Best practice cambodia

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Capacitating Local Governments for Developing Local Economy

NATIONAL League of Local Councils of the Kingdom of Cambodia (NLC) in cooperation with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) established partnerships to develop local economy in Kampong Cham and Takhmau municipalities as well as Kampong Siem through knowledge transfers of the Municipality of Chilliwack, British Columbia in Canada. This was a demonstration project in order to develop local economy in respective areas by optimizing local governments roles.

The three areas were selected through a very competitive process and taken into account their potentials in tourism, business center activities, as well as various supporting services; while still facing challenges such as limited budgets, access to technical expertise, physical infrastructure and experience in decentralization reforms.

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Considering this, Local Economic Development (LED) Working Group was established at the three (3) local governments. The group plays important roles in formulating plans (including budgets), monitoring, evaluating, and seeking solutions to problems. Each working group was headed by municipality/district governor, while members included municipality/district councilors, board of governors, commune-sangkat councils and municipality/district line offices. To support the process, capacitating the personnel was conducted by the Chilliwack. Included in the training session was leadership enhancement; that working group in Kampong Cham, chaired by the municipal governor with members from the Provincial Departments of Tourism, Health, Environment, Land Management, Urbanization and Construction, was assigned to asses, monitor, and develop standard for hotels, guesthouses, restaurants, construction, service provision, public order promotion and safe food handling.

With the transfer knowledge, local governments innovated and established partnership with various stakeholders: private sectors (include business people, hotel, and restaurant owners); the city of Chilliwack in mobilizing a local company to develop websites for Takhmau and Kampong Cham and trained local staff on technical matters in updating and maintenance; commune-sangkat councils in mobilizing community people, street vendors, hotel and restaurant owners to participate in the project activities; the Provincial Department of Tourism in providing information for the development of the municipality’s webpage, tourism guidebook and leaflet.

Capacity building was the main expected output of this project particularly for the local governments, while other output also included publication of tourism potential through website and outreach campaigns. Those were achieved with other significant achievements that were also made: encouragement and motivation of private investment, understanding LED concept and enhancement of leadership, rehabilitation and construction of physical infrastructure, initiatives to organize events, development of business attraction strategy, formation of groups and network.