Clean water across generations

I am Som Bee, 60, and I live with my seven-year-old granddaughter in Trapeang Tuk village in Cambodia. Today I am remembering support from CWS that really helped me change my life.

Some time ago I had the chance to join others in my village for an effort that CWS supported to help us have access to safe, clean water year round for cooking, drinking and gardening, and also to share information to help me improve my knowledge about safe drinking water and its storage. I also had a chance to learn about better hygiene to improve my health and my granddaughter’s and about better vegetable growing techniques for more yield and better nutrition.  

Before our work with CWS, my neighbors and I used unclean water from a shallow hand-dug well. Besides the water being unsafe, we faced water shortage in the dry season when the well dried up. Now the situation has changed and we all have safe, clean water from a ring well in our village, which is just about 35 yards from my home. And, best of all, because I learned about the importance of also filtering our drinking and cooking water, my granddaughter and I seldom have diarrhea like we always did before. This is because we use water from the biosand filter CWS gave to our neighbor after we learned how to keep it clean and useful.

With more water at hand I also started a garden of tomatoes, pumpkins, spinach, gourds, cucumbers and mushrooms. My granddaughter and I now have vegetables for eating and selling, and in the last six months, I earned about 200,000 Riel (USD 50) which I used to buy rice, some groceries and more vegetables seeds and tools.

The biggest way that partnering with CWS has helped me is that I no longer have to travel to work for others as a wage laborer, and I can spend time working happily in my vegetable garden and being near my granddaughter.  

Program Description

Since July 2011 CWS, together with our US funding partner and in partnership with Bread for the World Germany and the Finnish Evangelical Mission the Village Based Community Development initiative has supported water, sanitation and hygiene in 16 villages in the central Cambodia province Kampong Thom. The project was designed, and succeeded in many ways, to enhance families’ and communities’ capacity to define their development directions and priorities, which included access to improved water source and safe drinking water.

Trapeang Tuk is one of 16 villages that had difficulty in accessing water, especially during the dry season from March to June. Most people depended on hand dug wells for water to drink, cook, bathe and garden.

To help people respond to this challenge, which is pervasive in much of rural Cambodia, CWS partnered with the community and donors to build a high quality concrete well and to share household biosand water filters with project participants who agreed to share their labor, to gather local materials to build the well and also to make nominal cash contributions of less than one US dollar each to toward construction and filter costs. The well digging and finishing, including a protective wood and bamboo roof was led by the Village Development Committee and completed with a collective effort. To complement these material inputs, project participants have the opportunity to improve their knowledge about the importance of clean water, proper sanitation and good hygiene so children, especially, can avoid preventable water-related illness. In addition to the VDC members, the Village Health Supporting Groups were formed so their members could facilitate WASH education and training activities and to ensure ongoing maintenance of water supplies in their villages.