PROJECT SONGKEUM 2025 TRIP: BUILDING LASTING KNOWLEDGE
- Medsoc PnP
- Oct 2
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 22
Our project has always placed strong emphasis on empowering communities in Cambodia through sustainable health education. In 2025, we traveled to Siem Reap to connect with local villagers, better understand the health challenges they face, and explore meaningful ways in which we could support them.
Our first visit was to the Svay Lue Health Centre, which provides medical care to over 30,000 residents in the Svay Lue region and surrounding areas. The Health Centre Director guided us on a tour of the facility, offering insights into the region’s health situation and the infrastructure available to serve the community. During our visit, we had the opportunity to ask questions, observe the existing medical systems, and donate first aid packs containing essential items such as bandages and gauze.
Kids Education
As part of our kids programme, we taught children of ages 6-17 about a variety of topics, ranging from the importance of a nutritional diet to puberty. These health education lessons delved deep into dental and hand hygiene as well as the dangers of smoking.
We also conducted health screenings, including measurements of height, weight, and vision. The data collected enabled the local school to monitor the children’s growth and ensure their healthy development.
To engage the children, our team planned a fun programme including skits and games like sorting healthy and unhealthy foods. We even prepared materials for a dish soap and pepper science experiment to teach the children about hand hygiene.
Adults Education
During the adults programme, our focus was to impart health knowledge to the locals, pertaining to the issues faced within the village. Topics included wound dressing, muscle pain, importance of a healthy diet and family planning.
We also conducted house visits in the village to personally see the living conditions of the locals and ask them more about their lives. We were able to find out about what matters to them in life and their health situation, including how they manage their chronic conditions like hypertension with medications.
During the house visits on our previous trip, we learnt that the villagers faced issues of muscle aches and joint pains, which is why we decided to include simple exercises in our 2025 curriculum. We were even able to gift each villager a tennis ball to aid them in stretching at home.
We also taught them basic first aid skills to help them in emergency situations like choking, heat stroke, and bone fractures. With the help of the volunteers from Build your Future Today (BFT), we were able to communicate with the villagers in Khmer, the national language of Cambodia, and pass them printed booklets for them to retain the knowledge we taught them.
Vocational training - First aid training
We conducted a basic first aid course for the students over at Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia. Our focus was to educate the students about the importance of Proper First Aid and how they can help their loved ones with these skills. Comprising of a lesson and hands-on session, we reinforced the importance of Proper Wound Dressing, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) techniques, Proper First Aid for Choking adults & kids and How to put on an Arm Sling.
We covered the various hands-on session in a round robin style, allowing us to cover every skill within a short period of time. At each station, we demonstrated the proper technique first before letting the students try on each other while we observed and corrected them along the way.
Vocational training - Interview skills
We conducted an interview skills workshop for students at Journey Within Our Community (JWOC). These students are moving onto the next phase of their lives and are looking for new job opportunities. As such, our focus was to provide useful tips and advice to them on how to tackle interviews and present themselves confidently to the job interviews that they will be going for.
Similar to how our First Aid lesson was conducted, we held a lesson first before having breakout sessions where the students would answer some commonly asked interview questions asked by us, followed by some feedback given by us. We covered some challenging interview questions, the importance of a proper interview attire and some examples of it as well as some useful pre-interview preparation advice.
We also had the privilege of visiting Angkor Hospital for Children (AHC) in Siem Reap, where millions of children receive healthcare. The hospital's vision is that "every child in Cambodia gets quality compassionate health care, wherever they live and whatever their ability to pay." With the help of generous donations worldwide, the hospital is able to provide accessible, affordable and quality care to the children in Cambodia. We were able to tour the hospital, getting a glimpse of the medical equipment and systems in place as well as learn more about the meaningful history behind the founding of AHC.
Closing remarks
Overall, it was a successful and immensely rewarding trip - allowing us to view healthcare from a different country’s perspective and giving us the opportunity to carry out meaningful exchanges with colleagues outside of Singapore, all while fulfilling our mission to improve health literacy and promotion for the underserved populations in Cambodia.
