On the field...
David McEwen
Landing in Phnom Penh, I was very excited to get to work on the field: to absorb as much information as I could, to look for opportunities wherever I could, and to have fun. I was especially excited to try some of the people-driven methods we had studied about, but only had the chance to experience so far in theory. This was of a particular interest as my previous experience working in a community in South Africa could very much be seen as a singular, top-down process, involving very little participation from the community I was working with, and developing almost entirely from a select few people. This was an opportunity to try something else.
Moving from the wide scope that we had been conducting from a distance to a narrow one once we arrived at Beoung Chuk Meanchey Thmey II, the community where we’d be working, was welcome. We suddenly had the ability to engage first hand with the people we would be trying to assist and blurry, abstract concepts grew clearer. It also became more fun. Receiving guided tours of the community, and then being able to conduct detailed surveys and mapping exercises of each of the houses within BCMT II afforded us the chance to investigate and collate a rich well of information, impossible to do from a distance. Immediately it was clear that this was a two-way exchange, not simply one of us arriving, surveying and then leaving. This became more apparent during the number of exercises we conducted with members of the community.
In addition to individual house surveys, we experimented with variations of typical community exercises: we created a model in which we first asked participants to identify their houses and make them ‘their own’, customising the model accordingly; secondly we prompted members to begin playing with the model to create dream scenarios. This we completed in three separate groups, choosing to join the three towards the end to have a group discussion about the results. The calmness and control which we had experienced when working in smaller groups descended somewhat into chaos when everything was brought together. This was an important reminder that behind the playfulness with which we had conducted the first exercise, our silly foam representations were reflective of significant, life-altering issues, principally land tenure security, poor living conditions and a concern with plot sizes. While as a practitioner there to facilitate, the exercise felt like a failure, though simultaneously it revealed a new set of dynamics between members and allowed us to learn of new worries not communicated through the first exercise.
In retrospect, this was one of the most enjoyable parts of the entire trip. We had thought of something, we had tried it and now we both had to reflect on what we had learnt and create a new strategy to address the shortcomings. The following day we stuck to smaller groups again, and in order to curtail some of the chaos from the previous day, and to encourage those quieter voices to contribute, we experimented with the idea of a ‘talking jacket’. The ‘talking jacket’ was essentially a yellow, fluorescent safety jacket I had brought with me from the UK for some reason, that granted only the person wearing it the ability to speak. The conversation flowed much smoother this time, and the community members appeared to enjoy the activity. It felt rewarding to be able to think of something, try it, and see it succeed, enabling different voices to be heard and to contribute to the exercise. This all assisted the creation of a new community master-plan and re-blocking proposal, with the exercises on various days permitting us to absorb and discuss with the community what they wanted, translate that information into a proposal, and then refine the design further. This process was a far cry from that I had undertaken in my previous experience in South Africa, where refinement of my idea came purely through discussions with a select few people, with hardly any meaningful input coming from the community.
When it came time to present the work completed to the khan on the final day of working with the community, the work felt very much collaborative, presented together, as opposed to simply shifted on to community members.
The video below provides a snapshot as to the actives we conducted and community response to them:
