In December 2008, Prosperity Initiative's Impact and Performance Team began working with the Provincial Statistics Office (PSO) in Cao Bang, Viet Nam, to prepare for a baseline survey on the bamboo industry's impact on household income. Cao Bang, a poor and mountainous province in northeast Viet Nam that borders China, has a small bamboo industry which until recently was dominated by a single state-owned enterprise. Last summer, through cooperation with Prosperity Initiative, the Cao Bang provincial government lifted a ban that had been imposed on the export of raw bamboo from the province. This move has helped increased the bamboo price to the benefit of farmers.

Berlin - On 2 December, Dr. John Marsh, Executive Director of Prosperity Initiative, was invited to speak at the second workshop on Impact of Monitoring and Evaluation Efforts on Design, Implementation & Resource Allocation, organised by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ).

The meeting covered various approaches to how agencies ensure measurement, including monitoring and evaluation (M&E), improves decisions in project design and resource allocation. One major issue was how to aggregate results at an agency level to demonstrate overall performance. The meeting brought together M&E and agency leaders from foundations, bilateral donors and agencies, corporations, multilateral organisations and academia to create a community of learning.

Prosperity Initiative has launched a significant new Bamboo Feasibility Study in Cambodia in collaboration with the Maddox-Jolie Pitt Foundation (MJP).

"We're taking a demand-driven business like approach to a project aimed at securing a profitable and sustainable business with a pro-poor and socially responsible focus," explained Tim de Mestre, Head of Prosperity Initiative's Mekong Bamboo programme.

"And we're doing this with an NGO focused on environmental and rural livelihoods and sustainable production systems, who also see the need to give people an alternative way to make a living," he said.

4-7 November: Members of Prosperity Initiative's Strategy and Provincial Multi-Sector teams led a value chain training workshop with members of Ben Tre's Provincial People's Committee.

This on-the-job training is an important first step in Prosperity Initiative's partnership with Ben Tre province, our main government partner in our Coconut sector work. In August, Ben Tre was selected as the first province Prosperity Initiative will collaborate with to develop a multi-sector portfolio, with Coconuts as the lead sector.

Prosperity Initiative would like to introduce the Mekong Bamboo Business Database in English and Vietnamese. It contains contact and product information on nearly 300 leading businesses working with bamboo and bamboo products in Viet Nam.