In response to COVID-19 in the garment sector, CARE has worked collaboratively with the Phnom Penh Department of Women Affair (PDoWA) through the Commune Council for Women and Children (CWCC) to raise community awareness on COVID-19 prevention, such as proper hand washing and distribute Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to the affected communities. Sokhaley is a champion who trained and shared COVID-19 related information and gender-based violence (GBV) to female garment workers in her community.
Sokhaley Sokhaley is working at Kamboul Commune as a CWCC member. She is responsible for responding to domestic violence, update the statistics on women and children in the commune, civil registration in each village, and identifying any children who live in poverty and send them to shelters and seek help for that child, especially for orphans.
When Cambodia was hit hard by the COVID-19, Sokhaley had to provide awareness raising to communities on COVID-19 prevention and GBV prevention. She is a committed and enthusiastic person to conduct the awareness raising in the commune where she is responsible for. Lack of PPE materials for protecting from COVID-19 is a challenge for her and other CCWCs members during the community awareness training.
In December 2020, Sokhaley and her team received adequate PPE materials and other support, including meals, communication and payments for travel costs from CARE’s COVID-19 response project. Sokhaley and her CCWC team were very happy and felt confident in facilitating the community awareness while visiting the factory workers in their rented rooms during the weekend. 8,500 factory workers (6,000 women) have engaged in the awareness session in her community.
“I am very delighted when I have an opportunity to collaborate with CARE’s project on the COVID-19 response, it is very useful and benefit for garment factory in rented room, and CCWCs members to make them safe from COVID-19.” says Sokhaley. Through the hard work of Sokhaley and her team during weekends with garment workers, she noticed that most of the factory workers and community members who are living in rented rooms, had a good understanding on how to prevent COVID-19 and knowledgeable about GBV prevention. They comply better with wearing masks, regular hand washing; understanding of health care and modern contraceptives, and they know where they can access services.
“I am very happy that I can contribute my knowledge to make the workers who lived in community safe and more aware of the self-protection, as well as helping the community avoid the spread of infection in community.”says Sokhaley. Sokhaley thanked CARE to provide PPE materials and her team for taking time to provide the COVID-19 awareness to factory workers who live in her community.
Learn more about the response COVID-19 in the garment sector >