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Our Young Professionals Program is an 8-week long interactive, problem based WASH and soft skills teaching intensive, targeting university students from relevant disciplines and young professionals from NGOs and government. We aim to complement the work of academic institutions in Cambodia, in order to help better align the skills of university graduates with those expected by WASH employers.
We follow up the program with a 2 day WASH field trip, to help participants interact with the real-world applications of what they learn in Phnom Penh, apply the concepts they’ve learnt, and practice the Human Centered Design process, and related community development approaches they have encountered. After this, they have one month to create a concept design as a team, based on community identified needs. They then finally present their ideas to a forum of WASH specialists, who grade them on their ideas, and provide feedback and suggestions for next steps. In the past, teams have developed concepts addressing topics as varied as menstrual hygiene management in rural schools, perceptions and challenges related to the safe storage and management of rainwater, solid waste management, and a host of other topics.
The Student Support Service Center was established in order to leverage the close-knit relationships which exist within Cambodian universities, between students and their classmates, and their professors, to deliver professional development opportunities in a more appropriate , scalable and sustainable manner.
The Center for Sustainable Water is currently partnering with the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), The Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC), Engineers without Borders Australia (EWB AU) and WaterAid Cambodia (WA). The programs currently being offered by the Student Support Service Center include; professional skills development seminars and workshops, WASH careers advisory training and mentoring.
In Cambodia, less than 0.4% of females work in professional or technical sectors, and only one fifth of the enrolments in the Institute of Technology of Cambodia’s Hydrology and Water Resource Engineering course in Cambodia are female. It is critically important that we increase the number of female students entering the WASH sector and promote gender inclusivity and mainstreaming in the sector in order to retain females and enable them to take on leadership opportunities. This is essential as women are recognised as playing “a central role in the provision, management and safeguarding of water”, especially as they play a critical in identifying and bringing attention to the specific WASH needs of women and girls.
