After having implemented the project “Targeted educational strategies for pro-poor community development”, for more than 1 year and a haft, the project team decided to conduct a baseline survey in order to collect reliable and relevant data related to education and, health of children/ family such as nutrition, hygiene, vaccination etc… in the 10 target communes.

To do this, 2 133 respondents from 10 communes which represent about 11% of the total households were chosen as sample of the survey. They are selected by interviewers groups in some villages of the commune where some issues such as small children under 5 years old, violence, and drop-out had been identified by village chiefs and the Communes Councils.​

At the end of July 2012, the results of this survey were released. Below are some of the main results found in this survey:

• The level of education of the interviewers is very low (61.7% finished only primary school, and 20% have never attended school), and so they cannot get well-paid job (45.8% are peasants and 33.5% are labor work). Due to the small income, they (77.8%) cannot provide enough nutritive food for their children.
• The health services is well provided as 14.9% of parents still use the traditional medicine to cure their children, while the other claimed going to health center. In addition, 86% of the parents have vaccinated their children aged below 3 years old with mobile health services or health center. In spite of this, their knowledge related to hygiene is still low as only 21% of the interviewers have a toilet in the house. Moreover, half of them (50.5%) of them drink the boiled water.
• The education system still has lacks as no preschool exists in the target communes, however almost every parent are ready to contribute some money to run public or community preschools. 35.8% of families admitted that their children drop out of school. Most of them (82.3%) are less than 12 years old. The main reasons are: to help their families with fieldwork; the house is too far from the school or they do not have money to spare for the informal school fee. With financial support and further awareness-raising on the importance of education, parents could send their children to school.
• 56.4% of parents know CEFA through their children, chief of village or even CEFA animators , but only 18.7% of them have been in a CEFA an average of 1.8 times. 26.8% of the families have borrowed books from CEFA to read such as children’s books, magazines, history, Khmer literature and agriculture, and 30.33% of them have improved their knowledge related to what they have read.
• 82.7% of the families suggest that there should be more CEFA, and more varied books in each CEFA.

These are key results for the commune councils as it allows them to understand better their policies strong points and what the real needs in their communes are. For that reason, they are able to design a better communal educational development plan, to implement and own this project.