Chrak Svay Primary School

Chrak Svay Primary School invested in a School WASH package from Clear Cambodia, 2 years ago. The Chrak Svay school currently serves 571 student from the district surrounding the school. The school’s principal, Mr. Chhap Sarin, has worked at the school since 2005 and has been the school principal since 2014.

The school has a well, but the water that they are able to pump from the well is muddy, and the water has a unpleasant smell. They have tried other filters in the past and even tried a Household BioSand filter to get clean drinking water for the students. While the Household BioSand filter produced high quality clean water, it simply was unable to meet the daily water demands of over 500 children in a hot, humid climate.

Before investing in the School WASH facilities, the children had no place to wash their hands. Teachers would place basins of water outside each classroom once a day so children could wash their hands, but only a few students could wash their hands before it became muddy and dirty as well.

The latrines in the school were broken, which forced the students to find places behind the buildings and in the grove of trees behind the building to go to the bathroom. Older female students would often skip school during their periods as there were no working latrine facilities to give them the privacy they needed to meet their hygiene needs.

In 2016 Mr. Chhap talked with a friend who worked at Clear Cambodia and learned about their School WASH program. He submitted a request to his district education office, and their school was selected to receive the facilities due to the intense need of the students and staff.

Mr. Chhap says he made the request to get the School WASH facilities because the people in his community had invested in Household BioSand Filters for their individual homes years before and he knew that the technology worked. After looking at the brochures he knew that the bigger school system would be able to provide enough water for his students and staff.

In addition to the large capacity BioSand filter, the school also received a hand washing station, a new latrine building with 6 stalls, 3 for boys and 3 for girls. They also received a trash incinerator to help the school effectively dispose of trash, using the incinerator means the trash is burned quickly and efficiently and the high smoke stack on the incinerator prevents the smoke from drifting into the classrooms and interrupting class.

Mr. Chapp says that the facilities they received from Clear Cambodia have improved student health. Their teachers have received training on how to educate the children about hygiene, and access to materials to help them teach hygiene to the students. The environment around the school is cleaner thanks to the trash incinerator and the new latrine building.

He says that the school staff really like the clean modern design of the latrine building and parents are proud to send their students to a school they can trust, that has good hygiene facilities. Attendance has increased for the older girls that were skipping school before because of menstrual hygiene issues. Also the pass rate for final exams has risen from 80% to 85 – 90% depending on grade level.

Mr. Chapp is currently mentoring another principal in the area and helping him complete the process to get School Wash Facilities for his school from Clear Cambodia.

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