At the age of 34, she is the REDD+ Community Chief of the Sre Lvi village and is a role model for young girls in her community.
Working in a community-led project requires persistence and commitment. Sruot Pheany who has been living in the Sre Lvi village for more than 10 years is actively engaged in her community, through participation in forest patrolling and a variety of community engagement activities that build capacity and learning. Currently, at the age of 34, she is the REDD+ Community Chief of the Sre Lvi village. She leads committee members in developing work plans and facilitates financial workshops on REDD+ benefit sharing in her community.
“If there was no REDD+ project, I think our community would be in chaos, and natural resources would be under threat of extinction”
Although it can be challenging at times to be a female leader, she continues to do what she loves and is a role model for young girls in her community. One of her responsibilities as Community Chief is to lead a forest patrol team in her village. She manages encounters with illegal loggers, helps to solve land conflict issues, and coordinates meetings between local authorities and community members.
Under her leadership, with support from the Keo Seima REDD+ project, her community has built water wells providing access to a safe water source, a meeting hall so the community can gather and choose which issues they want to address and invest into, a sewage system, road repairing, solar-lights, and financial support on administrative tasks. These achievements have shown that despite the old perception that women can’t go far, this is no longer how women in her community are viewed.
