Provide women and girls education in Cambodia

In the last quarter, WRC has kept busy in Siem Reap fighting violence against women as well providing education and financial opportunities to women from the most vulnerable and marginalized communities in Siem Reap.

In educating women, our SHE Empowers Project, which delivers informal educational workshops to adolescent girls and boys, families and schools on gender roles, gender equality and equity, harassment, menstrual hygiene management, positive masculinity, positive parenting and basic emotional support.

This program had 240 girls participating in our training on Menstrual Hygiene Care for girls, with 33 youth ambassadors (23 females and 10 males).

Ambassadors also delivered workshops to 292 students (212 girls and 80 boys) on Gender Equity and Equality and Sexual Harassment in the target schools. The project team conducted training to 186 parents (174 females and 12 males) on the positive parenting at the communities, 161 participants (91 females and 70 males) joined in the annual reflection meeting.

 Safer Cities for Girls is a project which aims to build safe, inclusive cities for girls through a plethora of activities designed to raise awareness among young boys and girls as well as the general population on how to create a safer environment for girls in the city of Siem Reap; as well as to incorporate adolescent girls’ voices into the planning and further development of Siem Reap. In this period, the project completed the following activities:

Organized interface meetings (dialogue) between the youth group with the local authorities to discuss the recommendations that arise as the result of the Safety Walk exercise. The meeting engaged 55 (31 female) participants, out of which 29 were Youth Ambassadors, 4 authority leaders, 4 Police officers, 2 teachers and 16 village guards).

Conducted talks with 58 parents on positive parenting, gender equality training and safety walks for children, on parenting roles, effective communication, positive discipline, children protection, safety for girls, and prevention of sexual harassment/ gender-based violence within households or the public.

Conducted Men's Coffee Talks with 19 men in order to promote Safety for Girls, Role of parents in protecting children, gender roles, harassments, communication on parenting roles, children protection, safety for girls within households or public.

Carried out an annual reflection meeting for 3 years of project implementation with 116 participants (81 females, 10 authorities, 05 schools and 101 youths).

Young Women’s Entrepreneurship (YWE) intends to address the women's needs and challenges who are living in the urban city of Siem Reap through, i) building entrepreneurial hard skills and essential skills and ii) increasing civic entrepreneur engagement to existing platforms and meetings with other partners in Siem Reap provincial town.

The project aims at empowering businesswomen, between 20-40 years old, with new knowledge, skills, and access to networks and resources to create and maintain successful, sustainable businesses that reach new networks and give women a voice on a wider platform in society.

In this quarter, the project completed 6 activities with 567 people (382 women, 184 men, 3 girls and 1 boy).

15 YWEs participated in a business exchange visit to the private sector, 16 YWEs participated in the women’s support group meeting to share their experience of starting and being challenged in business, related to their businesses and civic issues.

3 YWEs received packages for additional skills support to maximize the program’s impact on their self-empowerment and business development.

47 YWEs participated in the orientation workshop in order to provide the project information to women, entrepreneurs and authorities to better understand the project plans and increase their knowledge of financial management, business, leadership, and economic rights).

This is only what we've done the last 3 months! Imagine what we can continue to achieve together in the rest of this year. 

We look forward to achieving more with your hand holding ours! 

In 2023, WRC collaborated with 5 target secondary schools, to teach and raise awareness of four core topics: Gender Roles; Gender Equality; Sexual Harassment; Drugs and Alcohol. WRC's project team also conducted training to school teachers, school principals, and commune authorities on basic counseling skills to ensure that they are able to support the children, especially girls, from any form of gender based-violence.

In this endeavor: 

• 719 boys and girls (under 18 years old) have participated in the Safe City for Girls project in 2023.
• 1,129 youths have been involved in the educational scheme.
• 2,992 total beneficiaries of the program in 2023.
• 266 youths (196 female and 70 male) gained knowledge and understood gender equality, from 29.54% to 80.46%

Through our school outreach projects, Safer City for Girls and SheEmpowers, we were able to directly reach 1,395 young people/students. As part of the SheEmpowers project, 24 teachers  from five target schools received training courses on Basic Psychological Counselling. They were equipped with skills to emotional support students, particularly girls in their stage of self-development. Indirectly, She Empowers will impact every child coming under the guidance of the trained teachers as well as our youth ambassadors, who will be spreading empowering messages on gender.

Likewise, we also provided Financial literacy information for 15 women. The project team conducted training on the topic of Financial Literacy for 15 women who were newly selected from the other projects, NGO partners, or through a public announcement. The training aimed to provide capacity building for women in financial management,  to enhance their knowledge in their business and allow them to support their family. The participants had a chance to learn and share with each other aspects of Financial Literacy such as a Vision Board, Motivation and Goal Setting, Budget Planning and Debt Management, Financial Management, Goals and Communication with Money, Business Concepts.

SWOT and 5Ps Marketing tools are used for the training with Young Women Entrepreneurs (YWEs). As a result, through the pre and post-tests, we found that the participants increased their knowledge and skills on average from 43% to 85% (a 42% increase).

We are truly proud of our education and empowering efforts, and hope you can be proud of us as well!

Thank you for being a huge contributor to our success.