The project has been initiated to improve the warm and safe care for orphans, AIDS affected children and extremely poor children in Samraong Tong district through delivery of safe homestay, recreation, early childhood learning, play area with books and playthings, health care, physical hygiene, nutritious food, clean water, moral behavior, protection from abuse, social and psychological assistance. The project goal is to achieve a measurable and sustainable improvement in the welfare, promotion and protection of the rights and dignity of community vulnerable children.
Most villagers in the project areas have worked for the garment factories and at the construction sites that are far away from their villages. They leave their home villages for work in early morning and come back in the evening. So their work has compelled them to leave their children alone at home or with their old grand parents without thorough care. This has made the children face a lot of problems such as serious illness, sexual rape, traffic accident, drowning, falling from trees, insufficient food to eat, lack of physical hygiene, etc. Some women are tied up by child care all day that make them unable to have time to work outside to get money to support their families. This has made them get poorer. The advantages they will secure from the project are that they will have enough time to work and their children will get access to education and health care, get nutritious food and be freed from various abuses.
In September 2012, the project manager determined the construction date of homestay for child day care service, announced the selection of construction workers and set up the construction team. In mid September, the construction workers were chosen from the nearby villages and the team chief was appointed. The construction worker team has been led by Mr. Phally. The project manager contacted the construction materials shops to ask about the price and decided to buy construction materials at the shops that sold at the reasonable price, found the people to fill the construction site with excavated soil and finally prepared it for construction. On 1st October, 2012, construction materials were transported into the construction site and the construction started. The homestay size is 8m x 25m with 5 rooms (each room size = 5m x 8m) that can accommodate the total of 60 children. 4 of 5 rooms have been used to accommodate the children while 1 of them has been made as a kitchen, a bathroom and a toilet. From November 2012 to early April 2013, the child homestay construction was completed. In September 2012, the new staff were recruited and the project was promoted to the communities, the survey on the community child and mother situation was done and the documents and other materials used for the project were prepared. In mid September 2012, the project management team promoted the project to the communities again, announced the selection and enrollment of children in the center. Although the day care service building hasn’t been completed, the rooms of another building were used temporarily. In Early February 2013, the project management team planned the training for the new staff on how to take care of the children. The project assistant requested the staff of Kampong Speu Provincial Department of Education, Youth and Sport for provision of the training for the new staff. He also prepared the documents for submission to this department in order for them to officially recognize the project. Due to busy work, the staff from Kampong Speu Provincial Department of Education, Youth and Sport are unable to provide the training, we have decided to postpone it until Early March 2013. However, one of the public school kindergarten teachers was employed to train the six new staff how to take care of children and to produce teaching materials and playthings for children. This was done only in the afternoon and from 15-28 February, 2013. In addition, they were assigned to visit the community kindergarten set up and operated in the neighboring village as well. In early March 2013, the staff involved in the project were trained again by officials from Kampong Speu Provincial Department of Education, Youth and Sport. After the child homestay building completed in early April 2013, all the children were moved into this new building. The services that are provided include 1) provision of education (the children will be taught Khmer literacy, numeracy and English, daily moral and hygienic practices by using gesture, video and other equipment and entertained with games, jokes and short old stories), 2) provision of health care (the children are referred to health service providers when they are sick and are educated on health issues), 3) provision of meals (the children are fed with breakfast prepared by their parents from home, and provided with lunch and snack prepared by the center), 4) provision of hygiene and sanitation (the children are provided with physical hygiene, the bathroom, toilet, kitchen wares, clothes are cleaned and washed by the caregivers) and 5) the children are provided with school uniforms and transported to and fro.