Provide women and girls education in Cambodia

During the last quarter, WRC kept its doors openedr to welcome women and girls seeking counseling support. Dozens came more than two sessions for emotional support and legal advice on domestic violence.

One of our clients said: 

“I feel much better after speaking to someone who cares about me.”

Our Safer City for Girls project also enhanced the knowledge that project participants had acquired throughout the early stages of implementation. Said knowledge is related to gender equality and girls’ rights. 

Through our practices, the project team collaborated with school teachers, and led by Youth Ambassadors, engaged with students in high and secondary school levels to conduct the Cascade training. 

Youth Ambassadors (YAs) worked within their teams to prepare the training plan - topics, materials, approach and coordination methods before taking action. In the meantime, there were 41 YAs as facilitators; 30 of them females who took the lead in 7 Cascade trainings. Topics like harassment, abuse, violence, girl’s rights, gender stereotypes and biases as well as girls’ safety, with a total of 287 participants - 169 of them female (159 girls under age 18-year-old, 10 women over age 18-year-old) and 109 boys under the age of 18 and 9 male adults +18-year-old).

To improve the safety of girls in Siem Reap city, the project staff supported 19/9 youth ambassadors who are under the age of 18 to conduct 3 Facebook live events to talk about harmful behaviors, gender biases, girl’s rights, negative attitudes, violence, harassment, safety walk and gender- based violence. 

The participants of the Facebook Live debate shared their ideas about kinds of provocateurs and abuse and shared their personal experiences. The Facebook Live event had 551 engagements, 2051 of people reached (included likes, comments and shares). 

Simultaneously, the project also designed the materials related to the safety walk and girl’s rights. 412 notebooks with the topic-related messages were distributed to community members, students and school teachers.

During the month of March, project staff partnered with local authorities and key community members to strategize the strengthening of parent’s capacities related to the parenting roles, children’s roles, sexual harassment, girl’s safety and gender stereotypes through 3 days of training at WRC office.

In accordance with the training approach, our project staff engaged all participants in the training through different games, storytelling, group discussion, drawings, role play, as well as a round of Questions & Answers and other interactive activities related to the topic. By project implementation, the project staff lead parents to join the discussion, draw the picture, play roles, contribute the Question and Answer, and Game reflection at WRC office. Finally, 68/29 females of participants joined the event.

Interesting realizations happened during this training. One woman of 40 years of age from Kantrok village, had experienced sexual terminology or harassment in the past, yet she didn’t react because she had no knowledge or awareness on sexual harassment or abuse. She didn’t process any report to the relevant authorities for support. This is the case for many women, men and children - their understanding of sexual abuse and harrasment is limited to rape and penetration, whereas there are many forms of abuse.

She then pointed out the importance of knowledge and being able to respond to such violations of boundaries, seeking support and report. Also, how to share knowledge to young children and protect them to avoid the experience like herself. 

Activities 3.2.2 Conduct Men's Coffee Talks to promote Safety for Girls, Roles of parents to protect children, gender roles, harassments, communication on parenting roles, children protection, safety for girls within households or public.

To promote the safety for Girls, the project staff collaborated with local authorities to identify the men to join the men’s coffee talk event. Through this event, the project staff gathered 26 men and  fathers for group discussions, road mapping, role play, questions and answers, and sharing real experiences. 

These were 3 days of events at the WRC’s office. Men spoke about ways to protect children, gender roles, harassment, communication on parenting roles, children protection, safety for girls within households and in public. 

Positive Parenting:

We delivered 8 workshops to 36 women and men as parents and guardians; 32 females and 4 males on positive disciplines, child protections, children development, communication within family, protecting children, and parents well-being. This informal education aims to support parents to reduce the negative effects on their children lives, introduce the positive methods to deal with their children, anger management, and cut the roots of violence on women and girls. 

SHE Empowers:

Here at the WRC, we believe in making a difference, hence our development of success indicators. For the SHE Empowerment project, success revolves around gaining 40 participants (M:11, F:29) to join our project launching event including the targeted school teachers, students, Department of Education Youths and Sport. And we also provided the orientation sessions to those five schools and students in a total of participants 246 (M:69, F:177) on women’s rights, gender roles, domestic violence, and reproductive rights, whilst 71 participants apply the knowledge learned on the topics (not direct attendance). We also understand the importance of men in promoting gender equality, hence our aim for 20 male participants to share the knowledge they have gained with their friends or household. We will conduct more workshops with the youth students, so they can take a part of sharing back to their peers and communities around. 

We also successfully conducted the basic counseling 23 teachers (M: 4, F:19) from five schools to understand the back emotional support, listening skills, and mental health awareness to support and prevent to drop out of students, especially girls. If they have any concerns or issues, the teachers are able to provide support to them.