Development and Partnership in Action (DPA)

Development and Partnership in Action (DPA) is a Cambodian non-government organisation (NGO) which localised from an international NGO called CIDSE. The organisation has been active in Cambodia for over 30 years, tackling issues as diverse as building capacity to community leaders, gender equality, natural resource management, health and education, and food security and as well as adapting to address emerging issues such as climate change and extractive industries as these topics became relevant to the Cambodian context. DPA has applied a new strategic plan for 2013-2016 with a vision for all Cambodians to enjoy a high quality of life as full citizens, accessing, using and protecting their rights. DPA continues to apply the key approaches as Community Organising (CO) and Rights Based Approach (RBA) for empowering and supporting poor and vulnerable people, building community resilience, building engagement and cooperation with relevant stakeholders and advocating for an enabling environment for sustainable development. Through these approaches, poor and vulnerable Cambodians in target areas will increase the access to rights and resources, improve livelihood, increase ownership, improve the capacity for participation, leadership of women, youth and Indigenous People (IP) and increase community resilience. In addition, the strategic plan makes further progress in the areas of improving, strengthening and empowering people, particularly women and those living in indigenous communities, encouraging them to participate in decision-making for development activities since they are the keys for the success of sustainable development. This strategic plan is focusing on the areas of natural resource management, climate change resilience and food security, support for grassroots organisations and social enterprises and other initiatives related to livelihood.

DPA has three main programme areas: Integrated Community Development Programme (ICDP); Partnership Programme (PP) and Development Education and Advocacy Programme (DEAP). The ICD programme aims to improve the quality of life of the rural poor through improving food security, health, education and natural resource management for and supporting collaboration between commune councils and people’s associations. The Partnership programme supports Community NGOs, Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) and Agricultural Co-operatives, providing capacity building for their organisational management and funding support for their activities. The DEA programme team aim to strengthen development education on gender, as well as strengthening advocacy on issues related to land, logging, extractive industry (EI) social environmental impacts and resource revenue management.