Nam Vann and her children outside their house and the safe mound they work tirelessly to build each day.

Nam Vann’s children come home from school and immediately get to work. They shovel soil on to a woven basket, and when the basket full, carry it to a place where a small hill is taking form. It’s only July and the rain has been light so far, but the eight children - five girls and three boys – are getting ready for the flood season, which is only weeks away.

They stabilise the walls of the mound, which are approaching the necessary height of 1.5m by planting grass across them.

With the help of the Cambodian Red Cross, the family is building a household safe area, where they will all move when the water rises across their fields, most likely between August and November.

Like many families in the area, Nam Vann’s is very poor. Their house, in Prey Prus in Kampot province, is small and lightly built of palm leaves on very low land. They do not make enough money farming their land. So Nam Vann’s husband works as a fisherman in Preah Sihanouk Ville, a province more than 150km away, and is only able to visit his family once every three or four months. By herself, Nam Vann has to support her five daughters and three sons.

Last year when the floods came, Nam Vann’s family evacuated their house and moved all of their belongings to higher ground far from their house. For four months, they lived in a tent provided by the Cambodian Red Cross, and Nam Vann could not work as a farmer. Now, with the safe household area, Nam Vann can save her livestock and support her family during the floods. She will be able to continue fattening her 3 young pigs to eventually sell for slaughter at the markets and the family chickens will provide much needed eggs and meat.

With the average income for farmer being less than US $1 per day, her pigs have the potential to sell for up to US $95 each, supporting the family for a couple months.

When we couldn’t earn an income, we had to find something in the flood to sell as water spinach, water lily, and snail, so we can buy food,” says Nam Vann. “And we eat small fish that we catch.”

This year, Cambodian Red Cross volunteers are helping Mrs. Nam Vann’s family prepare for the floods by building a ‘safe household area’ on their property. It is a raised mound of soil that their house can be moved to.

Cambodian Red Cross Volunteers measure the Safe mound height.

Although faced with heavy work to get the 8m by 6m mound higher than 1.5m, Nam Vann and her children work tirelessly each day. The children go to school in the morning and work on the safe household area every afternoon. While other families have husbands or other adults to help them, Nam Vann’s family does not. So instead of taking a rest at lunchtime, the children work through it, determined to keep going.

The family is one of millions of people in eleven provinces of Cambodia who risk severe flooding every year along the country’s two main watersheds – the Tonle Sap Lake and the Mekong River. During the last severe floods in 1991, 100,000 families were evacuated. And in 2002, a combination of drought and floods had a serious impact on the already impoverished country, affecting food security and forcing incomes down.

To reduce the devastating suffering that is caused by floods, the Cambodian Red Cross has worked with the Disaster Preparedness European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office (DipECHO) to help people in the most affected provinces prepare for the worst. They programme includes building latrines and wells in flood-proof places, putting in culverts to drain the water, and establishing safe household areas.

Cambodian Red Cross Volunteers helping build safe house areas.

In Kampot district, the Red Cross and DipECHO are now helping 249 families with preventative measures against the flood season. Two-thirds of the funding is allocated to building safe household areas. Families like Nam Vann’s receive help to build the safe household areas, with volunteers lending a hand to shift households – including houses, occupants, possessions and animals - to higher ground when the flooding comes.

During floods, Red Cross volunteers also distribute emergency supply kits and report the news back from the flood areas to the Red Cross branch to guide further help. During the rest of the year, volunteers train villagers in topics such as prepared for disaster, preventing dengue fever, first aid and international humanitarian law.