Congratulations to Working Group on Weapons Reduction and Oxfam GB in Cambodia for collecting so many photos and faces in the first week of the Control Arms Campaign.
It’s an inspiration to us all!

How was it done?
They recruited 150 young people as volunteers to make up teams of 3-5 people. The volunteers were given a short orientation to the campaign to collect the action card by explaining to people and asking them to draw their picture. The teams went “from house to house, market to market, place to place wearing our T-shirts and hats in the Phnom Penh city for 3 days and collected 36,000 cards,” said Neb Sinthay, who is the executive director of WGWR and a Board Member of IANSA.

That’s 240 each or just over a thousand per team! This is a fantastic achievement but not impossible for us all to copy.

The other 3,000 were collected at the Music Concert held on Saturday 11 October, which drew over 10,000 participants. “During the Public Concert, lots of people asked for Action Cards in order to draw their picture. They somehow felt that they should be involved in such an important event, and they themselves felt proud of being involved and showed their support for the campaign,” said Sinthay.

What’s next?
Working Group on Weapons Reduction are organising a small arms awareness campaign during the 3 day Water Festival in Phnom Penh on 7-9 Nov, which is attended by over 200,000 people. They will continue to collect action cards in support of the campaign just have to make sure they don’t become waterlogged!

For more information about the campaign go to www.controlarms.org