The Gift Of Life

Chris, his wife Tan Su Shan, children Talisa, 16, and Kai, 14, are planning a family visit to Kampong Chhnang at the end of next November—the second time for Su Shan and the first for the siblings

“When i was a kid, the word philanthropy didn’t even exist,” quips Social Entrepreneur Christopher Wilson, observing that these days, children like his own teenaged daughter Talisa and son Kai learn about charity and volunteering early on in school.

Growing up, his family’s motto of being kind to and looking after others impressed on him the importance of helping others. That urge grew stronger during his decade-long military stint, when he witnessed abject desperation, poverty and strife while serving in the once-troubled Northern Irish capital of Belfast and on the chaotic Yemen-Oman border.

But it was the years of travelling to Cambodia for business and leisure, from 1993 to 2008, that catalysed him into stepping out and up to actively work on changing the lives of the less fortunate. He co-founded what is now Social Capital Venture Development (SCVD) with a good friend in Cambodia, whom he met through work in 1993 when he was a private banker.

Christopher Wilson runs Social Capital Venture Development like he would a business, with best practices for efficiency and financial accountability

Their initial company, Social Capital Venture (SCV), was set up in 2008 as a “private venture”, until it became a registered not-for-profit Cambodian non-governmental organisation in 2013, to help poverty-stricken communities there. After spending a year studying and researching to identify the main problems these communities faced, Chris concluded that it was dirty water. Villagers get their water mostly from wells, ponds and rivers, which are very dirty and full of sand and mud. 

“In Cambodia, up to 8 per cent of children die below the age of 5, mostly due to poor hygiene and drinking dirty water. Dirty water, especially due to faecal contamination, is a chronic problem so people are always going to health centres and hospitals because of diarrhoea, which causes dehydration and can lead to death.”

Not a Pipe Dream 
SCV put in the first filters into its first school in June 2010. “That remains my proudest moment,” Chris recalls. “It was very emotional for me. I was very fond of the old headmaster, who was in his 60s or 70s, and it came after a lot of work, research and preparation. It was a very defining moment.

Since then, it has brought clean water to 90 schools and all the three hospitals and 39 health centres in Kampong Chhnang, a province in central Cambodia with a population of about 500,000 people. It aims to add another 50 schools to the list by the end of the year, and is committed to doing all 549 schools within five years.

School children taking water from their school's water site

A 20min chat with Hyflux founder Olivia Lum at a dinner in 2008 had led to the development of a filtration system especially for Kampong Chhnang’s needs. “I had all these ideas and Olivia asked me to come see her to see how Hyflux can help. They didn’t have a suitable filter for us, so they designed one to our criteria: durable, 60 litres per hour using gravity flow, takes out bacteria and viruses, portable, low maintenance, user-friendly.”

“We want to bring clean water, health and hygiene to every single person if we can. We’re focusing on schools now as they’re where children start and education goes on.”

With Unilever, which donated 5,000 bars of soap, SCVD launched the “Happy Hands” campaign in schools. Sinks were installed at the base of its clean water systems in the playgrounds, and children are encouraged to make a habit of washing their hands after play, touching animals, going to the loo and before meals. 

Last year, the organisation introduced a new bicycle pump ultra-filtration system, also developed by Hyflux. It marries pedal power to pump 500L/h of water through each of the large filters—up from 60L/h with the old system. The system costs $1,000 to build and a spot of stationary cycling by the schoolkids powers the system, so there’s no need for electricity or a generator.

“Clean water goes into 20 to 30L storage tanks that can be carried to classrooms, a bit like the bottled water dispensers we have in offices here in Singapore,” Chris says. 

A school boy powers up the new bicycle pump system at his school

It’s important to SCVD that these projects are sustainable. Parents have to pay the school US$1 per year per schoolchild. The schoolmaster is in charge of the clean water system, which goes towards its maintenance. “US$1 a year is an easy sum to remember and a tiny amount. A new Hyflux filter is $300 and should last three years, which means the school will have enough money to buy its next filter and we don’t need to keep helping them with that. This is how we make our projects sustainable. The schools have to agree to this in order to be part of our joint venture.” 

Indeed, the term “joint venture” is a purposeful one for SCVD. “We never give everything—not because we don’t want to give, but because it doesn’t work. You must have contributions from the beneficiaries, and shared responsibility. We call it a ‘joint venture’ and we have a little agreement; it’s not a legal agreement but still quite formal, with given responsibilities. 

“If you keep giving away things, people will think, ‘Oh, we’ve been given it and when it goes wrong, well, it was free, so don’t bother with it.’ When you do something as a team, they don’t feel treated as poor people to be helped but as partners, which creates a sense of dignity. This is key to long-term sustainability.” 

From the Ground Up
This commitment for the long haul drives Chris to run SCVD with best practices taken from his experience in the corporate world and military. “You have to run a charity as a business because you need to be efficient, manage your staff, run operations well, manage the accounts and ensure money doesn’t run out.”

SCVD needs about $150,000 annually to sustain its efforts. Since 2012, friends, family and larger foundations have been making private donations. In April this year, SCVD held its first fundraising dinner with Jia Foundation, which also supports a children’s charity in Siem Reap, raising $200,000.

A girl at an orphanage takes a drink

Chris stays vigilant; fully cognisant that one broken cog in the system can trip up the entire foundation’s survival. Finances are tightly controlled by him and fellow SCVD board member Oon Kiat Teoh, a Singaporean businessman and trained accountant. “Money is donated to us, so I make sure that every cent and dollar is allocated optimally to what we’re supposed to be doing. It’s all about integrity and doing the right thing.” External auditors also keep the books in check. 

Chris is in Cambodia every month if possible, although at the time of this interview, he wasn’t sure exactly when. “Hopefully this month! I haven’t got a passport! All my passport pages were taken up by stamps from Cambodia, so I had to send it back to England to get a new one,” he says, laughing.

As he’s not there all the time, he leaves the day-to-day to San You, SCVD’s executive director, who heads operations in Cambodia. Their 16 employees, all salaried, come from Kampong Chhnang’s villages. “Some are educated, some aren’t, but they all play a very important role, bringing on-the-ground knowledge and expertise. It’s important to have the right team with integrity on the ground.” 

SOPs, or standard operating procedures, were put in place so all the staff know exactly what their job descriptions are and what they have to do every day. “With SOPs, everything is done in a way that creates efficiencies and economies of scale. You break down operating procedures into simple, easily understood steps, so you don’t have any confusion or mistakes. 

“Every time my staff members go to a site or school, they know exactly what to do, down to the way they deal with the people, the questions that they ask. It empowers them in a way that’s also very strict.” 

Saving Lives
“The style of our foundation is built on humility and understanding the needs of the people,” Chris emphasises. “We don’t barge in and say, ‘We’re going to put a water system in here, it’s good for you, and this is how it works.’ Instead, we go to the people, ask them about the problems and how they would like to venture with us as a partner. We make sure what we do is specifically tailored for them and that they understand it and feel empowered.”

The kitchen at home doubles as an office whenever Chris, an avid photographer, is in Singapore 

Heads of the villages and institutions are asked for their views on water problems, while Chris and his team identify other issues from daily experiences on the ground. Then, they start to brainstorm for solutions. Concrete ideas make their way up to SCVD’s directorial board and to like-minded partner organisations, which develop technologies and expertise tailored to the province’s needs. 

As Chris and his team worked more closely with the local community, they noticed another problem. Hospitals had an alarmingly high mortality rate for women in childbirth. SCVD brought in KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) to set up a midwife training programme in 2013. It has since trained over 200 midwives and drastically slashed maternity mortality rates from about 190 mothers per 100,000 lives births to 58. 

Last year, 10 midwives became trainers themselves. Motivated by this success, Chris has begun to add training courses for emergency paediatrics. He already has Assoc Prof Ng Kee Chong, chairman of KKH’s division of medicine booked for a familiarisation trip to Kampong Chhnang at the end of this month. Training is expected to begin next May. 

Since starting its work, SCVD has dramatically improved thousands of lives in Kampong Chhnang. 

Chris has chosen to focus all of the organisation’s efforts on this one province instead of spreading out into more places, so that they can get the impact numbers—figures such as the dropped number of hospital cases for diarrhoea. 

“We want to make Kampong Chhnang a showcase for what we’ve done with the water, medical training, the hand-washing campaign, to other Cambodian communities and countries facing the same global problems. When we’ve brought clean water to every single child in this province, we will take it to the Cambodian government and say, look, you just need 16 people in each province and you can provide clean water to the whole province.” 

And just as it was at SCVD’s first water system debut, the day that Kampong Chhnang becomes a vision for others to aspire towards will be an emotional one for Chris.