Our club is involved in a major project in Cambodia which involves a collaboration between Rotary Clubs in Australia, the USA, Thailand, Ireland and Cambodia. This project is the subject of two separate Global Grant applications with our District project, World of Difference, playing a major role in both. This video, narrated by Bill Taylor, a fellow Steering Committee member from the Rotary Club of Edmunds Daybreakers in the USA was made in support of our applications. It lasts a total of 8 minutes and was filmed in the village where Central Melbourne contributed to the construction of Washrooms last year and where we plan to construct another 150 Washrooms over the next 2 years in the first part of the project. https://vimeo.com/
An important part of our project is not just building the washrooms but educating the villagers on the importance of hand hygiene. Another steering committee member, Paul Rake of the Rotary Club of Chadstone-East Malvern has written the following article on that subject.
CREATING BEHAVIOURAL CHANGES THROUGH MAJOR PROJECTS
The Rotary Foundation provides financial support and technical advice to Rotary Clubs to enable life changing projects around the globe. Whilst physical outcomes (such as new toilets) are often the visual focus of change, the real change that projects are seeking is BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE.
Rotary Clubs are focused on projects that change the lives of people. This is especially so when we look at our Club’s major project in Cambodia. We are planning to impact the lives of over 300 families by providing them with a Washroom Toilet.
But the provision of a physical asset (in this case a Washroom Toilet) is only half of the game plan. The more challenging half is to bring about behavioural change.Put simply behavioural change is about changing habits and behaviours for the long term. Research around health-related behavioural change proposes that small changes can lead to enormous improvements in people’s health and life expectancy.
When we conduct a major project, a significant component is the provision of what is known as WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) training. Again, put simply it is education to create awareness that in turn leads to changes in practice because of better understanding. For example, understanding why and how to wash hands before eating or after touching something that could have disease or other illness causing elements is important. Learning how to wash hands without understanding will not last.
In addition, small changes by one person can have a knock-on effect for other people. If a teacher understands (from education and awareness) that washing hands is important for health and can explain this to school children who in turn can pass on the understanding to their families, then we will achieve a much wider behavioural change impact. In third world countries behavioural change at the village level is important. But understanding at the local NGO/not for profit organisation level is also very important because it is these agencies that are in the best position to educate villagers to lead to understanding and long-term change. Part of the attached video is targeted at 20 plus NGOs based in Siem Reap Cambodia – all members of the Cambodia Leaders Learning Community. Our aim was to share with them understanding of what we are trying to achieve so that they too might become aware and model change.
Scan through the video and you will pick up different elements of our project planning and implementation. https://youtu.be/5nkQDgXYEyQ And as Rotarians we can reflect on the great work we are able to do, with financial and technical support from the Rotary Foundation.
