Empowering Cambodian Girls with Health Education

In late September, we travelled to Preah Vihear province to educate and distribute Days for Girls Kits. It was an increidble journey and we met so many young and passionate students. During this trip we educated 401 people and distributed 244 kits. Here is a report from one of our distributions!!

This was another wonderful opportunity for Project G Empowering Girls to conduct the workshop outside of Siem Reap and to empower more people. Firstly, we set this schedule more than a month ago and this mission was arranged by Rotaract and Project G get supported by CRST. After all the plan have been arranged, all the information have been updated we worked together with Production team to packing Kits and Education team to prepared for providing the educational workshop in this mission. Before going on the mission, we started choosing the educators, also Rotaractors and also CRST students who can join with us because we divided differently with Project L.

The workshop was conducted on 15th, September 2024
- 5 main educators (4 female and 1 male educators)
- Eam is the leader of the workshop.
- Somphors and Sokrin joined as the PG Communication team and photographers

When we arrived the school, there were a lot of villagers came to joined with us more than students. So, on that day we have 73 villagers, 23 female students and 20 male students. In total, we have 116 people joining with us. 

Project G Lessons:

• Women's Health Education, Women’s Menstruation, Reproduction of Men and Women, Fertilization and Sexuality, How to Use DFG Kits, Life-Saving Hand Washing, Sexually Transmitted Disease, and self-defend.
• Human trafficking and using flip charts for teaching by showing simple kits.
• About SolarBuddy and Cotton Bag

Kaj Pka Secondary School is located in Preah Vihear Province which is very far from the city of this province and many of students drop out of school because of lacking the transportation to go to school. Before we got there, we have to took the walking tractor, and then took a wood-ferry and continue with walking tractor again to get there. We arrived there around 9:30AM in the morning, and then we went straight to discussed with teacher for preparing class for our workshop. Teachers were very welcome us and they came together to prepare class for us. There were many villagers join with us and they were very happy to see us coming to help their community. Then, we started to arrange three classes, first for male students and male villager, second for female students and three for female villagers.

Let move to see our teaching activity, our educators were excited to share about Project G and to empower them to continue studying even they were girls/women and especially villagers to taking care their health and keep living in a hygiene. All the villagers and students felt so excited to join with our workshop and they just keep their face smile seeing how our young generation bringing the powerful time for them. So, our educators started introduce themselves to get attract their attention and make them feel at ease for joining with our workshop. Then, they started introducing about where are come from and what we are doing and focusing on. They also started to introduce about our Organization, Cambodia Rural Students Trust, and our Project, Project G - Empowering Girls. There was a partner for 1 class, so we tried to write more information on the white board. Firstly, our educators started with meaning of the empower logos of our Project G. This was making them felt value and changing mindset about their body and open their mind to accept to learn new things from this beautiful world. For female classes, they started the Women’s Health Education and for male classes, they started the Men Who Know lessons.

At this time, it much different from the time that we went to teach only students, as we also have villagers as well, they were so curious to learn with us and involved a lot with our educators that make them felt not tired. They tried to seek for their concerns with our educators and we think that they brave to discussed with their family or friends about women’s or men’s health. However, that was not everyone felt comfortable with our lesson, they were still have some students and a few of villagers shy to joined us as well. We did not go very details to all the lesson like we used to do, we just shared the part that were very important to them only because of the time limited. More than that, after finished the sharing our educators started to ask some questions to them to check if they could catch up what we share or not. Yes of course, we received a high percentage of understanding from their answers meaning that they were carefully pay attention with us.

Besides that, let move to men part, our educator was Veasna and he was really incredibly to explain about Men Who Know, talking about why it is important that we must know about ourselves, and women as well. We emphasize on the definition of power, and how do you not abuse that power that would lead to domestic abuse. As a man, you are not a great citizen or a husband if you do not respect women and other people around you, our educators explained. After that part, we also shared about their anatomy and the growth that they face to become a man. Like the girls, they also need to take care of their personal hygiene, taking care of themselves. Men part also the same as women’s part because we had a very limited time, so we raise only the main points and he also bring some funny stories that made everyone did not felt boring with lesson instead they loved it.
Our educators also started to begin the second part of the lesson with another educators. All female and male educators spread specific information through Human Trafficking parts lesson to the students. Although this topic is a very common thing in Cambodia, there is not enough discussion around this topic, especially the effect it will have on our youth human resource. Through this workshop, we have brought a lot of awareness around this topic to the students, and we hope that they will share them with everyone around them like friends, family, or other relatives.

After we finished the lessons, we showed how to use and the benefits of using Kits, Solar, and bags to them. Our educators showing with a full of confidence and talked details about how to use and also taking care of it to be last long using. This made everyone keep their eyes on our educators.

We were very thankful to teachers there who helped us organized, inform students during a school vocation, gather villagers and welcome us for doing this mission, without their involvement we could not make this happen. Let me add a little bit along the ways back to our bus, many villagers and students that arrived their home, and walking back home raise a waving to us with the smile of appreciate to all of our team and wish us a good luck went back to Siem Reap. We felt so tough and happy to see all of them like that.