Developing my team - Konthea

I am Konthea, Community Liaison Program Manager at Journeys Within Our Community. I have been working here for two years and learned a lot from this job. To be able to run this program smoothly I have contributed lots of ideas, energy and time. I learned from mistakes and adapted to changes to make the program better. However, to make changes to improve the program I have worked closely with my team of scholarship 

students.

There are a few points I want to share about them as I recognized they have been improving a lot through this program. One thing they are now able to do is provide half of the training on Home Gardening to the villagers by themselves. So, we do not need to spend money on an external trainer as before. This is quite important for JWOC and especially for themselves. I found they can take the responsibility of the trainings very well including explaining and leading people to practice what they have been taught and also they can deal with questions immediately and confidently. This is something that makes me really proud of them.

The other thing is that my scholarship students’ team is able to communicate with local people and the authorities very well, even without me. This point was a big concern for me before, as they always needed me to be with them and begin the conversation. But now they come back from the field with answers and or results I wanted. At the start of the year we provided a communication workshop which focused on this aspect of their development as I found this is the most important skill needed for the program, especially Community Liaison.

The last point I want to talk about them is they now understand very well about what they are doing. They know how to respond to the requests from beneficiaries, recognize problems and best practices and share it within the team. This point is something very great and it is what I want them to keep doing more and more.

Since they are developing every day, both new and old team members are helpful to this program. They are building trust for me and hope for JWOC. I wish I can help them to improve more in the future.

A year in Pictures

It has been such an incredible year at Journeys Within Our Community (JWOC) and we would like to share some of our most beautiful photographs with you. So much happens at JWOC in one year and we have done our best to capture the smiles and hard work that happens in the community.

Happy Holidays from everyone here at JWOC

The beauty behind buzzwords

Alexandra Plummer, the Managing Director of JWOC explains the buzzwords that the sector uses through JWOC's current projects.


I can talk about JWOC for hours; from the unprecedented commitment of our staff and scholarship students and the positive change we make in the communities we serve to the awe-inspiring support we receive from our donors. This got me thinking about the language I use to talk about JWOC to friends, family, staff and potential donors. I must admit that more often than not I find myself adopting “NGOspeak” – words and acronyms that are familiar to those who work in my field. The fast moving development world is inundated by “buzz” words. These are not to be entirely dismissed; they play an important role in framing an organization’s processes and are essentially used as a summary of their means for implementation. Beyond that, they can also act as key components in securing funds. But for those not living and breathing development work, these words can leave you a little high and dry. Words like empowerment, capacity-building, resilience, governance, civil society can be ambiguous, meaning different things depending on where you stand.

Below I have highlighted what some of these terms mean to me in relation to the work we do at JWOC. Hopefully looking through my lens will give you a better understanding of what JWOC does and why.

1. Capacity Building.

Simply put, I would say that Capacity Building is an investment. It is the investment in activities that can enable an organization to not just reach its aim but sustain itself over time. For this reason I would say it is an integral part of JWOC’s philosophy. Our 5 programs exist to strengthen; they make our staff, scholarship students, the local community and even our supporters and collaborators stronger and more able to face challenges. Projects like our new and exciting Technology Refurbishment expand what is possible for those involved. Learning how to better use technology in a learning environment equips staff and students with the tools to keep up in a technologically driven world. It may be a simple task for Information Technology tools to be delivered to the field, but it takes skills to use them to their full potential - a capacity that must be built from the ground up. Team for Tech and JWOC’s collaboration with the generous support of The Rotary Club of Sacramento helps build these skills to turn unemployed youth into future professionals in Cambodia. (Read more about Team4Tech here)

2. Resilience

The training that JWOC’s Community, Liaison and Assistance program runs is a prime example of resilience in practice. Recently JWOC ran training on practical health and hygiene to reduce health risks during the floods, which are a yearly occurrence. The knowledge that the floods come each year isn’t enough to secure prevention measures. In the squatters villages surrounding JWOC the root causes of flooding cannot be alleviated -- the village has poor irrigation systems, and uneven land. Since villagers do not own the rights to build on the land, the root-cause solutions will be a long time in coming. .Because of this, the chance of a sustainable solution to the flooding is slim.

Resilience means preparing as much as possible to come up against these odds. Working with what we have and what we cannot change, we build on what we can and reduce the risks to those who are vulnerable as much as possible.

3. Self reliance

At least once a week you will hear me highlight the problems that come with giving handouts. Handouts relieve problems temporarily, and are sometimes tempting when faced with dire situations (or necessary in an emergency), but it in the long run it creates dependency on others who are in a position of power.

We don't want to contribute to dependency driven behavior; instead we aim to enable communities to take responsibilities for their own future. How do you motivate a low educated community with poor health standards to improve their living situation? It takes perseverance and a lot of time to alter behavior. JWOC believes that by building strong relationships with local communities, by linking them to access to resources, and by offering training and facilitation, that over time these communities can become self-reliant. To us this means building ability to make informed decisions without external influence.

4. Empowerment

JWOC’s Microfinance initiative (MFI) is a prime example of empowerment in action. JWOC’s MFI increases women’s access to credit to invest in businesses that they own and operate themselves. JWOC’s borrowers have excellent repayment records, in spite of the daily hardships they face -- JWOC has a near 100% repayment rate. However, empowerment is not met by access to credit alone. JWOC operates a group loan system which enables women a space to share new ideas amongst other female participants; it also enables women to be the decision makers. JWOC’s borrowers also receive training on how to manage a budget which challenges existing social norms by empowering women in different ways.

I urge you to take the time to explore an organization's practice behind the trendy language and discover the beauty behind the buzz words. To find out more about all our programs please visit www.journeyswithinourcommunity.org

One step ahead; working with the community to mitigate the effects of flooding

Flooding during the rainy season in the months of September and October is common in Cambodia. In 2011 and 2013, the flooding was particularly severe and damaging; thanks to the generous support of donors, JWOC was able to provide emergency relief to villages in the communities that JWOC serves in Siem Reap Province.

In 2013, Cambodia experienced severe flooding with a death toll over 100 and over 60,000 people having to leave their homes. There was great concern over disease outbreak from water-borne diseases due to a lack of sanitation and hygiene in these extreme living circumstances. The flooding seriously affected nearly all of Cambodia including Siem Reap Province, and many of the communities JWOC serves. The flooding damaged homes, crops and caused harm to roads and infrastructure.

The risk of water related and mosquito-borne diseases, such as Dengue Fever, increases during flooding. As well as the large concern over the risk of disease there is also recovery to consider with clean up and repairs to roads and houses needed. Many families lose their crops as their rice fields and poultry are destroyed by the flooding, a source of both income and food for impoverished families. The longer-impact of the flooding is fear for food security with concerns over food shortages.

JWOC’s Community, Liaison and Assistance program works all year round to address these issues. This year we made some changes to improve our preparedness and response to the high waters that occur each year.

To develop an emergency preparedness plan, we started by collecting data to find out what villagers did to help themselves before and during the floods. We found that the knowledge that the floods come each year isn’t enough for families to take preventive measures. In the squatters villages surrounding JWOC the root causes of flooding are not easily addressed -- these villages have poor irrigation systems, and uneven land. As villagers do not own the rights to build on the land, root-cause solutions will be slow in coming.


The data we gathered demonstrated high health risks among a population where over 60% of the villagers live below the poverty line (between $1-3 a day). This helped us prioritize alleviation of health risks in our emergency preparedness plan.


This week, JWOC will run an emergency preparedness pilot training effort to prepare villagers before the floods. We will work in collaboration with the Angkor Hospital for Children (AHC) to conduct Health Care training focusing on basic hygiene, safe drinking and disease prevention to 60 beneficiaries from Teaksen Tbong Village.

We will offer villagers the opportunity to purchase emergency kits consisting of mosquito nets, soap and water filters. The cost for JWOC to purchase these items and field this pilot is $2090

JWOC does not want to create dependency that may occur by simply giving items away, so this year we will offer these emergency items at a subsidized price. JWOC will sell the items to the communities at a 60% discount, with a further reduction if purchased as a set ($7.50 per set). The money from these items will help defray the emergency kit cost and go straight back in our Community, Liaison and Assistance program fund which works all year round to make sure we prepare for, respond to and recover from emergencies like flooding.

We'll begin our pilot to 60 people, depending on the response to the pilot and what we learn, we aim to train other villagers (there are 250+ families left in the pilot village and around 300 families at two other villages who we hope train). Though to proceed with further training and emergency preparedness supply distribution, we require support from donors.

In addition to providing a donation now in support of our emergency preparedness efforts, please consider becoming a subscription donor where you can provide a monthly amount in support of our Community Liaison and Assistance Program. To make a donation please click here.


Thank you for supporting us in our mission to strengthen our Emergency Preparedness, Recovery and Response practices.

Konthea gives an update on the Home Gardens Program

I am Konthea, the Community Liaison and Assistance Program Manager. Since I started working for JWOC in 2013 I have felt very happy with what I have accomplished so far. This period of time has given me the chance to provide assistance to the poor villagers in the rural areas around JWOC.

Currently, I am working in a village called, Bang Koang. It is about 28 kilometers to the East of Siem Reap. There are 250 households in this village and most of them are poor families. They work as farmers, construction workers and other seasonal jobs such as fishing. Most women just stay at home, take care of their children and look after the animals. Some of them also like planting vegetables when there is enough water. Anyway, this village is always flooded and people can only plant vegetables between January and March.

Since I started working in this village, my team and I have provided information to people regarding vocational training, health care service and nutrition, and we initiated the Home gardens project to encourage the growth of organic vegetables in the area providing nutritional benefits and also a chance for families to make an income. There are two cycles of the Home Gardens project in this village, while in previous villages there were only one cycle.

One thing that has made me happy is the improvement of my team. Previously, we hired an expert for the whole training period, but this time he was hired for only 60% of the whole process and the rest was done by the scholarship students. They are able and confident enough to provide training to beneficiaries on composting and soil preparation before planting. That is one reason that some of the project cost has decreased.

I want to tell you a story about one of our Home garden beneficiaries. Her name is Pan. She is about 55 years old with eight children. Three of her sons and daughter are married, but the others are still young and need to be supported by her and her husband who has HIV.  She lives in a small wooden house on a hill. She is illiterate, but she likes planting. When she joined the Home Garden training she depended on listening and joining the practice at the group leader’s house. Later, when she started doing it on her own, everything was carried out perfectly.

She had previous experience in planting spring onion and chili. Now she is very happy that she knows how to plant cucumber, string bean, bitter gourd and tomato. She told me she never imagined that her hill land could be used for planting this type of vegetable as it is very hard and not rich at all.

Dry and liquid compost has made her land become good and rich. She then, buys more seed on her own to plant more and other kinds of vegetable, kale and eggplant.

Now she has many kinds of vegetable for eating with her own family, share with her neighbors and sell in the village. She told me that the profit she is making from her garden will be used to extend her garden in the near future. There is a well provided by JWOC’s clean water program to three families around including hers, it will enable her to have enough water for all the vegetables.

Clean Water Program Update

Seng, Our Clean Water Program Manager,  discusses the activities involved in the Clean Water Program; the latest collaboration with Community, Liaison and Assistance Program and the people and communities that are supported through our clean water initiative.

I am Seng.I have been the Clean Water Program manager, for about a year now. We do Clean Water  Program activities at schools and in villages. We are still providing hygiene training to students at primary and kindergarten schools, in Siem Reap town and at the same time, we are checking the filters and wells that we have provided, they are using very well.. There are now 12 schools that we have done, which means 6280 students have been provided with hygiene training! Students, teachers and principles of schools are very welcoming and very happy with what they are getting from our activities. 

Volunteer Sa Em, teaches kindergarten children at Krong Siem Reap school how to wash their hands.

Recently, the Clean Water program has cooperated with Community Liaison and Assistance program (CLA) to implement their programs in the communities.  We started with providing program training, on the 28 Apr to 18 May 2013 for all scholarship students volunteering in the program. We feel very happy when we have two teams working together because we have more experiences, and learn from CLA, even though the tasks to implement seems new to us and the work to be completed seems a bit difficult at the beginning. Now it is actually easier in implementation because there are more suggestions and ideas when discussing with each other.

Part of the CW and CL&A collaboration, the volunteers attend a fun and engaging training.

I have more knowledge about these two projects working together and having noticed that there are many more  improvements in the whole village that we have been working in. We can run projects  in the villages more frequently. We keep observing or monitoring what has been done in the village and we can inform the problems and solve them faster. 

The group conduct Specialized Training in Kork Thmey village

Since starting, there are 17 villages JWOC has implemented Clean Water. After having checked around ten villages, we decided to choose Kork Thmey village that is to the west of Siem Reap - about 30 kilometres.  There have been many problems in the village, lacking  access to water, not enough materials to make clean water and lacking good hygiene knowledge in their lives. We have seen 30 hole wells, 12pit wells and 33pully wells, but most of them haven’t enough water in dry season and sometimes they dry up. We found thirteen places to install new wells t In fact, Kork Thmey is a small village of only 170 families. Most of them are farmers, but there isn’t enough irrigation, the people can farm only in rainy season. In dry season, some people go to work in Thailand illegally, some find the work in Siem Reap town and most women stay at home looking after their house and children. 

CW and CL&A Program Managers sign a contract agreement with the village chief and group leaders at Kork Thmey village.

I really hope that there will be a lot of change in the village due to Clean Water program and Community Liaison and Assistance working together. We have assigned the group leaders in the village by ourselves, not decided by  the village chief. Most of them are women because we think they are actively involved in the community effective helpful and trying hard to help their village.

A consultation with the village chief

Drilling a new well, Kork Thmey village

I am looking forward to writing again next time to tell you more about the Clean Water Program’s work in villages and schools. Thank you very much for reading my update and for supporting Clean Water in Cambodia!