Small Scale Initiatives for Vulnerable Groups

In the second week of July, our team working on the EU-funded project dedicated to building capacity for local councillors hit the road again for a week's visit to the province of Pursat. Together with our implementing partners from Aide et Action and AMDCSPUR, we first organised a brief training, explaining local officials how to assess the needs of vulnerable groups in their constituencies. API's senior programme manager, Barmey Phan and AMDCSPUR's director, Eng Samrith, shared their ideas with the audience, concentrating on the need to strengthen the institutional capacity of the Provincial Associations of Local Councillors (PALCs), specifically by learning how to develop small scale initiatives benefiting women, youth, children and other vulnerable groups, based on data collection in the field.

Following this training, we went on to actually assessing the needs of vulnerable persons living in eight districts of Pursat, and showing local officials how to undertake this task by themselves in the future. At API, we believe in a wide and inclusive participation in local decision making processes. However, all too often, the voices of women, youth, indigenous people or persons with disabilities are not heard by decision makers. This is why, in this project, we are concentrating on making the local councillors who are PALC members more sensitive to this topic. Based on the data we collected, they can subsequently come up with initiatives aiming at responding to the issues raised by citizens.