When Community Truly Led, the Results are Staggering

Kaeng San, a medium size village, sits 130 kilometers down a red dirt road from Ratanakiri provincial town, and past it further lies Chak Chap; a sub-village. Here, a community of Tompuon Indigenous Peoples has spent generations adapting to a punishing dry season.

Between dry season, the water holes shrink, there is not enough clean water for drinking, cooking, or washing.

Fetching water costs a household between one to one and a half hours. For women and girls, it was unsafe to go alone, so they had to wait for husbands and fathers to be free, but men already worn down by fieldwork. There was rarely enough water for basic consumption, let alone leftovers for irrigation.

The turning point began not with an outside solution. As part of its Strengthening Climate Resilience project (SCR), 3S Rivers Protection Network (3SPN) conducted a Vulnerability Risk Assessment across Kaeng San. Chak Chap villagers attended too, and though Kaeng San's worry was flooding, the knowledge stayed with Chak Chap, they had learned how to look squarely at their own struggles.

Months later, during the SCR's evaluation, an evaluator simply asked Chak Chap villagers what their challenges were. Something clicked: their real struggle wasn't flooding; it was worsening water scarcity. They carried that realization to their local authority. August 2025, as 3SPN began fieldwork for its new IP3 project, the community didn't wait to be asked. They raised their hands first, asking directly whether help with the water crisis was possible. 3SPN validated the need and then responded to the villager’s proposal for two bore wells, a solar pumping system, and water storage tanks, villagers even built the tank wooden foundations themselves.

Once the system was installed and water tested, 3SPN didn't just hand over the finished system and walked away. Instead, they helped the villagers elected nine-member Clean Water Station committee, including three Indigenous women, and set their own rules: monthly fees, maintenance, waste prevention, and hygiene. They built in fee exemptions for the poorest households, People with Disabilities, and orphaned children. 3SPN then trained the committee to run the station as a small business, including bookkeeping.

The water station is still in its early stage. Each household pays to connect its own pipe, then a modest 2,000 Riel monthly user fee to the elected treasurer. Committees meet monthly to talk about water use, maintenance, and hygiene.

Today, 74 households in Chak Chap are early members of the water user group. For them, clean water is now a simple turn of a valve. The hours once spent walking to the water hole are spent instead on farming and household work, which means more cash crops, more vegetables, and better income. Moreover, each household water user saves at least 30USD per month that was once spent on gasoline for pumping.

The impact runs deeper than income. Families have more time to cook and care for each other. Children are cleaner and healthier, and villagers have noticed less diarrhea in the community.

More Chak Chap households are now asking to join the water user group. As demand grows, the committee is considering water usage meters to keep consumption fair, that households using more would pay more, discouraging waste before it starts. It is another decision the community is making on its own terms.
Chak Chap is a testimony to what happens when a community is given the space to name its own problem, trust its own potential, and lead its own solution: the results are staggering.

Funded by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the four-year IP3 project, 2025 to 2029, aims to promote resilient, inclusive, and sustainable development in Cambodia’s Mekong basin through women’s leadership, stronger civil society engagement, and climate-resilient community development.