Svay Pao is home to the second Village Hive, which was established in 2023.
Svay Pao is one of the largest and most densely populated communes due to it being centrally located in the heart of Battambang District.
Read on to hear stories from the Svay Pao community themselves, reports from the local leaders and discover the impact of the Village Hive.
21,338
people
4
villages
Our community is full of joy and happiness to welcome the Village Hive to our Svay Pao Commune.
I first learnt about CCT's Village Hive Project from our neighbouring commune in Ou Char. I did my research and asked around to get more knowledge and understanding from the senior leadership in Ou Char, who have experience working with this project for one year already, and I learnt from them that the Village Hive was doing so much to support vulnerable people.
I am so happy that CCT also established a Village Hive in Svay Pao. We signed the handover MOU on the 31st of July, 2023, and have been running the Village Hive for four months now.
Already, we are seeing great results. The Village Hive is aligned with our government policy introduced by Samdech Thipadei
Hun Manet, Prime Minister of Cambodia. It compliments the government's low-income ID card scheme for families living in poverty who don't have jobs and uneducated children.
Before we had the Village Hive, one of our big challenges was that I needed more staff to do the outreach work to families in poverty. We only had one main social worker responsible for all four villages in our commune. When our citizens had problems, it was impossible for us to reach them in time.
With the Village Hive, CCT transferred their staff to Svay Pao, so we can now stay on top of all case management. We received two social worker staff members in our council office and four teacher staff members at our public school. I already have my whole team working on the Village Hive, too, and it has helped us a lot.
We are enrolling children in school and helping families to get stable jobs. We are improving our schools and health clinic. We have a Village Hive centre in Wat Kampheng Public School to provide vulnerable children with nutrition, life skills, computer classes, art classes, homework tuition, library reading, English language, storytelling, painting classes, and ethics classes.
We now also offer daycare services from our public school, so families have the opportunity
to find jobs and stable incomes and don't have to worry about their children's supervision.
All of the children supported through our Village Hive are safe, with physical and mental improvement. We are fostering intelligence, resilience and vibrant spirits. With this support, in the future, they will surely become good people in our society.
The Village Hive is helping vulnerable families who live in poverty through the early intervention seven-step program.
These families don't have sufficient skills and struggle to maintain secure incomes. Their children face barriers to receiving an education. So far, the Village Hive is working directly with 28 of these families, 114 people, in Svay Pao Commune who are experiencing extreme hardship.
For me, collaborating with CCT on the Village Hive is such a great privilege. Seriously, establishing this project has been as easy as can be. It really has provided more help to our community than we could have ever asked for. Now that we have the Village Hive, no matter how hard the challenges our community is facing, it is no problem for us to help.
Our goal with the Village Hive is to see our community develop. CCT has embedded their projects into the community to lead by ourselves. For now, we still work together with CCT on our Village Hive to help vulnerable children and support them with their education, social services, and health services.
So far, the Village Hive has given a lot of benefit to the children at our schools. Now, all children in our community can enrol in school and get an education. They can eat with a full stomach and have protection and safety in our community. On top of that, they can receive health services.
Another benefit of embedding the Village Hive into the Svay Pao community is that it gives us knowledge and understanding about how children are struggling in our community. We are now working together to provide all the opportunities for those children. Most importantly, we are preventing children from falling behind and living on the streets, and instead, encouraging them all to go to school.
Before we received this project, I had so many worries in my heart. I was worried about children who didn't enrol in school, children living in poverty who didn't have rice to eat and didn't attend school; they were hanging out on the street, and their job was collecting scraps to earn money. Too many families were living in poverty and using violence as a means to cope. Some families didn't have jobs.
Now, with the Village Hive, we see that children are enrolling in school, have enough food to eat, and are starting to live in stable conditions with safety. Some families have already received stable jobs and earn enough income to support their families. The result is far different from before. Our community is living in more harmony than before.
Another addition to our school from the Village Hive is that we now operate a Village Hive centre from the school. When I became the leader in our school, I felt so happy to bring this project to our school. I love this work so much because it is our responsibility and our role to help the next generation have an education so that they can serve our community.
One big change from the Village Hive is that CCT is no longer doing the work alone without the input of the community and commune. Working alone is not a good way to succeed. Working together, we know the strengths and weaknesses, and then we have the discussion to help each other find the solution to run our program in a better way to help children in poverty.
In my opinion, if the other NGOs want to invest their programs in Cambodia and if they want their programs to be successful and sustainable in the long run, they need to collaborate with the community, village, and commune in the public system, working together so that all the benefits can last forever.
The biggest goal in my community is to see my community develop and not see a single child not attending school. Every one of them deserves education, good knowledge, and a good standard of living. It will make our community grow and make our nation progress.
The Village Hive Project has truthfully given a lot of benefits to the community by providing support for our local health clinic.
We have received a budget for hospital equipment supplies, building toilets for disabled people, renovations and painting the building, and health education workshops to promote good health and prevention from disease.
Before we had the Village Hive in our community, we faced some risks because of the lack of health knowledge in the community; now, we have the resources to educate our people to allow them to learn fast and protect themselves.
Before, I could see that even though many people had national social security ID cards and low-income ID cards, they were reluctant to use them in our local health clinic. Now they know and understand that with these two cards, or even if they are poor and don't have these cards, they can still access all of our services.
The Village Hive is encouraging people to use the services from our local health clinic more than before. I see a big change in the increase in the number of people accessing our clinic. I feel so happy to see that the Village Hive really is helping our community.
We are also now doing outreach work in the community to provide general education, health knowledge and home nursing. The Village Hive supports our Village Health Committee group. Every month, we can host meetings and share news from our health clinic to alert our communities to risks so they can get vital information on time.
The support we received from CCT to build our Village Hive is helping to develop our community and health clinic. I want our Village Hive to continue in the long run because it helps us achieve our goals to help our people.
My biggest goal is to see the Svay Pao community develop and the people under our protection have good health and a high standard of life. When they have enough health education, it will help prevent them from living in poverty. When they have good health, they can work and make a living to support their family.
One of the main goals of the Village Hive is focused on preventing family separation, helping families to have stable jobs and businesses so that they can make a better living to support their children's education.
Before the Village Hive, we lacked the ability to address the problems our citizens were facing. When they experienced hardship, they didn’t come to report it to us so we weren’t aware of their struggles.
Since CCT set up the Village Hive, we collaborated and worked together to find the most vulnerable families in the community. We have a Hotline to provide immediate assistance for emergency cases. Now we have a budget and resources in our hands, it is easy to provide prompt support to help them if they don’t have food, or their children don’t have school materials. For some families who don’t have jobs, we help them with training and setting up a small business so that they can make a better living. When we support families to connect to employment or establish a business they really have a better quality of life from it. Their children can then go to school and we can close the case and move to help the next family. This is a very good thing. For homeless people, they don’t have secure homes so their standard of living is very poor, so we can support them to have stable homes or even rent a place to ensure they have a better quality of living.
Before, our citizens were reluctant to come to us for support because they didn’t have the knowledge or understanding of what their local council could do. NGOs can’t adequately be responsible for the kind of support they need. After we promoted the Village Hive to our citizens, they now understand that when they have a problem they can report it to us or call our Hotline and our team will connect and check in at their home.
Prior to the Village Hive, CCT worked separately. Like other NGOs, they worked alone which makes it very difficult. But now it is much easier because we have our Village Hive budget and our people are engaging directly with us. It is now much easier to connect, engage and provide support to all our citizens, and they are happy about it too.
The difference between CCT and other NGOs is that CCT has embedded their programs and budget into our Village Hive to empower us to support our own people. Some other NGOs are also working within Svay Pao, but they don’t embed their work into our systems. I can say, CCT’s approach and the results we see from the Village Hive is better than other NGOs because we have the ability to reach all our people. For other NGOs, when we see our people need support we need to send a proposal to them to request help. But they have their own agenda and have the right to decline. That is why the Village Hive is very good because we have a budget and resources that we have control over, so we can take action easily and help our people without delay with healthcare, jobs, and business, or food. It is very good.
If other NGOs worked like CCT, it would be very good because our local council needs to take control of this work and manage the budget and lead the program ourselves. If we need to go back and forth sending proposals to NGOs, it takes so much time and it is impossible to help people on time.
Since the Village Hive, I am now busier than ever, but it is okay for me because I want to help people in my community. So I am happy to be busy. I don’t want to see our people living in poverty and having a vulnerable life. My dream is to see my people in our community to have the essential support they need to have a better quality of life and for the whole community to have a better standard of living.
