Following the feelings of success experienced by Deirdre and myself last month, we decided to repeat the Sanitation Project at another Cluster of Primary schools in Phnom Srok District. This cluster was Srah Chik, one I'm a lot more familiar with in general due to the close proximity of the schools to my office and the fact that the model school (Chey Oudom) is a part of this cluster. It was Srah Chik Primary School, in fact, which was the school to give birth to the idea of the Sanitation Project in the first place (see Talking Crap entry). We chose a different cluster to start the project off with as initially not every school in Srah Chik cluster had toilet buildings so it was great to finally spread the project to this cluster. 
We followed our agenda from last time, holding a meeting with community members and school staff on one day which was followed by a Student Council Workshop the next (with a few modifications). As before, the participants were really engaged and enthusiastic, although there seemed to be an even more positive vibe about this group of people. As hoped, Vuthang (my assistant/translator) led the whole thing in Khmer and did so fantastically well. I have really seen this man grow in confidence and ability in the last year. His English isn't wonderful all the time but the way he communicates in his own mother tongue is really clear, expressive and fab! In Khmer culture he is relatively low down the pecking order as a young single man but he held his own during this project, facilitating discussions of problems and solutions between school directors and well respected elders from the community. It meant I was fairly redundant but that, I guess, is the whole point. It feels great to be doing less and less in terms of leading meetings at this point in my placement. Vuthang, together with my colleagues are more than able to lead the way!
The Student Council Workshop was a lot of fun and this time the teachers were much more proactive in leading the children in learning about good hygiene practices. Again, who knows what the eventual outcome of this project will be. If nothing else, we managed to get 4 schools together, sharing meetings, knowledge and learning and we showed how the Student Councils can be used in a collaborative way and as leaders for the rest of the students in their schools. The teachers were great and really took the lead this time.
The activities included learning words to a goofy song about how to use the toilet properly, ordering a set of pictures, acting out how to use the toilet (caused great hilarity!), matching questions and answers and exploring the Germ handshake. Most of the activities were from a supplementary book from the Ministry of Education themselves so thankfully all the hard work was done for us! We tried to make the project as simple and cost effective as possible, in order to motivate but at the same time being realistic for schools to afford themselves. These are the gift packs we provided; a sanitation starter kit! costing less than $2 in total as well as a pack containing the activities we used on the day and some drawing materials for the poster competition! All pretty basic but its stuff that schools are really lacking in.
I've added more to the previous Talking Crap entry too...
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