Footprints Project

A total of
4200
Travelers
donated
$18120.41
(100% funded)
to help improve
Education
impacting
900
people
in
Cambodia

Project Achievements

This Footprints funded project to provide pre-school teaching materials was part of a much larger program in Cambodia called Empowering Poorest Families. This report gives an overview of the total project achievements in the 2nd half of 2009, specifically highlighting the educational aspects.

Conducted baseline surveys in four new villages

Baseline surveys were conducted in four new target villages in Angkor District. The purpose of the survey is to assess the situation and needs/challenges faced by the families, children and communities. Information in the base line are:

Basic family information (e.g. age, marital status)
Family economy/livelihood
Child related information (e.g. health/nutrition, education, child abuse/protection)
Housing
Maternal health
Sanitation
Public/private services (e.g. health centre, NGOs, rice mills)

The survey report was completed in the second quarter of FY10 and was shared with concerned stakeholders such as commune council, district council, and provincial department of rural development.

Coordinate with Plan Cambodia Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) project staff to construct community preschools in four new villages:

The locations for four new preschool were identified and construction has started.

Coordinate with Plan Cambodia ECCD project staff to establish and carry out preschool activities in nine villages:

A total of 246 children (143 girls) attended preschools. Plan ECCD team provided the ECCD program orientation to relevance department at district, commune, and community level to give them better understanding of the ECCD project’s implementation process.

Train communities in nine villages on parenting

385 target poorest families (354 women) in nine villages participated in parenting meeting. Main meeting agenda including Children Development, Importance/Value of Education, Toy Making/Materials for Children, and how to enrol children for 2009-2010 school year.

Established and carried out child club in nine villages

32 representatives/leaders (nine girls) of child clubs in the five villages conducted a meeting to develop their own action plan for the training their club members. Specific training topics include malaria, dengue, swine flu preventions and how to live in harmony in a family without violence. Following the action plan, 258 child club member/children (158 girls) in the target villages were oriented by their respective leaders on the selected topics.

78 child club leaders and members (42 girls), one school director (male), one community preschool committee member (woman) and eight community preschool teachers (seven women) participated in a study tour to three ancient Cambodian temples (Angkor Wat, Bayon, and Phimean Akas). The purpose of the tour was to build their awareness and learn about their great Cambodian heritage and understand that the success of their empire was a result of effective leadership, solidarity/unity and hard works. The aim of the tour was to build their self confident/pride about themselves and their communities. After the visits, children shared their knowledge with their families and villagers.

In quarter two a club meeting was conducted where members of nine child clubs attended. A total of 374 children (229 girls) participated in the meeting conducted by 54 child club leaders (32 girls). The meeting topics/agenda were as follows:

Child rights principles,
How to develop energizers/warm up games,
National anthem/songs, and
Personal hygiene education

One day training was conducted for 54 (32 girls) child club leaders under the supervision of the Education Team of Krousar Yoeung (KrY), Plan’s NGO partner for this project. The training was to educate the leaders on various areas such child rights, life skills, hygiene.

Carried out social centre activities

The following are the events/activities carried out at the social centres that are relevant to the education part of this project:

Child club meeting: Four social centres in villages are being used for child club meetings.

Literacy class: Three social centres are being used for literacy classes with 73 adult students (38 women). The class is operated five days per week. The main session of the class is writing, reading and calculation with mainstreaming of Life Skill Concept including taking care children, understanding of hygiene and sanitation, understanding of HIV/AIDS and its impact, saving, raising animal and growing vegetable.

What next for this project?

The project will continue until July 2011 and will aim to empower some of the poorest families in the district with the skills and the self confidence to access available services and to develop livelihoods activities using the sustainable resources they have at hand.

The Empowering Families priority project will look to find more effective ways of reaching and including the poorest households in community development projects in Cambodia without stigmatizing them or creating jealousy in the community.

Case Studies

These two women have been part of Plan's Empowering Poorest Families program in 2009:

Meak Un, 38

Meak Un, 38, and her husband Chim Chun, 45, have four children. They lived in the forest to cultivate rice before joining the empowering poorest families project. After receiving counseling they decided to join the project in 2008 and received cooking materials for making cakes to sell and water jar. Un sells cake in her village to feed her children and sends them to school. Un’s husband use to be very violent to her due to frustration of being so poor now, Un advises us “We have hope in life and help each other to earn money, raise pig and chicken, sell cake, plant cassavas and vegetable for consumption and selling. We have no time to make quarrel”, Un said.

Huan May, 49 years old, widow, has seven children

“Before joining the project my life [was] so difficult because I could not earn much income to feed my children. I got support amount [of] 400,000 Riels (US$100) to establish the grocery shop. Since then, I earned about 1 million Riels (US$250) from my business, grow vegetable & cassava for consumption and selling, raise animals and weave mats in the free time for selling. I spent 400,000 Riels for sending five children to school and spent 100,000 Riels to buy pig”