The project  Empowerment through positive parenting of women at risk of domestic violence strengthens the implementation mechanism at district and commune level especially women in D/CCWC (District and Commune Committee for Women and Children). This enables them to deliver positive parenting knowledge and skills for intimate partners who are at risk of domestic violence in Chi Kraeng commune in Siem Reap province.

The project expects that:

• 10 sub-national  D/CCWC officials are equipped with positive parenting, technical and facilitation skills;
• 200 parents and intimate partners have benefited from knowledge and confidence building by trained sub-national of MoWA to foster safe gender equity and to preserve good family communication and relationship with their spouse and children, and
• at least 250 communities in Chi Kreang commune are aware of the importance of positive parenting in the prevention of violence against women and children.

The project builds capacity of D/CCWC to enable them to start delivering positive parenting support that is one of the key primary intervention strategies to prevent violence against women.

“After gaining knowledge on Positive Parenting, parents start thinking about the negative impact on their children if they practise hitting”.

“They know their children are learning from how they behave, whether good or bad. Additionally, they learn about parenting styles and how the styles positively or negatively affect their children, bot emotionally and behaviour-wise.”

Quote from women who received positive parenting training. More quotes have been shared on this video.

The woman-led commune focal points have become key resource-based persons in the community who provide positive parenting support for other parents. They also provide support to women who are in intimate relationships and are at risk of gender-based violence. The commune has considered investing further social services support for women in terms of positive parenting. The project has reduced harmful traditional practices on parenting, norms and beliefs supporting harsh, poor and/or negative parenting, including violence. It has promoted father/husband involvement in child-rearing, positive family communication, and gender inequality elimination. It also supports the eradication of society’s perception that give only women the responsibility of child-rearing.

The project has significantly achieved the following:

(i) Encouraged provincial and district government to establish a working group to ensure project implementation effectively and strengthen local government mechanisms to take over the Positive Parenting scale-up. This working group establishment officially nominated representatives from district and commune focal point to be responsible as local Positive Parenting workforce for delivering Positive Parenting support for targeted parents in Chi Kreang;

(ii) Built capacity of 10 representatives (from 10 target communities) of working group members to become community-based facilitators on Positive Parenting;

(iii) 210 parents and women at risk of domestic violence and committing violence against children have received Positive Parenting knowledge by trained facilitators;

(iv) Provided 6-time follow up coaching and mentoring for trained facilitators; and

(v) Organised a community-based campaign on Positive Parenting that 445 people participated in on December 17th, 2018. This campaign influenced local authority and people in the community to see how positive parenting approaches contributed to reducing domestic violence in the family.