CfC UPDATE from Cambodia trip - Feb 2010

So far it's been a productive, thought provoking and also frustrating trip.

I arrived in Cambodia on Wednesday afternoon last week (3rd Feb) and spent a few days in Phnom Penh meeting people and helping Heng (our manager) to find a long arm sewing machine that we need to sew the larger rugs. This is the frustrating part....No luck there so far. We considered cutting one up and welding on a longer arm but it looks not to be possible. Still trying to find a solution to that one and it needs to be fast so we don’t hold up the shipment.

I had a good meeting with Alan Flux, a VSO volunteer designer from AAC (Artisan's Association of Cambodia). He gave me lots of names of people to talk to about different products and materials. He also talked about the need for training local Cambodian Designers as he said that after spending 2 years here developing handicrafts for lots of organisations, there seems to be no original modern local design. Everything is either copied from the past or the designs come from westerners or neighbouring countries. That would be something interesting to work on – developing local design. Alan gave me a design for making a tube scarf out of the cotton we use that will look great.

Heng and I also visited a relocated community just outside of Phnom Penh. One of the groups kicked out of Phnom Penh when the government sold slum land to developers. They were pretty poor and we’ll send someone back to get information about how many kids are out of school. There was another similar community down the road and yet another where they had grouped together all the HIV victims.

We visited a few fair trade shops looking at products we could possible make, getting some good ideas.

I'm now in Siem Reap and have been joined by Ailsa (who sells the rugs in Alice Springs) and Clay (who will move here with AYAD to work for us in July if all goes to plan). Soon (on the 19th) Frank will be with us if all goes to plan there as well – i heard something about a problem with VISAs because he’s Ghanian.

Currently we’re focused on figuring out where to expand to (visiting Projects and villages), vetting CVs to recruit a new social worker and product development and diversification (checking out fair trade shops and projects).

Ali has been working on that as well as putting together a draft village selection questionnaire to help us select our next village in Siem Reap and working on the Child protection policy for implementation.

In Siem Reap we’ve also been visiting a few NGOs who work with kids to see if we can work with them.
They include:
- Green Gecko (very nice street kids residential program most of whom still have siblings with their families who are out of school)
- http://www.greengeckoproject.org/
- New Hope Community Centre (NGO school and programs for a very poor area)
http://www.newhopecambodia.com
- Angali house (education for street children)
http://www.anjali-house.com/html/
- Pepy (focused on education)
http://pepyride.org/

We also plan to visit Angkor Butterfly Centre who employ poor women in breeding butterflies (pupae) for export.

We’ve been having our perceptions of how to work with and help kids in the most effective way challenged and been having a lot of discussion and debate on how we can best achieve our goals. We were challenged on the idea of having a simple message (we return street kids to school) at the cost of doing development in a more sustainable and empowering way. It was suggested that we could give people more credit and play a role in educating people in Australia on good development – letting our message be about the lessons we have learned.

We also realised that if we are truly going to work in an empowering way to get kids back to school and keep them there then we really need to be letting them decide the best way to improve the situation of the kids in the village.

Something else that we were aware of and that has been very obvious is that most NGOs here are not working together and that overall there is little coordination and a lot of inefficiency in addressing the problems – specifically in children’s education. We’ve been thinking on how we could help bring everyone together through partnering with the carpets project.

It’s also obvious that some NGOs, while having a lot of heart, are not working in very empowering ways for everyone involved. Clay, Ali and I discussed the possibility of working with them and helping them learn about the benefits and empowerment and community driven development as the primary model of development.

I’ve just finished reading a short book written by a Cambodian man that had a small organisation and was working with villages in the late 90’s just after the fighting. It’s all about how to do development with Cambodian communities in the Cambodian way. The quote that really stuck with me is:

“Participation means that we participate with the village folk, not that they participate with us.”

It’s only 70 pages and I think we need to make this book mandatory reading for everyone in CfC!

Lots of food for thought anyway...

So moving on; Sunday night will see Chinese New Year celebrations start and the fireworks have already begun. On Monday morning we’ll head to Poipet to do a quality check of the shipment going out, to train the staff and work on improving production systems and family case management. Ali leaves on Tuesday and we’ll be back in Siem Reap on Friday to interview Social Worker candidates and finish off any last bits and pieces before returning on Feb 24th.