SLS-8d2 Community Impact Study - Cambodia

Engineering service-learning projects have been shown to bring positive impact in the community. However, many such projects focus on creating “first- or second-order changes” - which address mainly immediate needs, such as an emergency or crisis, or empowering individuals to meet their own needs. Through engaging the community in a sustained effort, an organized engineering project can create a “third-order change,” which empowers the whole community. PolyU teams have been serving in Cambodia since 2010. Each year, the teams can only stay in Cambodia for a short period of time,  usually around 10 days.  But over the years, the many short term trips have built on each other into a sustained effort. To investigate the impact on the community overall, we conducted a study into extending short-term student engineering service-learning projects to build up capacity and help in the longer-term development of communities.

Armed with three years of experience in Cambodia, in 2013 our team started a university-community partnership project in Somrong village, Sen Sok district, which at that point was a semi-rural area 14 km away from the capital city of Phnom Penh. The  villagers’ lives revolve around farming.  A number of the younger residents have departed to work in factories and businesses in the city or even abroad. Most of the large number of children in the community study at a government primary school nearby. The site was on the main electrical grid, and therefore electricity is available, though still expensive and unreliable, with frequent blackouts and brownouts.  Running water was not available, and water was collected from rainfall or bought from the city. There is no land-line phone service, and the villagers rely on cellular for communication and access to the Internet.