Sustainability

The CHOICES project strategies expects to see sustainable benefits in the areas of personal/household behavior change, increased skills/income opportunities, and increased local support infrastructure and services. The project interventions focus on changing personal behaviors at the family and community level helping them to make choices that give their children better opportunities in the future. Household level choices are strengthened by peer support in groups and linking vulnerable families to long term sources of information such as the trained facilitators, livelihoods support suppliers and markets, and trustworthy safe places of employment. Nutrition and household hygiene behaviors are supported by the long term increased access to the foods needed for balanced meals through increased cash crop production and having access to quality clean water sources and sanitary latrines. Principles of ownership and self-reliance while needs and household capacity are considered in providing material support. Community caregivers are linked to the local Health Center services along with the Nutrition Education and Rehabilitation Program activities and child growth monitoring will become the norm rather than the exception even after the vaccination period is over. The project begins with more intense behavior change promotion with increasing support of WASH and Livelihoods support through Reflect Circles. In Years 4 and 5 community groups will meet more often and livelihoods support will decrease with more emphasis on mentoring and coaching of previously trained households along with growth monitoring for new children to ensure that new behaviors are being implemented and effective and providing additional awareness only as needed. 

Poor households often focus on short term income solutions. The project works over time to support families in assessing, planning and supporting skills and livelihood expansion. Skills and infrastructure are provided to increase livelihood options based on objective interest-based analysis. Complimentary skills in basic bookkeeping, marketing, and work ethic are promoted as well as better management of the increased work opportunities. The project supports community based development initiatives where possible including establishment of savings and loan groups to promote savings and support livelihood capital. These savings groups will be networked and federated together with registration to national credit associations such as the Cambodia Community Foundation Network that ADRA linked with the Farmer Associations and Women’s Empowerment Associations in Siem Reap and Preah Vihear provinces. Beyond this, experiential capacity building with trained village facilitators, local authorities and Project Coordination Committee members and partner NGOs will also form the basis of ongoing support of information and services upon project completion.