Phnom Penh, Cambodia— November 5, 2007— IRD hosted senior officials from the Government of Cambodia and representatives of the International NGO community at a workshop in Phnom Penh on “Positive Deviance”, an innovative approach to promoting behavioral change.

“This event gave an opportunity for the NGOs who had implemented the Positive Deviance system in Cambodia to share their experience and lessons learned, and develop recommendations for prospective implementers of this methodology," said Monique Sternin, Technical Advisor to the Positive Deviance Initiative. "The presentations from ADRA and PDF showed that Positive Deviance had some success in reducing severe and moderate childhood malnutrition at the community level."

Cambodian Ministry of Health functionaries and provincial health officials joined representatives from the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, CARE, ADRA, AED, CARITAS, Partners for Development and several other development agencies to discuss the local application of the Positive Deviance model and make recommendations for the future. IRD’s Cambodia office organised the conference when approached by the Positive Deviance Initiative of Tufts University (Boston, Massachusetts, USA) in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Positive Deviance method encourages communities and institutions to discover the solution to problems from within. It has been applied successfully in several settings worldwide, most particularly in the field of public health. In the case of child health, for example, communities are invited to reflect on why despite equal poverty some children in the community are healthier and to investigate for themselves the (Positive Deviance) solutions that the mothers of those children are already putting into practice. Thus, the approach identifies accessible and available solutions in a shared cultural context.

The conference began with an opening speech by Cambodia’s Secretary of State for Health, Professor Eng Huot, focussed on childhood nutrition, one of Cambodia’s most pressing health issues. He expressed his concern that modern media influences were tempting poor families away from the most cost-effective and nutritionally valuable food sources: breast-feeding for babies and traditional foods for older infants.

Sternin then led participants in exploring the lessons learned from the application of the Positive Deviance approach in Cambodia in the field of nutrition; ways of building on success so far; and potential application of the method to other health issues.

"What was particularly useful was that participants enjoyed the opportunity and the time to debate several issues such as community mobilization, sustainability, BCC strategy and integration into other existing programs,” Sternin added.

Somchit Boungnasiri, who manages IRD Cambodia’s USAID-funded Child Survival program in Kampong Chhnang Province, was also pleased with the conference.

“This is the first workshop here on nutrition problems and Positive Deviance program.  It is a quite a new concept for Cambodia so a lot of people were interested," said Boungnasiri. "The audience was very engaged and asked many questions, and during the group discussion participants were very active and enjoyed the exchanges. They thanked IRD for organizing this workshop; it was a successful and fruitful day for everyone."