Quarterly Plenary Meeting for NOVCTF 30-Mar-2011

On March 30, 2011, Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation (MoSVY) held the 13^th Plenary Meeting of the National Multi-Sectoral OVC Task Force in the Ministry. Preside over by H.E. Keo Borentr, NOVCTF’s Chairman, delivered an open speech to welcome participants for their time and cooperation. He briefed the achievement for the first quarter of 2011. Around 30 participants were invited from members of NOVCTF, POVCTF in five provinces, relevant institutions, and NGOs - NAA, HACC, KHANA, UNICEF, SCA, and so on. 

Notably, MoSVY has recently established five POVCTF in five provinces –Kampong Speu, Kampong Thom, Kampong Cham, Prey Veng, and Siem Reap provinces. All POVCTFs were invited to join this quarterly meeting at the Ministry and to present their quarterly achievement respectively.

Mr. Khlang Vichet presented the achievement of NOVCTF, challenges, lesson learnt, next plan, and recommendations. For the first quarterly, NOVCTF updated the progress list of NOVCTF members and EXCOM from the national and provincial for 2011, submitted monthly meeting reports, coordinated with Ministry of Planning on ID Card for equity fund, provided technical support for provincial OVC task Forces, and coordinated for finalizing National Standard and Guideline for OVC, and other plan development for 2011. Through the report of the task force, it was found that some challenges occurred such as the often changes of NOVCTF members, late disbursement of Global Fund Round 9, lack of human resources for activity plan 2011, and static website.

Updating Information on Global Fund Round 11 Proposal

H.E. Dr. Hor Bunleng, Deputy Secretary General of National AIDS Authority (NAA), showed the history of funding and the process of the proposal development for Global Fund Round 11. NAA will announce the proposal for applications. The proposal will compile and consolidate in July 2011. The prioritized objectives were defined for proposal of Global Fund Round 11 as below:

1. BCC – outreach, advocacy, communication and social mobilization
2. Improving coordination of the National Response
3. Support for orphans and vulnerable children and Stigma reduction
4. Enforce the law and policy development and implementation.
5. Strengthening HIV and AIDS strategic information 

H.E Vathana Sann, Deputy Secretary General for Council of Agricultural and Rural Development, presented about National Social Protection Strategy for the Poor and Vulnerable. He showed the linkage between rural development and OVC on how it is engaged. As in this presentation, the youth and children were considered the vulnerable group. He, further, illustrated the risk and vulnerability of children in work place and the poverty rate categorized by regions of Cambodia. According to the presentation, 82.5% were under vulnerable employment, 58.8% were illiterate and below primary education (71.6%, 1998), Out-of-school children in 2010 was 15%, dropped from 18.7% in 2005.

He also showed about the framework of National Social Protection Strategy (NSPS) and its definition.

Social Protection

• Employment Market Policy
• National Social Security Fund
• Social Safety Net
• Social Health Service

In summary, H.E. Prack Chanthoeun, Director of Technical Department for MoSVY, briefed the results of the discussion and presentation for this meeting, and expressed his thanks for the effort of NOVCTF, POVCTF, and all members of NOVCTF, and then announced the meeting closed.

Cambodia: Earth Hour

PHNOM PENH: Cambodia is celebrating the campaign of “Earth Hour” amidst the world campaign at 8:30PM on 26 March 2011. The event is known as the biggest campaign in contributing to the reduction of Climate Change.

Around 60 private companies in Phnom Penh city will turn off the light for an hour to join with the world in climate change. Over million people around the globe will also join the event to commit to actions that go beyond the hour.

There is increasing in number of cities participating in Earth Hour this year in further proof of Earth Hour’s exponential growth.

Protect Ourselves, Care the World

HIV and AIDS were known as an incurable disease which became the most popular actor around the world against human being. Not only you, but also your relatives, your family, your friends, and your society will be affected, if you don’t recognize it as the strongest disease of the world. You can’t even touch it, see it, nor task it. In contrast, it can touch you easily whenever you ignore it or forget about it. After it touches you, you cannot take it away from yourself for the whole life and you will stay with it until the end of your life. It’s not the nasty disease, it’s very gentle to come in your body, and it’s gentle to kill the bodyguards in your body one by one until you became unwittingly dead. It’s not the final destination of your life; it’s what you have to protect yourself from transmission widely.

In the setting of a concentrated epidemic, the main focus for youth interventions is recently targeted toward most at risk people (MARP), Orphan Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs), Injecting Drug User/Drug Users (IDU/DU), and Entertaining Workers (EW), which were defined as those who are practicing high risk behaviour. Why those become the target of HIV and AIDS? It’s because those young people did not recognize the strength of HIV and AIDS nor how it affects the body. Furthermore, they may get unclear information about the HIV and AIDS. Be sure, HIV and AIDS still exist in the world and are not far from us. So, protect ourselves to care the world from HIV and AIDS.

Cambodian Traffic Penalty

 

Bring the World with a Just and Fair Care

HIV/AIDS Coordinating Committee (HACC) is a strong HIV/AIDS NGOs network with the capacity to build strategic partnership with all players for an efficient, effective and sustainable response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its impact in Cambodia. Recently, HACC is supported from over 120 members to play an important role in facilitating, coordinating and sharing experiences, best practices and information as strategic information among civil society organizations in response to HIV and AIDS in Cambodia. A key conclusion of the 2007 Consensus Workshop on HIV Estimates and Projections is that prevalence in the general population has declined and will stabilize if interventions are sustained. The main risk of a second-wave of HIV infection occurring in Cambodia (i.e. significantly increased HIV incidence) is from female sex workers (SW), their clients and sweethearts. Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) and Drug Users (DU) may also be potentially significant contributors to any second-wave of HIV infections. Populations that may be especially vulnerable to HIV infection are female partners of high-risk males, mobile populations and urban and out-of-school youth. Firstly, it cannot be assumed that incidence will remain low. Changes in the structure of the commercial sex industry and the difficulty of sustaining prevention programs in brothels where there is a high turnover of sex workers, along with the possibility of significant epidemics among MSM and IDU/DU, mean that sustaining and improving prevention efforts to maintain the reduction in HIV incidence will need to attract high priority. Secondly, the maturing of the Cambodian epidemic means that there are a growing number of PLHIV in need of ART. Delivering on the commitment to provide long-term Universal Access to ART and associated care and support will need to be a continuing high priority. Thirdly, the high AIDS mortality rate has resulted in many orphans and widows. Finally, PLHIV, especially those with advanced stage HIV, have high social and economic support needs. Key constraints and threats to the effectiveness of the response are; financial contribution from Government is very limited just over 10% of annual HIV expenditures, resulting in dependence on donors and funding from USAID, US CDC and the Global Fund (more than 80% of total financial resources); the lack of an effective resource tracking system; organizational capacity and technical skills in some ministries and some NGOs are weak due to lack of strategic information, effective coordination, implementation of law, policies and guideline and the quality of many programs needs strengthening. The key opportunities that need to be addressed are; scaling up of prevention programs for MARPs included MSM, IDU/DU and SW. Developing organizational and technical capacity in key ministries and NGOs/CBOs; rational and effective use of technical support to address capacity gaps in priority areas to ensure improved and efficient absorption of resources; development of resource tracking systems, priority setting and alignment of resource allocation to priorities; an emphasis on quality improvement for all program areas; improving governance and coordination; and better use of strategic information. Capacity building of civil society organization in response to HIV/AIDS it seems increased in term of program management, institutional development, financial management, Monitoring and Evaluation and procurement. Anyhow, due to annual information rate, high staff turnover for good environment and better pay, some civil society organizations are still facing difficulty in maintaining a good staff, lack of capacity in mobilizing the resources, challenging with the organizational development and the lack of strategic information in order to move organization to the right track and also alight with the national strategic plan. In other word, based on the assessment of civil society participations in the national response organized by HACC found that the level of participation from the civil society is in level 2 of influence, it means the participation of civil society is still needed to be improved, especially in the level of law and policy development. The voice of civil society organization, particularly the voice from the community people is needed to be addressed and solved based on the priority needs of those populations for sustainable response. The main reason of this project is to build the capacity of civil society organization in the national response by providing a platform for the CSO to share and learn from each other all best practices and using the strategic information to incorporate with their project or program in alight with the national program. There are two innovative approaches within this project such as six main technical working group established, the use of mass media for HIV prevention and sufficient use of research findings to inform the development of mass media, tailoring to local evidence on patterns of behavior and related believed through high-technology HIV/AIDS Campaign and actively strategic information sharing among HACC members and relevant stakeholders through e-forums, website, key correspondent team and other electronic sharing. To success within this project, HACC have proposed for 3 objectives are as followed; To promote information sharing and best practices and coordination on HIV/AIDS responses amongst civil society and other stakeholders To promote positive environment and collective dialog for influencing policy and decision making for effective HIV/AIDS responses The support for the HACC will be directly reached the target audiences and communities who really need the funding assistance.

Asian Travel

Asian Travel Slideshow: Heng’s trip from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to 3 cities Bali, Dalat and Koh Kong (near Veal Veng) was created by TripAdvisor. See another Indonesia slideshow. Take your travel photos and make a slideshow for free.

Travel to Lao and South Africa

Thona Travel Around Slideshow: Heng’s trip from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Lao Peoples Dem Rep (near Laos, Laos) was created by TripAdvisor. See another Laos slideshow. Create a free slideshow with music from your travel photos.

World Travel

World Travel Slideshow: Heng’s trip from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to 5 cities Bangkok, Hanoi, Kathmandu, Nagarkot and Lumbini was created by TripAdvisor. See another Thailand slideshow. Take your travel photos and make a slideshow for free.

Ayay Song Promotion Radio FM102MHz

Mr. Doung Sokea sang a beautiful ayay song which is the Khmer traditional song in Cambodia.