Travel
Asia Site Visits - Cambodia (Oct 14 - 18)
October 14, 2008 – Licadho, Phnom Penh
We met with Naly Pilorge, daughter of the Licadho founder, in Phnom Penh. Licadho is a very strong human rights organization. They have organized a number of ex-patriates and foreigners to protest and witness human rights violations. They have a staff of 150 with many different professionals, including lawyers, social workers, medical professionals and counselors. Union leaders have been convicted of murders without adequate evidence in show trials. Licadho volunteers protested the trials and were detained.
Licadho encourages the people they recruit to protest to be calm, skilled and work to consensus. Last November companies threatened communities, taking their land for development. Licadho sent volunteer witnesses. Cambodians are not allowed to gather or meet with their government representatives, so Licadho sponsors events throughout the country on special days, such as Women's Day, Freedom Day, etc. where people hold local events wearing their signature scarf (blue & white) showing support of human rights. Cambodians think they need permission to meet in public, but Naly says they legally only need to "notify" the authorities. The official definition of a "public event" is becoming too broad. Licadho tries to find any excuse to meet. There is a Land and Natural Resources coalition to support a national petition that these resources be used for public benefit. Licadho provides organization for civil action, criminal defense and other logistic resources.
Licadho tries to fight passivity and defend freedoms where Cambodians can't afford to stand up. It is easy for the government to create fear, the role of the NGO is to be a visible witness, and show the people that they can be proud and visible. They are subject to false accusations and threatened verbally, physically and legally. Everyone has become desensitized and scared. They are pushing the envelope. In talking with others in Cambodia, they feel that Licadho is more confrontational than most are willing to be, but they all have tremendous respect for their work.
October 14, 2008 – Tabitha, Phnom Penh
We met with Janne Ritskes, a Canadian, who started Tabitha in 1994 after working with other NGOs in SE Asia and Africa. Tabitha's core work is going into poor villages and starting savings programs. They match 10 weeks of savings by the villagers at 10%. The villagers make a priority list of what they want to buy. They usually start with small things – a few chickens – at first to eat and then to sell. They usually progress to more and larger sources of income, eventually building themselves a small house, then starting a business, and then finally being able to participate in family and community celebrations.
Tabitha has found that it takes about 5 years to go from abject poverty to being self-sufficient. They have also been successful with community wells for irrigating agriculture for a village. It's usually the older generation that remembers how to farm, once they start.
They now have work in 10 provinces that impact 3500 families. Their clients have saved $1.5 million and made $8.0 million in purchases. A side benefit is a lessening of physical and emotional abuse in poor families. Tabitha has found that about 90% of the families entering their program are experiencing domestic abuse. This disappears after about one savings cycle. By the third savings cycle, it is down to about 1%. Those who get wells that benefit 3-4 families must put in their own money and use the well for growing vegetables or animals. The wells are of moderate depth, since the deep wells seem to get contaminated by arsenic. After the 4th or 5th year the families may chose a latrine with gravel or sand filter away from the well. Once people have vegetables, the incidences of rickets and scurvy disappear due to improved nutrition. Tabitha has 53 staff, 2-3 in each province and 2 senior staff that perform internal audits. We also visited their famous silk products shop, where they train the weavers. Profits from the stores cover Tabitha's administrative costs.
October 15, 2008 – Social Services of Cambodia (SSC)
We met with Ellen Minotti who took us to visit the social workers and office at Kompong Speu, a poor area outside Phnom Penh, where Ellen started her first social work program in 1992. All four Pangea members were taken on field visits with individual clients to observe how the social workers interacted with their clients.
Ellen has a background in Social Work, and came to Phnom Penh for a short project from Seattle and stayed. Traditional social work in Cambodia entails primarily giving advice and is paternalistic in approach. Ellen has trained social workers to be active listeners and help the client identify their own issues and solutions. Clients are also served in their own homes, so they are not subjected to danger or ridicule in seeking services. Much of the social work training that SSC does is for workers in other NGOs that deal with trafficking and abuse issues.
SSC has just received a UN grant and is well-funded, but the original program we visited in Kompong Speu is not fully funded, and a small grant would allow them to continue their excellent work for a partial year. The compelling reason to fund this program is not just the individuals with mental health issues, but to expand this example of effective social work in a country where this is not the standard practice.
We came away from this day wanting very much to maintain a connection with Ellen and her program.
October 16, 2008 – Friends Economic Development Association
We visited with Anthony & Benny, volunteers from Australia at the House of Light and Knowledge, which is a free community youth center, in Battambang. Classes in English and other subjects are taught to supplement the local school curriculum. This was a "hopping" place and a safe haven for kids. The rules discourage use of drugs and alcohol, "gangsta" behavior and other anti-social behavior. The kids are taught to protect themselves from harmful influences. They also have a garment production unit to employ young women in the community, run a small café, are starting to promote a eco-tourism program and hope to enhance their performing arts programs.
We visited classrooms, saw the garment production and listened to Black Eagles, their young band, perform traditional Khmer and no-so-traditional music, with JoAnn Schindler joining in on the conga drums. Chanthorn Lout is the band’s manager and would lead the program that Pangea might fund. He is an outstanding leader who is very altruistic and energetic. Their proposal to Pangea was to allow the purchase of traditional Khmer instruments, training of 30 young artists and four road shows. The primary purpose would be to employ the youth and use their performance to educate other sometimes illiterate youth in issues of domestic violence, prevention of drugs, crime and unemployment, and environmental issues. We were very favorably impressed with the inventiveness and dedication of this project and its leadership.
October 17, 2008 - Saboros
We met with Sim Sakhorn, Executive Committee Chairman in Battambang along with many of his project directors. Mr. Mam Lin, project director for youth apprenticeship program showed us around Battambang and introduced us to a number of past and present clients. Mr. Lin is a survivor of the Pol Pot regime.
Saboras has been funded entirely by the Inter Church Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO), a Dutch NGO. ICCO is now requiring that Saboros seek additional outside funding. Aside from the Apprenticeship Program, Saboros operates a Community Child Right Project and Credit for Rural Development Project. The organization was founded in 1993 by a group led by Mr. Ok Kong. They operate in 3 districts of Battambang and 2 others. Their stated objectives are to build the capacity of the poor to access public welfare services for improving community livelihoods; to strengthen the roles and responsibilities of local authorities, especially commune councils, as development partners in the process of decentralization and good governance; to promote the rights-based approach for preventing all forms of human rights violations, including human trafficking and the illegal exploitation of natural resources by supporting dialogue between the community, government, civil society and the private sector; and to improve the professional capacity of Saboros staff members and counterparts in the areas of management and leadership.
The apprenticeship program is to organize direct apprenticeships for vulnerable youth in a variety of private enterprises, to provide information on finding employment and raise awareness of relevant social issues; and to support trainees during and after the completion of their apprenticeship. In 2006 they selected 132 youth, ages 16-25 for the program from 45 villages. Pangea members visited apprentices working in a garment workshop learning how to sew many types of garments, a women learning to do "wedding make-up", a motorbike repairman who has his own shop, a radio repairman who works out of his home and is now able to pay for his mom’s medicines, a computer repairman who has started his own classes to help others.
The project seems to be very effective in helping young people find employment of their choice in their own village and avoid social problems of poverty and unemployment. It appears to be well run and well supported in the community.
October 18th - Tean Thor
We learned about Tean Thor from Emma Leslie after the Pangea proposal process was completed. Emma helped us put together our itinerary for the Cambodia site visits, and is an advisor to both FEDA Cambodia and Tean Thor.
We were totally charmed by the children who sang several songs in English with us (part of their English training) and then several individual children who sang beautiful Khmer songs with great emotion. These children are poor children from the local village, may or may not be able to afford attending the public school. There is much corruption in education, the courts and in the medical systems. Although public education is supposed to be free for all, many teachers require payments, and some of the poor can’t afford them. This classroom provides a place for the kids to come and learn English and other social values, including self-protection.
No better example could be taught to the children than the adjacent building, which is a shelter for HIV/AIDS patients. The shelter provides a place for the patients are “not comfortable” in the village because they are in bad shape, or because they are being harassed. Tean Thor also provides outreach to over 100 other patients in the village, with ARV, combined with more traditional remedies (bark teas, etc.). The compound also included a garment workshop, making school uniforms, about half of which are given away for those who can’t afford them, and the half sold to provide income for the seamstresses.
Tean Thor impressed us much with his compassion and dedication. This is exactly the small, grassroots organization where Pangea funding can be most effective. We came away from Tean Thor wanting to keep this connection alive and knowing that a very small grant would make a huge difference to this program.