In the beginning of November, under the strong sunlight in the dry season, the cleanup activity was conducted in Kampong Chhnang Province with the aim of improving the sanitary condition in the community, with the slogan “let’s live cleanly, have a clean meal and drink clean water”.

If you have ever been to Cambodia, you may know that garbage disposal is one of the problems in this country. Commonly, household garbage is not managed nor separated properly. In addition, there were no cleanup activities in the community so far. You can see some kinds of garbage, such as plastic snack packages or empty plastic bottles which are thrown everywhere, on the road or in the gardens. Therefore, we decided to conduct cleanup activity to clean the village first before implementing other activities, because the sanitary condition of food, clothing and shelter are important on people’s health.

The activity was led by a mayor of the village holding a speaker on his hand. Some people carried garbage bags while some held the tongs to pick up garbage. Children were so interested in this activity because they had never experienced this kind of activity before. As soon as their mothers found garbage and pointed at it, they rushed toward it and pick up. The villagers picked up all the garbage including some being almost buried in the ground or under the water channels. After one round of the village, the garbage bags were full and heavy, and villagers were soaked in sweat.

Some of the villagers said that, “I didn’t know that living cleanly is related to our health”, “I have never cared about scattered garbage in the village until now, but today I realized that cleanup activity can refresh my mind. I will clean up my house when I come back home.”

It is not easy to change someone’s life habit. There is still a long way to completely decrease the garbage in the village, but we found from the villagers’ face expression after the activity that we already had to a good start.

We will continue to support this project so that this one step for the improvement of the sanitary condition in the community will be proceeded further in the future.