key investment for this is the ATEC Biogas digester that we installed in 2018. It is connected to the WC to process waste into compost and give off biogas. Having clean cooking gas is a necessity on a farm project. In the last 12 months we have hosted multiple impromptu community lunches and volunteer parties. Many converging at the back of the site in what is called the “WC block”.

After discussion with the architects, we realised it is the nature of design and construction to give new meaning to structures. So in August 2019 we decided to commence a revamp of the WC block to now be The Roundhouse.

A swift retrofit will allow us to add features on the existing structure such as sturdy counter tops, blinds and screens for privacy and keeping the wind out. A detailed CGI link from Squire demonstrates it better. The kitchen conversion opens us up to conducting nutrition workshops and curbing foodwaste by processing what we grow.

On 21 November 2019 we had our annual fundraiser at Squire & Partners Upstairs space to announce the Roundhouse Revamp and collect pledges. We welcomed our guests with a signature cocktail made using flowers grown at the AgriTech Centre.

The martini was such a hit that it will go on the bar menu Upstairs, with a small contribution per purchase for Green Shoots!

The event was also an excellent opportunity to update supporters and friends on our progress on site, succinctly done by this video. Volunteers from UCL Volunteering Service enabled the evening to run smoothly.

Pledges were collected on beautiful hand-sketched cards and the evening ended with some Khmer music and dancing.

In one evening we reached a total of nearly GBP 1,465. We have a generous anonymous donor that has pledged to match the amount up to GBP 3,500.

We are now running an active online crowdfunding campaign to close the gap. Donations are accepted on this link: https://www.wonderful.org/appeal/agritechcentrecambodia-fc2a5ab0

Greetings from the Green Shoots Agri-Tech Site! Already referred to as “Mondol Kasikam” by the locals. This blog is long overdue as I have paused numerous times to encapsulate my emotions from when I first arrived on site and took in everyone’s hard work … to when I got stuck into the work myself until we had the big launch party on 20 December.

I might be biased, but I will honestly say no amount of insta-stories and photos prepare you for being on site! So let me backtrack.

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Our time in Samrong has passed by very quickly and we are sad to say that this is our final post. Our focus for our last week was to conduct a number of meetings with the projects preferred contractor to discuss the project scope and expectations. These conversations will be continued by Green Shoots, CIDO and SAWA as they continue to work towards reaching a contractual agreement.

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Whilst it has been evident from the start of our time in Oddar Meanchey, during our third week in Samraong we were presented two opportunities to witness just how respected the work of Green Shoots & CIDO is in the local community (main photo) Read more »

Week 2 and the deeper we immerse ourselves into the project the more absorbing it gets. From seeing early progress onsite, having discussions with a local contractor and seeing images shared by the Green Shoots team of bamboo screens being trialed in London – it’s exciting to think of what the Agri-Tech Centre can be.   Read more »

Inspired by Green Shoots’ focus on economic empowerment and capability building to prevent and relieve poverty, we have arrived in Samrong town in North-west Cambodia to apply our experience in Architecture (Kate) and Human Resources (Cory) to assist with the development of a new Agri-Tech Training Centre.

Green Shoots has been partnering with CIDO on the development of a schools based program bringing sustainable farming skills to students across two local provinces since 2014. The Agri-Tech Training Centre will take this education program a step further and provide vocational training aimed at encouraging young people into viable careers in agriculture.

It is an exciting time for the project, with construction scheduled to commence in a couple of months and the CIDO team planning for enthusiastic students to start filing through the doors next year. To assist, we will be testing and prototyping materials prior to the build, assisting with contractor engagement and helping the CIDO team complete some initial planning for the transition into the new centre.

Since arriving in Samrong last Wednesday, we’ve been warmed by the enthusiasm and generosity of the CIDO team. Led by Ratana and Sarin, the team have been welcoming and patient as we learn about the project and Cambodian customs. No doubt making lots of mistakes along the way, such as failing to cheers before having each sip of beer over dinner! Actually that generosity has extended across the community in general. Most places we go, there are friendly people keen to chat or invite us along to a meal, a football game or another community event.

To crack in and get the hands dirty on day one, we picked up where Tom and Sakshi (volunteers who recently departed Samrong) left off with their brilliant work testing earth blocks. With direction and assistance from Sarin and Sokphea, we added to the Great Wall of Samrong, by building a second test wall using the earth blocks consisting of 6% and 11% concrete stabiliser. Sokphea proved to be the powerhouse of the team, for what she lacks in size she made up for in strength.

 The new wall was quickly put to the test with some strong winds and heavy rain over the last few days. By monitoring for weathering and mortar/brick damage, we will gain an understanding of how the different compositions of the earth bricks perform. You will be relieved to read that so far so good!

Kate has since been busy gathering information about material availability and pricing while Cory has helped workshop key responsibilities for the CIDO team in the Centre. We have started to feel settled into our Samraong routine. It feels like our time here is flying and we are looking forward to working hard over the next few weeks to maximise our contribution to what will be a fantastic project.

Any contribution to help fund the centre and would be warmly welcomed here: https://mydonate.bt.com/events/greenshoots10nov

Who/What: Green Shoots Foundation has launched a *new* overseas volunteering program with Socially Active Workshop Architecture (SAWA) and Brixton-based architect firm Squire & Partners called: DESIGN +TRAVEL, BUILD CAMBODIA.

It forms part of our Food, Agriculture & Social Entrepreneurship program in Cambodia. The focus is on skills for rural development (horticulture/climate change and livelihoods).  In July 2017 the government allocated 1.2 acres (0.5 Ha) for us to establish our own Agri-tech Centre- so now we can broaden to horticulture, eco-building and also water management.

Between August and December we have one or two week volunteer positions available to help with the delivery of a remarkable eco-build (below) designed by Edward Dale-Harris, founder of SAWA, for Squire & Partners.

Positions start at £ 500 –EXCLUDING FLIGHTS (including accommodation/ insurance/visa/ meals)

Where: Samraong Town, Oddar Meanchey Province, North West Cambodia (2 hours away from Siem Reap)

Why: You should apply if you want to be part of a grassroots lead architecture project, get involved with earthblock making, permaculture, bamboo weaving and setting up vegetable garden projects/ landscaping. AND an opportunity to win copies of “Sustainable [R]evolution”– a book documenting ecovillages and permaculture projects across the world.

How: it is simple. email volunteer@greenshootsfoundation.org to know more. OR fill in this googleform: https://goo.gl/forms/HCOB23dtpXgS9bUL2 and we will get back to you.

We can also help you set up an online fundraising platform so you can meet your target!

ps> see what volunteers have already been up to: https://www.greenshootsfoundation.org/blog/fasediaryweek4/

We’ve been very busy for the last week and a half, but here’s our final update!

After finishing all of the compression testing, the earth block production went into full swing. Based on our compression test results, we agreed to produce 3 different earth bricks consisting of 6%, 8% and 11% cement and use these to create a test wall for each.

For the walls and some additional testing we needed 40 bricks of each composition. We spent full days on Monday and Wednesday preparing blocks again with significant help from Miss Sokphea and Mr Peouch from CIDO. Being in the teething stages of building Earth Blocks we managed around 40 blocks a day, but with some learnings (now carried on by CIDO), some additional moulds and a mechanical mixer, this figure should easily be able to exceed 100 bricks per day with 3 people.

By Thursday we had completed all of the earth bricks needed for the test walls. While the remainder of these cured we began preparing foundations for the test walls. We decided to mix the foundation by hand by combining the earth, cement and grave. This ended up being particularly difficult, especially in the heat! However we persevered as we only needed enough for the 3 test walls. During the Agri Tech construction the building contractor will most likely use a cement mixer. We recommended for the earth brick production to use a mechanical mixer or cement mixer also as it will reduce the labor time spent in mixing by hand and will be better for the well-being of the people involved as well.

On Monday this week we met with a local contractor as part of our effort to continue the tendering process. This meeting offered a valuable insight into the Khmer tendering process and has enabled us to create a plan forward with CIDO and Green Shoots in order to award a contract before building commences in August.

On Tuesday it was back to the field to build the first of three test walls. The rationale behind the walls is to expose the Earth Blocks to local weather for a period of 2 months and monitor them for erosion or other signs of degradation. This should verify the results from our testing last week and will allow a final composition to be selected.

Aside from exposing that this might be the first wall we have ever built… building the test wall was a fun and successful exercise! Building on our foundations poured the week before, the wall pictured below was constructed from 8% cement Earth Blocks, with 2 rows of purchased sand-cement blocks as a base. Starting on earth blocks from research and investigation phase to testing and now to actually use them to build something has been a great development to work through!

As we’ve run out of time in this mission, a further 2 walls, using the 6% and 11% bricks, will be constructed over the next few weeks by the CIDO team.

On our final trip to the Agri-Tec site we prepared 6%, 8% and 11% cement samples to be sent to Phnom Penh in 3 weeks time for lab testing. This will verify the results we gained from our field testing.

Today is our final day working in Samrao

ng before we head back to Europe. The last month has been a fantastic experience. We have thoroughly enjoyed working with Green Shoots and CIDO and have learned a lot from the project. We’d like to thank Ratana at CIDO and Muneezay at Green Shoots for organizing our mission.

This is a great project to get involved in and we would highly recommend doing so if you have some free time and want to contribute to an NGO making a meaningful difference in Cambodia.

Akun Chraan!

All the best,

Sakshi and Tom

You can still contribute towards this project via this link: https://mydonate.bt.com/events/greenshoots10nov

This week has been exciting and we have some great progress to share!

From having just the outline of the shelter prepped last Friday, with the help of the team at CIDO we managed to not only complete the shelter build but also our field compression testing and start on the brick making!

The shelter build was fantastic and involved a number of people and materials to take it to completion. We bought wood, borrowed spades and help from two different local farmers, bought sustainable roof materials made from local grass called “Tight” Roof and help from Sarin, Sokphea and Poeuch at CIDO.

On Monday we finished with the main structure in place, which consisted of eight strong wood logs dug 0.5m in the ground to outline the skeleton of the building.

On Tuesday we finished with further supporting and strengthening timber straights, walls made from thick waterproof plastic sheets (donated by a local shop) and our testing rig firmly in place within the shelter.

On Wednesday, the roof was finished and we started Round 1 of the field compression tests…

The test rig is built up of a single metal rod 1.5m in length with a metal “pin” 2cm in diameter welded on at 0.5m. This rod is then hinged on a bolt and metal blacking plate to allow 180 degrees movement. A thick wall piece of wood is used to bolt the backing plate into, so that it can be dug into the ground and hold its place when carrying out the testing.

Before we could begin testing, a testing criteria and strategy was established. The recommended strength for bricks in a single story building is approximately 2Mpa and double story 4Mpa.

The final earth bricks in the construction of the Agri Tech Centre will only be used as single story loading however to account for any future work or developments we tested to 4Mpa also. There is also the factor of the bricks getting wet and the subsequently the remaining strength after. After a bit of discussion with the engineers at Burro Happold and Ed at SAWA, our final testing plan was as follows:

Round 1 Testing

-Dry Compression Test upto 2Mpa

-Bucket (soak) test for 12 hrs or more

Round 2 Testing

-Wet Compression Test at 2Mpa and 4Mpa

-Make test walls and carry out drop tests and bridge tests

We calculated that approximately 19.3kg weight hung onto the end of the metal rod would result in a 2Mpa force being applied through the 2cm diameter metal pin onto the sample earth blocks. And double the weight equaled double the force of 4Mpa.

On Thursday, we finished all the compression testing and collated our results to share with our international team (via whatsapp). The key highlights from the testing were:

-The earth-only samples passed the dry testing but immediately fell apart in the water during the bucket test!

-There was measurable variance in the earth samples from the three different locations with earth sample from location 3 being generally the weakest.

-Cement mix ratios of 8, 11 and 15% tested the best with all the earth samples which meant that it didn’t matter where the earth came from, the samples were all strong enough for both 2MPa and 4Mpa.

Having the test results allowed us to narrow down the range of viable cement/earth ratios we could use to begin making the full size earth bricks.

On Friday we began mixing up the first batch of test bricks (a mix of earth with 8% cement). After a full day of trialing different mixing and molding methods we successfully produced 32 bricks. These we now have to leave in the shelter (protected from the weather) to cure and reach their full strength.

Next week we need to aim to complete round 2 of testing which means building some test walls and carrying out some drop tests and bridge tests. This will hopefully help us in narrowing down the choices a bit further and finish with the best earth brick mix possible for the Agri-tech centre construction!

Tom & Sakshi

You can still contribute towards this project via this link: https://mydonate.bt.com/events/greenshoots10nov

Focusing on our first task, the earth blocks, here is a quick run through of what we achieved so far.

With the office closed on Monday and Tuesday for the public holidays celebrating King Norodom Sihamoni’s Birthday, we picked up where we left off last week on Wednesday.

The big focus for us this week was to finalise everything we were going to need to complete field-testing on the earth blocks samples, as well as beginning to source equipment to create the full size earth block bricks.

Due to the lengthy waiting times for lab testing in Phnom Penh we have designed a rig (drawing) that will allow us to quickly perform fairly accurate impression/compression tests on the existing cement samples prepared by Ed Dale-Harris on a previous trip. (lab testing to act as a final confirmation at a later date. This will allow us to shortlist 3-4 final cement mixtures that we can make up into small batches (~100 total) of full sized bricks.

To make the full sized bricks we also designed some moulds that can be used both for testing and during larger scale production later in the year.

With rough sketches for each in hand we headed to various machine shops and welders around Samroang. One of the local staff at CIDO, Sarin, helped significantly with translating the sketches and explaining the purpose of the moulds. Eventually we were able find a shop that could produce both of our designs in just a few days.

We visited the workshop the next morning for a check up, and they had already constructed the earth block moulds! Our initial impressions are that they will be durable enough to produce blocks for the entire building project, and that they are lightweight enough to be easily handled onsite.

All of our testing and trial block making will be conducted on the same site as the future Agritech centre. We have started preparing a test site and shelter that will house our testing rig, small scale earth block production, and should provide a useful shelter throughout the build of the Centre.

On Friday morning we visited the site to confirm a suitable location for the shelter, and begun clearing the proposed site with help from CIDO members Sarin, Sokphea and Poeuch.

Once completed this will provide a flat surface for creating the cement blocks, cover from the rain that that could erode the blocks while curing and, thankfully, shelter from the sun!

It has been great this week to get our hands dirty and see some tangible results, we are very excited to continue working on the project and are looking forward to sharing test results and producing some earth blocks in the next week!

Tom & Sakshi

You can still contribute towards this project via this link: https://mydonate.bt.com/events/greenshoots10nov