Report from Clear Cambodia (cooperation partner of Wasserzeichen e.V.) about the completion of the School Wash Program at the school Sakream Primary School

Kampong Thom Province, September 2022

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1. School Name: Sakream School.
2. Address of the School: Sakream village, Sakream commune, Prasat Balang district, Kampong Thom province. 3.GPS Location of the School: N:13.185236, E: 104.751708
4. Total number of students: 356, 157 are girls
5. Total number of teachers and staff: 11 teachers, 6 are females
6. School category: Primary School

The school challenges:
Sakream primary school is located in Sakream village, Sakream commune, Prasat Balang district of Kampong Thom province. The school is 49 kilometers from the district office and 79 kilometers from Kampong Thom provincial town. Sakream school was built in 2019 by Cambodian Royal Government funding. Currently, the Sakream school has two main buildings, one building was built by concrete under support from the Cambodian Royal Government with 5 classes and another wooden building was built in 2022 with 3 classes under support of community contributions and school year funds. Sakream school has 7 grades including kindergarten to grade 6 and it has 20,000 square meters.

The schedule of school to provide teaching to students has also been separated as two different times, both morning and afternoon. Previously, the school did not have any cleaned/safe water for supporting all students when they joined school classes. Base on the figure provided by school director showed that, 30% of students (equal to 107 students bringing the water from their home which collected from the unsafe sources for drink during they joined the school class) 70% of them (equal to 249 students who are able to purchase the unknown drinking water which was bottled and sold in the village). Most of the students have less understanding on safe water and hygiene and sanitation. School directors, teachers and parents have critical concerns related to safe/clean water for their children. They have sent any requests to the relevant department but never getting the responses. Some students got diarrhea when they joined the class because of poor hygiene, drinking unsafe water that made them get poor school performance or missed the class very often.

 

​Description of what we built and how the fund is used:
To make the construction of School Wash facilities functioned well and properly, the project team starting work closely with District Office for Education (DoE)of Prasat Balang district to discuss and identified the school which qualified and meet the criteria for equip the Bio sand filtration system, Hand Washing station, garbage kiln and latrine. After long discussion, the chief of district for education has decides and suggested the project to equip the School Wash facilities to Sakream primary school that lacked of any facilities for support the students who were joined that school to have opportunity to get clean/safe water, hygiene and sanitation knowledge for strengthening their health status being good as well as the students who studied in urban school. Then, project staff have come down to the school identified and work with the school director, school committees, school teachers for discussing and sharing responsibilities in monitoring the construction process and quality as well as maintenance. They are very delighted, grateful to join and take the responsibility to ensure that the construction is going well and align the design set. The project staff and school entity, worked together to identify the location for starting up to build any construction which provided to all students are able to access, easy and safe. In the construction process, the school committee, school teachers, and school director have joined the monitoring approaches to ensure that construction was well constructed with good quality and aligned to the design. The school director is responsible for building the shelter for the concrete support frame by themselves, that is the part of their contribution.
The project staff has also provided the training on clean water, sanitation, hygiene, Menstrual Health Management to 11 teachers (6 are female) and all of these teachers have planned to share this important knowledge to students who studied in their school. The fund was used for building facilities, health training materials such as towel, soap, plastic basket etc. and for teacher stipend when they were involved in the training.

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