A significant project has been launched for the sake of the well-being of Cambodian children, particularly the underprivileged ones, ensuring access to education, health, and hygiene.
Serves as the newly shared project between the government of Cambodia, the Chinese government and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the “Strengthen education, health and hygiene for Cambodia’s most vulnerable children” project, was officially launched in Phnom Penh yesterday.
The launching ceremony was presided over by Health Minister Chheang Ra, the Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Wang Wenbin, and Will Parks, UNICEF’s Cambodia representative.
The initiative aims to fill the critical gaps in the quality and accessibility of essential services for children, women, and families—including newborns, infants, children with disabilities, children at risk of malnutrition, ethnic minorities, and ID-poor families—in some of the country’s most remote and underserved areas.
Many children in Cambodia, particularly those living in hard-to-reach areas, continue to face challenges in accessing quality education, healthcare, and clean water.
During his speech, the ambassador noted that, “We hope that the children in the most vulnerable communities in Cambodia can feel the warmth and care from the Chinese people through this project. Children are the future of the country and the nation. We should care for the healthy growth of the children together. They are the inheritors of the traditional friendship between China and Cambodia and the successors of global development.”
Ambassador Wang added that China is willing to work with Cambodia and relevant international organisations to continue to strengthen support for the education and health of children in the most vulnerable communities in Cambodia under the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund, to further promote practical cooperation between China and Cambodia in the field of people’s livelihood, and make unremitting efforts to achieve the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and jointly build a human community with a shared future.
“It is a critical time for Cambodia’s children,” said Parks. “While we have made great strides in their lives and well-being, intensifying global challenges are threatening their futures, and it is the most vulnerable children who risk being left behind—at school, at home, and in their communities.
“We are grateful to the People’s Republic of China for their commitment to working together with UNICEF and the Government of Cambodia to protect the children who most need our support.
Together, we can ensure that every child, regardless of their background or circumstance, fulfils their right to learn, grow, and develop to their full potential,” he added.
This partnership aims to enhance foundational literacy and numeracy skills for the country’s youngest learners.
It will provide supplies, materials, and knowledge to 10,000 teachers and 80,000 students in pre-primary and primary schools, including 600 children with disabilities, to improve early-grade and inclusive learning.
Parks noted that to promote infant and young child feeding, growth monitoring, and detection of child wasting, the support from China Aid will also strengthen the capacity of 600 health personnel across 200 health facilities and 800 Village Health Support Group members to provide lifesaving quality health and nutrition services.
Healthcare workers and teachers will also be supported to adopt healthy and nurturing care behaviours and monitor children’s growth, critical to decreasing the risk of childhood malnutrition, reaching 65,000 children under five and 30,000 schoolchildren.
Additionally, to address urgent gaps in access to WASH services, critical hand hygiene supplies will be provided to vulnerable households, including the IDPoor, living in flood-prone areas, where the risk of contamination and spread of disease is high. Hand hygiene supplies will also be provided together with other learning and teaching materials to all 3,000 community preschools in the country, benefitting around 60,000 children.
National learning assessments for Grade 6 in 2021 revealed that 45% of pupils are below basic proficiency in Khmer, and three in four students (74%) are below basic proficiency in mathematics.
One in ten children under five still suffer from wasting (acute malnutrition), which has remained unchanged in the past decade. And despite improvements in access to water, sanitation, and hygiene services, one-third of healthcare facilities do not have access to basic hand washing services, and 78% do not have access to basic sanitation facilities.