On Assignment for WHO - Directing 4 Videos About their Social Prescribing Campaign

I was commissioned by the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office to direct 4 videos about their Social Prescribing for Healthy Aging programme in Cambodia to form part of their training toolkit. The toolkit provides implementing partners with an overview of the best practices of how implement social prescribing at the community level.

The Social Prescribing for Healthy Aging programme is a way for healthcare workers to connect people to a range of non-clinical services in the community and to help the elderly not feel anxiety, loneliness or depression.

The toolkit is designed for policy makers and community health centres to help them run effective social prescribing schemes.

The brief was to make 4 videos to highlight the key aspects of successfully implementing social prescribing schemes.

The first video features Dr Kao Sovandara, a lecturer at The Royal University of Phnom Penh and part of the lead team implementing social prescribing in Cambodia. He gives an overview of the programme, the training they provide and how that works at a grassroots level.

The second video features Yem Sameoun, who is a commune councillor responsible for running the scheme in her community. She talks about the training she receives, the work she does in the community and the positive outcomes.

The third video features Nget Krin, an elderly community member. She talks about the situation she faces, the support she receives and how that makes her feel.

The fourth video features Dr Khan Sareth, a lecturer at The Royal University of Phnom Penh and part of the lead team implementing social prescribing in Cambodia. He gives an overview of what they’ve achieved and reflects on how the scheme can be improved in the future.

While the project is intrinsically nebulous in nature, I hope it can have an impact in Cambodia, regionally and in the rest of the world. As the world’s population is aging, it’s increasingly important to make sure everyone feels included within their communities.

You can see other example of my work for WHO here and here.

Veasna's Story - Working as an NGO videographer on a case study for VSO

This is the second case study I made on assignment as an NGO videographer for VSO.

The video tells the story of Veasna and the positive impact VSO’s RECOVER project has had on her livelihood.

As part of the project, Veasna received agricultural training and financial support to improve her growing facilities.

Held in the community with other vegetable growers the training shows Veasna best practices about what to grow, how to grow it and pest control.

Veasna has used the financial support she received to construct a net house for growing higher value crops.

VSO have also set up agricultural cooperatives. This gives the vegetable growers additional selling power as the cooperative can sell larger quantites direct to market.

They sign contracts to guarantee fair prices for their vegetables and a constant source of income.

A storage facility has also been built in the community so the vegetable growers can store their vegetables to cut down on wastage and to be able to control the sale of the vegetables they grow to the market.

It was great to see the positive relationship Veasna had with Ravuth, the trainer, and how she is looking to expand her growing activities in the future so she can support her young family.

Below is the final video:

And here’s the shorter version I made for social media:

You can see the other case study I made for VSO here and another video I made for WHO here. Please get in touch if you have any NGO video projects you’d like to chat about.     

NGO videographer for UNICEF and LEGO project in Siem Reap, Cambodia

I was assigned to work as an NGO videographer to produce a training video for UNICEF and LEGO’s Build the Change project in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

UNICEF and LEGO have been corporate partners since 2015. Their latest collaboration is the Build the Change project, which will be taught in classrooms across Cambodia. The aim is for Cambodian students to use their imaginations and LEGO to work no a project that expresses their hopes for the future. Photos of the projects are then uploaded to a portal for the project and LEGO aims to share the projects to try and bring about lasting change using the students ideas.

I was asked to make a training video that helped to support the teacher’s book to clearly and concisely demonstrate to Cambodian teachers how to set up and run the activity in their classrooms and share the projects.

The video was a challenge as the project hadn’t been launched in Cambodia and no one had experience of teaching the activity. I worked closely with Bunly and the communications team at UNICEF to find solutions to make a training video that clearly explains the process of running the activity in a classroom, so that teachers across Cambodia understand how to set up and run the activity in their classrooms. The team at UNICEF were very happy with results.

You can watch the video below and you can see more examples of training videos here and more examples of my work as an NGO videographer here.

Working as a videographer for the NGO Kiva in Siem Reap, Cambodia

I spent three days working as a videographer and photographer for the international NGO Kiva to document a series of case studies to show how their work providing with people with loans so they can buy energy-efficient ACE cooking stoves helps to improve their livelihoods.

I worked closely with the team at ACE who are based in Siem Reap. We filmed five case studies with a mixture of male and female loanees who have bought the stove to give a representation of their typical customers.

All of the people we interviewed said that the stove had helped them save money in terms of the fuel costs, which is particularly important as rural Cambodian continues to recover from Covid-19.

Other opinions included that Kiva’s loan product was well-structured and without being able to pay the loan back in installments, they wouldn’t have been able to buy the stove. Other benefits included the ease of use and the fact that it produces less smoke than conventional stoves which is better for their health and their houses don’t get covered in soot.

It’s a great initiative and it was great to see how the stoves had reduced people’s fuel costs to free up money for them to spend on other essential items. Hopefully the videos can be used as a marketing to encourage more people to provide more loans for good causes like this one.

To find out more about the type of loans Kiva offer and how to get involved, you can visit their website.

Below are some frames from the footage I shot. You can see some of the photographs I took here and for more of my work an NGO videographer, you can watch my reel here.