Samnith’s Story

One of the most compelling stories of OIC Cambodia’s work in the past 6 months comes from Samnith, an ENT nurse, who is being trained to be Junior Speech Therapy Assistant at the National Paediatric Hospital, Phnom Penh.

“I would like to thank for OIC Cambodia and National Paediatric Hospital to give me the opportunity for online training as Speech Therapy Assistant with Australian Speech Therapist. Speech therapy is to improve communication, language and swallowing. The training gives me the useful knowledge to help Cambodian children with communication difficulty, swallowing problem, speech delay, autism, behaviour problems, and other disabilities concerning communication and language that need support from speech therapist. Many Cambodian children need support from speech therapy, but now speech therapy specialists and services are limited and very costly”

- Buoy Samnith, Speech therapist assistant, National Paediatric Hospital.

The National Paediatric Hospital is one of the organisations which OIC Cambodia has built a strategic partnership, and in the past 6 months, OIC Cambodia has developed and delivered more than 60 hours of speech therapy training to two junior speech therapy assistants at the hospital so they can use these skills for children who need assistance with speech and swallowing difficulties.  

This is just one of the many organisations OIC Cambodia is working with to make a profound difference in Cambodia in the work they are doing to develop speech therapy as a profession in Cambodia.  Other institutions OIC Cambodia is strategically building relationships with are National Rehabilitation Centre - Persons with Disability Foundation; Special Education Department SED (Gov department within MoEYS;  Department of Preventative Medicine (part of Ministry of Health);  Department of Social welfare (part of the Social Affairs government ministry); National Institute of Special Education; National Institute Social Affairs; Disability Action Council (Government liaison body) and Pannasastra University (private Cambodian university).

Donate now to help OIC Cambodia continue in its mission to building the first speech therapy university course to develop Cambodian trained speech therapists by 2030