Our Soap for Hope Project is an integral part of our commitment to improve health and well-being among our students, their families and the wider community.

Here at ISF, we believe that every child has the right to education, healthcare and sport. We seek to make a fundamental and positive change to the lives of some of the most disadvantaged children and their families in Cambodia through our cross-cutting programmes that focus on quality education, reduced inequalities and improved health and well-being.

Our students and their families live in slum communities marked by poverty. These living conditions often have poor health and sanitation standards which results in poor hygiene, leading to diseases and poor health. Poor health causes our students to miss classes and their families to miss out on working opportunities. Poor hygiene also contributes to stigma against those living in slum communities, as they are perceived as ‘dirty’ by others.

Through the Soap for Hope Project, we collect used soap bars from local hotels and put them through a recycling process to disinfect, reshape and make new soap bars available to re-use. These are then included in the monthly food parcels that ISF students and their families receive. This project helps promote hygiene among the communities where we work, improves overall health and has a knock-on effect of keeping children in school and parents in jobs. Additionally, the project employs three community members as soap-makers, giving them training on soap-making and enabling them to earn an extra income to support their families.

We know from experience that happy and healthy children are able to learn effectively. We support the health and well-being of all our students, providing necessary services to improve their physical and mental health. The Soap for Hope Project enables children and their families to take practical steps to make positive changes in their hygiene and personal care.