Youth Participation

CFI has been working with many vulnerable children and families in the Ek Phnom district for the last decade. We help them through our services to build and strengthen their independence so they can lift their family out of poverty. We provide educational support, health care services, counseling, and much more.

We have been developing our services since the beginning to fit into our client’s needs and we think the best way to discover what the people using our services think is to ask for feedback directly from them. That’s where the Youth Participation group comes in.

The Youth Participation Group is a bunch of young people who use our services who are happy to tell us what they think about our services and how it can be improved.

Due to the worldwide pandemic COVID-19, it has changed what we are doing. But CFI still recognizes the importance of the safety and health of the most important people, the children and young people in the community.

Our social work and education advocacy teams work together to facilitate these sessions and during the most recent session we asked nine young people the following questions, provided here with a summary of their answers:

Question 1: Could you tell us how to prevent COVID-19 for yourself and your family?

Students: I and my family prevent the COVID-19 by
– Washing our hands with soap or alcohol often
– Keeping social distance of two meters
– Eating well-cook food
– Not eating wilds animals
– Staying away from sick people
– Staying home if you don’t have to go out and wearing a face mask if you do
– Using a tissue to cover your sneeze or using your elbow.

Question 2: How do you share these important prevention messages to your families and community?

Students: We share these important prevention messages by
– Telling them directly
– Broadcasting to the community through a Tuk Tuk with a loudspeaker
– Sending messages through social media

Question3: How do you maintain your study during COVID-19?

Students: I maintain my study during COVID-19 by
– Self-studying at home
– Reviewing old lessons daily
– Online studying with teachers at public school
– Group learning via Facebook messenger
– Doing exercises every day

Question 4: What do you think about CFI’s response to COVID-19?

Students: I think CFI’s response is great. CFI thinks about our safety and health, CFI decided to close the school and let us study from home. CFI always checks our health every week, provides school tasks to do every week, and reminds us to protect ourselves from COVID-19 by showing us how to wash our hands in the correct way.
Third, is the main purpose of the call. We review with the student where they are at with their lessons and we provide more tasks for the students to do for the next week. Parents really appreciate what we are doing with their children during this period and have thanked us for staying in contact with their children.

This approach means we are continuously learning how to improve our services, with advice from a source that really matters. We always analyze the results and make changes as required to ensure the most important people we are working with get the support they need during this difficult situation.