Project Lokun

A major aspect of our work in Project Lokun is to help build awareness on hygiene on both personal and community levels. We aim to encourage the students and villagers to commit to looking out for their households and one another in a bid to foster better relations with better healthcare. Hence, our Education portion is split into two segments: School Education and House-to-House visits.

School Education
As young as they are, all children ever care about in their free time is to play, explore, and above all have fun in all that they do. It is a joy to experience fun unadulterated, as it is to watch those younger than us being happy in their activities! However, in rural environments, accidents and mishaps are always bound to happen. It is thus our prerogative to ensure that the students in the schools that we visit are aware of what to do if incidents were to arise. We teach them basic principles behind:

Wound management

Protocols in the event of snake bites, bee stings, ankle sprains or heat stroke to occur.

Personal hygiene like the importance of washing hands and bathing.

Food nutrition and hygiene.

We also ensure that the children know the importance of visiting their local health centers when they do not feel well, imploring the idea that were they to be in poor health, they would not be able to have fun, or be able to assist their parents in their daily work.

Above all we deem it irresponsible to only visit these students simply to provide healthcare and screenings, but the importance lies in our interaction and relationship with all the children. We aim to play games with them in our free time, to provide fun quizzes as well as inject fun into our lessons with interactive games and skits and cute rewards. We hope that as the kids become more involved with us, they might be able to grow comfortable with our screenings, and take home proper principles in personal hygiene to share with their families.

House-to-House visits

This aspect started as a recce trip in Project Lokun 5 as an assessment of the living conditions of the villagers. Having made our observations, we came back in Project Lokun 6 and visited as many homes as we could manage to, and with the aid of translators, provided a translated handbook for the families to consult with in regards to household hygiene and the need to look out for the sick. Some lessons include boiling water gathered from wells and not drinking straight from road puddles; essential cooking of food and protection against flies; basic first aid complimented with a very minimal first aid kit. The difference between school education and house-to-house was that in this instances we were interacting with adults as well. This meant that our objectives would take a more important angle, dealing with STDs and fidelity, as well as to look out for neighbours and a need for a community network to protect each other by not promoting mosquito breeding, sharing of wells and accountability between neighbouring homes.

Future Potential

There is a vast amount of potential with house-to-house visits. As much as there is a great deal to teach them, the aid we can give in terms of medical or basic supplies would be a beacon of light for them! We are actually aware of the Pursat prefectural government’s efforts to provide health centers in every village, and are currently looking into promoting them to the villagers. As we recognize that our visits might not be able to achieve much and nothing is done when we leave, it is essentially these centers that carry the bulk of healthcare for the common people. It would therefore be our aim to help the villagers foster trust and dependence on the centers.