Monday
Aug012011
LO field team update from Cambodia!
Monday, August 1, 2011 at 2:31PM
By Glenn Fawcett, LO Director of Field Operations
I was moved by the number of young women we have in our care that are determined to complete their tertiary disciplines and continue to make a mark and help develop their society. The passion and commitment of CIST aspirants and DDD employees studying at university continues to inspire great hope for a future Cambodia, where these young women make a deep impact in their chosen professions and as role models for other Khmer youth.
We visited an ethnic Phnong village still pristine as it would have been during the Jayavarman dynasties. Unlike in most cultures, here the men are charged with weaving the baskets for carrying and storing. Their wood-frame homes capped with straw and eaves of woven palm leaves resist even the heaviest monsoon rain and are replaced annually. When the time comes to redo the roof, each family is assisted by the entire village and the work is completed in a day.
I suspect these people were least bothered by the Khmer Rouge, as they were probably seen as the ideal agrarian social unit - mostly illiterate and with little ambition to become sophisticated or urbanized. They continued life in their villages largely without fear during this era of genocide.
Happy to be homeIn Banteay Meanchey, we noted that two SMART referrals were trafficked. One of them ended up on an Indonesian fishing boat where he was trapped for six years until swimming a shore. A Phnom Penh Post article outlined the issue with current cases where half a dozen men swam ashore to escape a cruel captain that shot deckhands for fun. Those that became sick were also thrown overboard rather than bear the cost and effort of treating them.
Local press coverage continues of shady labor recruitments that duplicate what we are telling poor villagers that might innocently send their children into highly suspect and vulnerable situations. Their hopes for high returns often become a nightmare for the children, who have their travel documents confiscated on arrival and suffer sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of employers. A recent report outlined how girls were sent away for domestic workers only to end up locked in a brothel. They managed to escape before too much damage was inflicted, however.
An International Children’s Rights Day was the highlight of my visit to our Integrated Rural Development program in Pursat, where one of our scholarship boys along with another student delivered a fabulous awareness raising program to a small gathering of villagers. It was held at the home of an microloan group member we visited on the previous trip to see her impressive sugar cane plantation.
Later, we found that two girls age 14 and 15 from our GATE scholarship program in Phnom Penh had used forged documents to get work in a garment factory that opened near their school. We are now pursuing village heads who issue forged documents.
The tragedy is that these families are so steadfast in their decision to have their children work. One girl contacted by the program threatened to go to work in far off Kompong Soum’s beachside capital, Sihanoukville, and live with her father if the program tried to stop her from taking a local job. We are sympathetic to these parents and children determined to leave school and work to escape their poverty, and find that it's best to tackle these issues structurally by deterring the practice of forging documents and raising awareness on the issue of child labor.
I was moved by the number of young women we have in our care that are determined to complete their tertiary disciplines and continue to make a mark and help develop their society. The passion and commitment of CIST aspirants and DDD employees studying at university continues to inspire great hope for a future Cambodia, where these young women make a deep impact in their chosen professions and as role models for other Khmer youth.
We visited an ethnic Phnong village still pristine as it would have been during the Jayavarman dynasties. Unlike in most cultures, here the men are charged with weaving the baskets for carrying and storing. Their wood-frame homes capped with straw and eaves of woven palm leaves resist even the heaviest monsoon rain and are replaced annually. When the time comes to redo the roof, each family is assisted by the entire village and the work is completed in a day.
I suspect these people were least bothered by the Khmer Rouge, as they were probably seen as the ideal agrarian social unit - mostly illiterate and with little ambition to become sophisticated or urbanized. They continued life in their villages largely without fear during this era of genocide.
Happy to be homeIn Banteay Meanchey, we noted that two SMART referrals were trafficked. One of them ended up on an Indonesian fishing boat where he was trapped for six years until swimming a shore. A Phnom Penh Post article outlined the issue with current cases where half a dozen men swam ashore to escape a cruel captain that shot deckhands for fun. Those that became sick were also thrown overboard rather than bear the cost and effort of treating them.Local press coverage continues of shady labor recruitments that duplicate what we are telling poor villagers that might innocently send their children into highly suspect and vulnerable situations. Their hopes for high returns often become a nightmare for the children, who have their travel documents confiscated on arrival and suffer sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of employers. A recent report outlined how girls were sent away for domestic workers only to end up locked in a brothel. They managed to escape before too much damage was inflicted, however.
An International Children’s Rights Day was the highlight of my visit to our Integrated Rural Development program in Pursat, where one of our scholarship boys along with another student delivered a fabulous awareness raising program to a small gathering of villagers. It was held at the home of an microloan group member we visited on the previous trip to see her impressive sugar cane plantation.
Later, we found that two girls age 14 and 15 from our GATE scholarship program in Phnom Penh had used forged documents to get work in a garment factory that opened near their school. We are now pursuing village heads who issue forged documents.
The tragedy is that these families are so steadfast in their decision to have their children work. One girl contacted by the program threatened to go to work in far off Kompong Soum’s beachside capital, Sihanoukville, and live with her father if the program tried to stop her from taking a local job. We are sympathetic to these parents and children determined to leave school and work to escape their poverty, and find that it's best to tackle these issues structurally by deterring the practice of forging documents and raising awareness on the issue of child labor.
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