Most Significant Change
Most Significant Changed: Mr. Yen Pheng and Mrs. Chea Saran
Title: new life JouRNEY
Mr. Yen Pheng, 43 years old has married to a 45 year old woman name Chea Saran. They both live in Bang Oek village, Svay Phlosh commune, Peam Chor district in Prey Veng Province. They have a child as a bond of their love. The life of this couple included quarrelling, sometimes it would lead to physical and economic violence when he got drunk. Their living conditions were not good as they earned little income from their farming work. In 2021, they both were invited to attend the community education and other campaign events focused on GBV and gender. They both started to receive home counseling and education from CCWC and CHEC district facilitator to discuss and share about impact of GBV, gender and law and integrated them into group members’ meetings.
Since they both joined the self-help groups and attended the meetings, they learnt from other group members how to manage anger and use non-violent communication. They also received training on Gender Equality with other men and women who experienced same GBV cases. Mrs. Chea Saran was then appointed as women group leader by group members, and she led the meeting together with support from CCWC to share good experiences with the group members to live without violence in family.
Relating with the changes of Mr. Yen Pheng, he has changed his attitude and behaviors to use good words for daily living. He reduced drinking and stopped exerting violence in the family because he understood that exerting of violence was not lawful and impacted on the family’s honor and disgrace with neighbors including lost family income when got an injury and also had high commitment to stop exerting violence in family and tried hard to earn money to supply the basic needs. In the bi-monthly meeting of men’s groups, and quarterly meetings between men and women, Mr. Yen Pheng always raised the negative points that lead to GBV and shared a good experience to stop violence for daily living among the team members. Now, he often intervenes with other families who are subject to GBV and provides educations to other men perpetrators in communities. These changes became a factor of economic improvement with enough income to support daily living with family happiness. At the end, they both expressed their thankful to CHEC and Donors including local authorities for providing them education that helped changed behavior of Mr. Yen Pheng to be a good man to stop exerting violence in family.