An historic event will be taking place in Cambodia at the end of November. From the 24th through the 2nd of December the first ever team sport World Cup will be held in the country.

Appropriately enough, the sport is volleyball for the disabled, and the venue is Phnom Penh's Olympic Stadium.

The Phnom Penh World Cup will be the biggest ever World Organization of Volleyball for the Disabled (WOVD) competition in the history of the organization with nine nations participating: Canada, Slovakia, Germany, Cambodia, Australia, Poland, Malaysia, India and Myanmar.

Cambodia is currently number 4 in the world, with aspirations of taking the top title. A professional volleyball coach from Germany will be training the team, most of whom are landmine survivors.

Out next month, the World Cup Song, the "Stand up Cambodia Anthem".

And if you're more into art than sports, the 10th Asian Cartoon Exhibit opened in the Cambodian-Japan Cooperation Center in PP on Monday and will run through the 29th.

Seventy-seven cartoons from the top cartoonists of 10 Asian nations are on display, each addressing environmental issues in the home countries.

Not cartoons, but real pigs are apparently the draw for some British investors who are said to be keen on the idea of pig farming in Cambodia.

Stephen J. Curtis, the executive chairman of ACMC, an East Yorkshire-based pig breeding and pig genetics company, said that his company was interested in cooperating with the Mong Reththy Group as Cambodia has strong potential to provide favorable conditions for industrial-scale pig-rearing.

The British Ambassador, David Reader, has been showing people around farms in Sihanoukville and Koh Kong, and it seems some are in hog heaven over joining forces with Cambodian agro-business.

And from livestock big to livestock little ... very little ... pig farming to sericulture.

This wonderful story is all about rebuilding the silk trade in Cambodia, and one man's efforts toward making that happen.

Japanese silk expert Kikuo Morimoto found little of the traditional silk production industry left when he came to Cambodia in 1993, but he's getting it up and running again, planting mulberry forests for the silk worms and finding those who can teach the craft to others.

Today there are over 500 people, mainly women, trained to create beautiful fabric from busy worms.

In 2003, a five year project, Project for Wisdom for the Forest, began with the goal of moving Cambodian villages back toward the self-sustaining entities they historically were.

What a difference one person can make.

His work has not gone unnoticed: he was awarded a Rolex Enterprise Laureate Award in 2004 and he used the US$100,000 (RM370,000) prize, as well as his own savings, to purchase the 5ha (now 15ha) piece of land in Chot Sam, northeast of Siem Reap for the PWF project.

Cool.


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