For our programs and initiatives to be truly sustainable, and to live on long after CCT, they have to be embedded into public systems and run by the community.
In 2019, we launched a pilot to hand over our Village Hive model to a commune in Battambang, called Ou Char.
The holistic range of family support services that comprise our Village Hive model have been accessible to all the families in Ou Char Commune since 2016. Over the last 5 years, the Cambodian team at CCT have run these services out of privately run facilities.
After laying all the necessary foundations for the transfer of power, including establishing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Commune, co-creating the frameworks for the commune to govern the fiscal and human resource management of the Village Hive, and training in child protection and anti-corruption protocols, it was time to begin the hand over.
The first Village Hive service to be handed over was our youth centre. The local council decided that CCT would transfer the youth centre service into a public primary school in Ou Char Commune.
The youth centres are our most vital service — they ensure that the most vulnerable children in the community are able to access nutrition, healthcare and education while social workers are working with their families to achieve their long-term goals.
Ou Char Commune contributed the space and facility within the public school for the transfer of the youth centre. They will also contribute their staff to the ongoing operation and management of the youth centre. This contribution allows us to close our privately-run youth centre facilities as all the children will be able to access the services from within their local public school. This will result in future cost savings as we will no longer be incurring rental and some operational costs.
The public primary school that CCT transferred a youth centre into was in Phum Ang Village, one of the six villages in Ou Char Commune. Over the last 12 months, we worked together with the Phum Ang Village local council, to renovate an old classroom into a youth centre and build toilet and shower blocks for the students.
In October 2020, the youth centre in Phum Ang Village Public School opened its doors. There are now 54 children, including 10 preschool-aged children, enrolled and accessing their basic needs from the new youth centre in their local public school.
We will now commence the handover of our medical outreach, family finance, construction and social work programs to Ou Char Commune to complete the Village Hive. We will also begin embedding youth centres into two other communes in Battambang.
We believe that our impact can only be truly sustainable if our work is placed in the hands of the community where it can grow, evolve and outlive CCT.
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