Phnom Penh: The final workshop of the project made by women on strengthening economic resilience for workers in the textile and garment sector on September 20, 2023 was held at DARA Hotel in Phnom Penh to demonstrate the success  Of past projects between Care Cambodia and the Collective Union of Movement of Workers (CUMW) under the auspices of the Lululemon brand owner.

The purpose of this workshop was to celebrate the project's achievements in strengthening economic resilience, to share project findings, lessons learned and implementation, as well as to gather key input from stakeholders for sustainable cooperation.

For the implementation of the one-year project, the project manager of the CUMW, Ken Chhenglang, praised the cooperation from stakeholders, which is the main factor leading to the successful implementation of the project and great results for workers, trained by the CUMW at their factory base.

She expressed her gratitude to CARE for choosing the CUMW as a partner in the implementation of this project, which has directly benefited the workers.  However it is dificulties, CUMW is still able to implement the project successfully and beyond the plan submitted by CARE.

Representative of the Project Evaluation Team, Sok Somith said that the previous project implementation achieved 76.4%, although the project was short-lived, but could be successful and get better results, and the understanding of the workers on the subject of social protection, gender-based violent and harassment and the financial management are similar.

He said that through direct interviews with workers, both by telephone and in the factory, workers agreed that the above three topics are really important and beneficial, seeing that there is a change in attitudes workplace and daily living, in particular, helped reduce domestic violence and harassment in the workplace, as well as financial management.

Pav Sina, president of the CUMW, said that despite the end of the implementation of the project made by women, the union movement did not end, that is, the training of the CUMW continued to provide workers in all bases.

At the same time, he called on Care Cambodia to continue this beneficial project to be more sustainable, because through this project, it is very important to provide benefits directly to workers.

In collaboration with CARE and with the support of the brand owner Lululemon, the CUMW continues to share knowledge with workers at the grassroots level on how to raise awareness of social protection, gender-based violent and harassment and financial management. it is the most important subjects to apply this knowledge in their daily lives.

The topic of social protection, gender-based violent and harassment and financial management are critical for cambodian workers as the world faces the current covid-19 crisis to complement and address emerging issues but occurs in work and daily life.

It should be noted that CUMW, a professional organization that has been actively working in promoting the rights, freedoms and dignity of workers, has collaborated with CARE to train more than 2,500 workers under the theme of the three main topics above.