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The Khmer Rouge period (1975-1978) saw up to 25 percent of Cambodians die in "the killing fields" or Ii'om starvation, Devastation to national ini1-astructures, family and social life, culture, and the elimination of educated professionals including doctors and teachers werc not alleviated when the Vietnamese then occupied Cambodia for the next 11 years, The Paris Peace Accords in 2001 defined the rebuilding of the Cambodian state and the United Nations moved international personnel to Cambodia to separate warring factions and prepare for elections in 1993, UNAMIC (United Nations Advance Mission in Cambodia, 1991-1992) brought 1,100 personnel and was replaced by UNTAC (United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia, 1992-1993) with over 22,000 foreign soldiers, police, and so on, including contingents from sub-Saharan Affican nations already in the throes of their own HIV/AIDS pandemics (UNAMIC, 1992; UNTAC,1996;Yeager & Kingma, 2005)

Community health psychology provides a framework for local citizens themselves to systematically affect change in health and social inequalities, particularly through Participatory Action Research (PAR). The Cambodian NGO SiRCHESI launched a 24-month Hotel Apprenticeship Program (HAP) in 2006 to provide literacy, English, social skills, health education, hotel skills-training, work experience and a living wage to women formerly selling beer in restaurants; there they had faced workplace risks including HIV/AIDS, alcohol overuse, violence and sexual coercion. Quantitative and qualitative analyses indicate changes in health-related knowledge, behaviour, self-image and empowerment, as HAP trainees were monitored and evaluated within their new career trajectories. Copyright © 2010 SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC.