Project Lokun Cambodian Mission Trip Fundraiser 2024

Hi there! We're a group of Year 1 and 2 students studying at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and we need your help!

Who We Are

Established in 2006, Project Lokun is a biannual medical humanitarian project to Pursat Province, Cambodia, jointly organised by students from the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and University of Puthisastra Faculty of Health Sciences. Project Lokun is currently on it's 32nd batch of committee members, and we are looking forward to our 29th trip down to Cambodia in this upcoming academic year.

Project Lokun strives to uphold our core principles of Cultivate, Connect and Care in the work that we do, which also serve as our overarching mission statement. We aim to

(i) cultivate the importance of health and disease management through education,

(ii) connect the villages back to their local healthcare system and

(iii) care for the villagers through the provision of acute primary healthcare services.

We embarked on a reccee trip in December 22' and on 2 main trips in May and December 23'. After being grounded for two COVID-19 years, we went on a recce trip to rekindle old partnerships in Cambodia. We met with various NGOs and discussed how we could work together moving forward. Most importantly, we visited two Pursat hospitals and various Health Centres in order to better understand the healthcare system in Pursat and collaborate with them for our main trip. With the information we collected and the connections we made, we successfully organised 2 main trips in May and December, where we conducted our acute Clinics, children and adult Education, and Health Needs Assessment at full-scale.

To match the needs of Pursat community, we re-evaluated our project focus to tackling diabetes in the province as it is a more pressing and insidiously growing problem. After rekindling our relationship with the Lokun Cambodian Wing (LCW) through our trips, we are working more closely with them than ever before.

As we strive towards improving our interventions, we remain cognisant of the need for our initiatives to further our goal towards greater sustainability of Project Lokun. We work to handover more responsibility to LCW and involve more Cambodian stakeholders in our initiatives.

It is an honour and privilege to be able to lead a team of passionate Singaporeans and Cambodians who are committed to improving the health status of villagers in Pursat. The future is bright as batch after batch of students entering the project show more enthusiasm in serving the Pursat community. As we recruit our 34th batch of committee members, we hope to find students that share the same passion and genuine dedication to serve, so we can continue on our mission of ‘Cultivate, Connect, Care’ and endeavour for greater heights.

What We Plan To Do

We will be going to the Pursat province of Cambodia, one of the most underprivileged provinces in Cambodia, this year 2024 in May and December. We do our work in four villages within the provinces: Takeo Village, Buon Village, Toul Makak Village and Prey Omal Village. In each of these villages, we will be employing our hallmark ventures: Acute Care Clinics, Children's Education, Adult Education, Health Needs Assessment (HNA), Hospital Referrals.

- Acute Care Clinics

Our clinics are a vital part of our trips. We organise GP-like consults for the local villagers, setting up stations for registration, triage, Doctor's Consult, pharmacy - essentially setting up a mini-GP clinic in the villages to screen the locals for any conditions they have, or any malaise they feel. We recruit fully accredited Singaporean and Cambodian doctors to run the Doctor's Consult station, to ensure all treatments prescribed to locals is accurate, and based off proper diagnoses.

- Children's Education

We hold educational programmes as one of our main activities on our mission trips as well. We organise lessons for the local children about topics such as basic oral hygiene, puberty and eating healthily!

- Adult Education

For adults, the educational programmes shift its scope towards proper hygiene practices, the importance of exercise and self-monitoring for early signs of diabetes/diabetes management for those diagnosed with the disease.

- Health Needs Assessment (HNA)

During our trips, Lokun will conduct our door-to-door Health Needs Assessment (HNA) baseline questionnaire which aims to retrieve quantitative data from the villagers we serve. The HNA not only serves as an analytical tool that exposes the health needs of the village, but also allows us to monitor trends of the health status and knowledge of the villagers. By analysing and optimising the data collected from HNA, we would be able to continuously measure our success in Lokun’s village-wide initiatives.

- Hospital Referrals

From our Acute Care Clinics, villagers with more complex conditions that cannot be managed/treated with medication at the clinics may be referred by the doctors to seek further specialised medical treatment at the local health centres and hospitals. We use funds from our fundraising activities like this crowdfunding campaign to pay for these locals' hospital treatments, procedures and medication. We will do our utmost to uphold to a referral service that enables the villagers to recognise that healthcare is their responsibility, and to also link those villagers who would genuinely benefit to their local healthcare systems.

Closing Words

We need funds to keep the above ventures ongoing, for the utmost benefit of the locals. Namely, funds would be channelled towards (i) our transport into the villages (ii) medication for the villagers (iii) medical equipment for various medical procedures at the Doctor's Consult stations (iv) educational materials for children and adults (v) hospital referral procedures for the locals.

We are extremely grateful to any and all donations, every little bit counts! We sincerely hope you can extend us the necessary aid we require by donating any amount to our project Project Lokun, to allow us to confer the best standard of healthcare to the villagers of Pursat province, Cambodia.

I genuinely believe very strongly in the message of this project, to better international communities that are not as developed as the one we have here in Singapore. It is really a great feeling when we see the young Cambodian children running around laughing and living comfortable, happy lives- and I am certain this is only possible with all the help we receive from our supporters like you. Thank you so so much, Project Lokun would not have been possible without all of you :) - Project Directors, Vincent Qi and Chan Jing Wen

Alternatively you can Paynow us at this Paynow QR Code, do indicate "Your Name_Project Lokun" under the reference/comments note of the transaction!