KAMPONG CHAM, Cambodia – January 15, 2025

Cambodia’s garment and footwear industry employs more than 870,000 workers across 1,200 exporting factories. Despite being the bedrock of the $13 billion USD industry, thousands of these workers face increasingly heavy traffic, unsafe and overloaded vehicles, and dangerous road user behaviors in their daily commute to work. Workers, 80% of whom are women, account for 20% of all traffic deaths in Cambodia annually. Women are disproportionately involved in commuting crashes that result in serious fatalities and injuries.

In an effort to empower Cambodian garment factory workers and enable them to raise concerns about unsafe commuting, the Speak Up Campaigns were launched in 2018 as part of The Support to Safe and Sustainable Commuting for Garment and Footwear Workers (SSSC) project. The SSSC project is implemented by AIP Foundation and AIP Foundation Denmark, and supported by the Civil Society in Development (CISU) from Denmark.

Now in its third phase, the SSSC project is continuing the expansion of the Speak Up Campaign. In September and October 2024, 97 Speak Up Champions, including 74 female workers, from 6 factories attended trainings on “Facilitation Skills and Social Media” and “Advocacy Skills and Environmental Protection,” respectively. The objective of these trainings was to increase the knowledge and confidence of workers to enable them to advocate for their safety and build a sense of community amongst workers.

Most of the training activities utilized interactive and practical methods. Post-knowledge test results indicated significant improvements for all tested topics. For instance, the percentage of Speak Up Champions who correctly answered facilitation-related questions increased significantly, with improvements ranging from 16-45% across individual questions.