Education for 300 Urban Poor Children

“Drinking clean water keeps me healthy”

Phana was born on May 15^th, 2010. Now he is now 15 years old and lives with his mother and old grandmother in a small house in Khvet village, Theay commune, Baphnom district. He has one sister named Kimhouy. He is the first child in the family. Now he is studying in Grade 9 in Theay secondary school. His family’s living condition is not good at the moment, so his father always moved to work as a construction worker in Phnom Penh to earn extra income to support the family’s living and children’s education as well.

In the past time, Phanna did not take care of health and personal hygiene, and he also did not understand or apply the good drinking, living, and eating in his daily life. Thus, his health condition was not good, and he often got diarrhea and vomiting because his family did not have clean or safe water to drink every day. In general, his family always drank unsafe or unclean water such as raining water and wells water without filtering and boiling properly because at home his family did not have water filter for drinking every day. So that’s why he mostly got diarrhea and vomiting, and his family also spent much time and money for buying medicines and treatment. As a result, he could not attend school regularly because of bad health condition at that time.

However, everything changed a lot after he was selected into the school development program in July 2021. The program provides his family with hygiene materials such as toothbrushes, toothpastes, nail clippers, soaps and water filter, and we also provided study materials especially food packages to his family. All this support really encouraged and made him very happy, and it is also a good assistant in improving his health condition, hygiene, and livelihood for a large part of his family. In addition, the program team not only provided these materials to him and the family, but we also conducted home/family and school visits with his family. During the visit times we always encouraged him to study hard both at school and home and we also shared with him, his mother and grandmother on the importance of hygiene, good drinking, living and eating because our health is the most important thing for our living and life. At school program staff and teacher often shared and taught him and all the students on personal hygiene and how to drink safe and clean water for good health.

Now Phanna understands well the importance of hygiene and good drinking, eating and living. He also practices or applies it well into daily living both at home and school. He often washes his hands, cut fingernails or toenail once per week, takes a bath, and brushes teeth every day. He washes clothes and hair regularly specially; he always drinks clean or safe water every day both at home and school because now his family has water filter at home that provided by the program. So, he just refills the clean water and can drink any time. “…I am so happy because now my family has water filter at home, so I always have clean or safe water to drink every day. Now my health condition also is good if I compare with the last time. I do not get diarrhea and vomiting as before and I can attend school regularly. Finally, I would like to say thank you so much to program team who supported me, and my family especially provided my family water filter…”, said Phanna smilingly. “…before my family did not care of drinking clean and safe water, so we just drank raining water and wells water without filtering and boiling properly. As a result, my family members’ health was not good at that time and we often got diarrhea and vomiting. However, my mindset or thought has changed positively after program provided my family a water filter. We just refill raining water and wells water into a water filter, but we can drink safe and clean water at home every day with good health condition. Now my family understands very well about the importance of drinking safe and clean water for daily life and my family just bought a new water filter to replace a broken water filter that provided by the program…”, said Phanna’s grandmother smilingly.