Nom Kreab is one of the new OPA that have just been established within 2018 in the urban of Battambang City. This OPA is exist of 67 members while 52 members are women and most of them are over 60 years old. The majority of older people in this village reported about the health issues is their main problem while most them have a very little knowledge about health care and not regularly access to health center unless they got a serious sickness.
This OPA was selected and supported HAC’s projects from 2018 and registered as a member of Cambodian Ageing Network. With the support from the project, this youngest OPA has made a lot of progress in terms of health care activities, social works, local fundraising, and advocacy works toward the welfare of older people.

They have shown up their high commitments in leading and organizing of series of advocacy campaign events within 2018, 2019, and 2020 through the Age Demands Action approaches, particularly on special events such as World Health Day in April, World Elder Abuse Awareness Day in June and the International Day of Older People in October which gathered almost 200 participants each year to the events including the senior government officials from provincial levels, key NGOs and stakeholders. From these events, we found this OPA had received a lot of support from the governments, NGOs, and local stakeholders in terms of funding, cooperation, and support. They could raise up to 800 USD from participants per event including some support from the project to run the campaigns and support their needy older people after the events. Mrs. Ou Vanda (64ys), an OPA leader said that “We have raised around 485 USD within the campaign of world health day within on 06 April 2018. And we have used the rest amount of the money to buy some food and materials to support our needy older members in the village after then. The commune chief also promises to allocate the commune fund in 2019 to support our OPA’s activities as well. By this 2020, the OPA in Nom Kreab has successfully received the first-ever fund of 500$ from their commune council to implement their activities.”

One notice that, this OPA has been improved a lot upon both technical support and financial support from HelpAge Cambodia through Voice’s project in terms of strengthening the capacities of OPA’s committees, capacity building, and advocacy support in a series of workshop, training, meeting and key events. “I am very to be a member of Cambodian Ageing Network and contribute to promoting the voice of older people through this network.”, said Mrs. Heng Bunthai (68ys), an adviser of OPA in Nom Kreab and a member of CAN.

Mr. Orn Prom (75ys) a member of Nom Kreab OPA said that she is very happy to join this OPA and she has got both spiritual support and financial support from the OPA through the commune fund to expense some cost of his wife’s health treatment. He hopes this OPA will last long and support older people in the other village as well.