PACA Needs Assessment Survey, May 21^st, 2013

Ashley and I went to Samrong village to do a Participatory Analysis for Community Action (PACA) needs assessment survey for our diarrhea prevention project. Collecting base line data about Samrong village and its people’s behaviors will help guide our project, however, we have an even more important objective. We want to implement a participatory approach to our project by engaging the people of Samrong in its development and execution. Involving community members in the planning process is the best way to ensure or help is wanted, and accepted.

We had 5 PACA activities planned; A door to door survey, creating a community map, creating daily activity schedules, creating a seasonal calendar, and priority ranking. You may remember me doing these activities before in my training project, New Skills Put Into Action, Garbage In Cambodia.

Door to Door Survey

We spent the morning walking from door to door, collecting data from a sampling of families in the village. Questions were designed to help us determine current resources and practices in the community relevant to water and sanitation. The responses give us a sense of what knowledge currently exists, and in what areas we need to offer training. The results also helped us learn a lot about the village in terms of the financial situation of families.

You may remember from my last post, part 1, hand washing, proper water treatment, and safe disposal of feces are the three key hygiene behaviors that can be improved to reduce diarrheal disease. So our questioning probed for these behaviors in particular.
Most people reported washing their hands at least before eating, but honestly, I am suspect of this. People often report what they think you want to hear. Most people reported they get heir water from the village surface ponds, some boil it, most do not, and the majority of people reported not having a latrine, so they use the rice fields or where ever for defecation.

Following our survey, eight representatives of the village met with us at the village community center later. We had 4 women, two older, and two younger, and 4 men, again, 2 older and 2 younger. Because the roles of men and women are quite different in Cambodian culture, we divided the group by gender. After each activity, the participants were asked to present their work to the entire group.

Community Mapping

Community mapping is an effective manner of locating different spheres of activity, spatially over the landscape. It also was an effective and fun introduction to the village for Ashley and me. Each group was asked to draw a map of their village, and include anything on it that “they” feel is important to their life; landmarks, buildings, water sources etc. It was interesting to see how each group worked. The men were very serious and deliberate about what they wanted to include.

The women treated it more like an art project, drawing colorful rice fields and flowers. Both, interestingly, included essentially the same information. From these maps, we were learned the layout of the few roads, houses, rice fields, and irrigation canals. We also learned where the 2 hand-pump wells, surface water ponds, and a communal toilet with washing area are.

Daily Activities

This activity identifies the routine labor demands of men and women in their daily lives ,and demonstrates the gender-based perceptions of the workload of each group. The tool helps to raise awareness with regard to the contribution that different groups make to overall household welfare. Additionally, the information developed serves as baseline data to help us plan project schedules and monitor the impact of the projects activities on people’s time allocations.

Each group was asked to write out their daily activates for a single typical day. We learned that the men wake early, wash, eat breakfast, and head out to the rice fields where they remain for the majority of the day, returning in the evening.

The women provided a much more detailed schedule.

• 6:00am they wake, pack up their bedding and mosquito nets, cook rice, bathe, and wash the dishes.
• 8:00am they go to the rice fields to pump water and transplant rice plants.
• 9:00am they return home, bathe, wash clothes, cook more rice
• 9:30am they eat and then take a break
• 11:00 am they stay home and enjoy free time
• 12:00 they pray to Allah for ½ hour
• 2:00 they always watch TV at home
• 3:30 they pray to Allah and then cook food

Seasonal Calendar

An understanding of seasonal variations is important to the development and implementation of a community action plan. This technique traces seasonal variations in household labor supply and demand, income flow, and expenditure patterns. Household well being fluctuates seasonally during the year in terms of food and income availability, and the demand on peoples time and household resources.

Creating the community calendar was done as a single large group. We mapped out the time period for which the project will run. School, farming activities, holidays, times of increased illness, and water availability were topics the group felt important to include.

I found it interesting that they confirmed their high season for diarrhea was May to August, which matches the data I collected from the health center. It was also important that we learned the community has to buy supplemental water every month except August. This places a significant financial burden on families who have to spend 40,000 Riel ($10 USD) per week on water from May to July. That is a lot of money for them.

Priority Ranking

In this activity, we asked the participants to rank WASH topic areas against one another to determine what they feel is of highest priority to their village, which will help guide the lessons we will offer in the project. They were asked to rank clean water, washing hands, treating diarrhea, and toilets, each against the other. In order of importance, they ranked them in the following way:

1. Washing hands
2. Toilets
3. Clean water
4. Treating diarrhea

Water Quality

nnnThe last activity Ashley and I did, was to collect some water samples, and make observations about the village’s water sources. Quality sanitary water sources are clearly lacking in Samrong.

Local potable water sources are limited to 2 communal hand pump wells, and several surface water ponds exposed to contamination by local agricultural practices, including pesticide and fertilizer chemical use, and exposure to livestock like cattle goats, and ducks.

The ponds are not fenced off, and the livestock has direct access to them. Another source of water contamination is probably from insufficient latrines for the population. Only 67 of 177 families in the village (just 38%) have a latrine. Most of the population defecates in the rice fields from which run off can enter these ponds.

Here is a look at a few more of the surface water ponds they have to use.

In the dry season, the ponds run near dry as you can see, and the 2 wells cannot provide enough water for 970 people. This is why untreated water is purchased at significant cost and trucked in from nearby canals.

We used a kit with hydrogen sulfide (H2S) test strips for bacterial water testing. The test strips indicate the presence or absence of hydrogen sulfide producing bacteria (water not safe to drink) through a color change (clear = clean, dark = contaminated).

You can see the results. All but the control sample and 2 village wells (from the left #2, #4, #9) are dark colored and thus contaminated. The clear tubes are our control ,and the 2 wells . The black tubes, indicating contaminated water, are the surface ponds and rain water cisterns that we sampled.

My Khmer language tutor, Sokhorn, is helping me here translate the results from the PACA activities back at my house.

We are scheduled to to hold the 3 day training of the village volunteers next Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. In part 3, I will tell you about it.
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Read Fighting Diarrhea in Samrong Cambodia: Part 1

Read Fighting Diarrhea in Samrong Cambodia: Part 3