Projects: Cambodia

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About Cambodia

Cambodia is a lush, tropical country that shares its borders with Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. Cambodia is located in the heart mainland of Southeast Asia, a region with a glorious and mysterious past that is rich in cultural heritages. Cambodia’s main attraction is Angkor Wat- arenowned ancient temple city whose magical image draws ever-increasingly numbers of tourists from all over the world.

Yet Cambodia is a country that is lacking in proper healthcare, which in turn causes an endless cycle of poverty, disease, malnutrition and minimal education.

The divergent facets of the Kingdom provoke both the serious and casual traveler, generally charmed and sometimes bewildered by its heritage. Ancient Holy places such as Angkor Wat, Bayon, Taprohm, and gorgeous natural wonders such as the the giant roots of ancient trees, the graceful shapes of Apsaras and ancient temples long buried in the jungle, make Cambodia a unique and memorable experience. Complimented by the friendliness of the Khmer people, amazing Hill tribes settled in the remote areas, and strings of pristine islands and the century beach, are just a few reasons to visit this beautiful country.

Most visitors to Angkor Wat are not away that nearly half of all deaths in children under 5 are attributable to undernutrition. Proper feeding of infants and young children can increase their chances of survival. It can also promote optimal growth and development.

Front Line organizations such as Angkor Hospital and M’Lop Tapang community health care workers provide health education to families in one community about malnutrition and how to make a healthy porridge for their babies. 

Cambodia and its people need your help

Preventable diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles and HIV/Aids are rampant. The vast majority of child deaths are reoccurring and can easily be prevented with adequate medical treatment. Children are dying everyday from starvation.

• 50% of the child population in Cambodia die before age 5, that is 1 in 8 Cambodian children dying before they see their fifth birthday. In summary this is more than 40,000 children dying every year.
• An estimated 570,000 children live without parental guidance.
• Nearly 600,000 children under five year of age are underweight and are malnourished.

Cambodia lacks education, qualified teachers and insufficient salaries.

Cambodia lacks the ability to plant and grow enough food.

• Land mines restrict the amount of land available for cultivation.
• Extensive irrigation systems are needed to double their planting season
• 70% of the population have no access to clean water
• Almost one third of Cambodians live on less than US$1 per day 
• Due to poverty, children in Cambodia are forced to give up the chance of receiving education to work and supplement the family’s income

Strategy:  “How together we will make a change”

Helping children and their families out of poverty with skills to receive an income and become self-sufficient.

• Nutrition
• Health & hygiene
• Clean water
• Seeds for gardens
• Basic health and dental care.
• Vocational training (welding, carpentry, plumbing, sewing, bicycle/motor bike repair)
• Social enterprise

In Cambodia, CWAF Supports:

• Angkor Children’s Hospital http://angkorhospital.org/
• Angkor Satellite Hospital for Children http://angkorhospital.org/treatment/satellite-clinic/
• M’Lop Tapang http://www.mloptapang.org/
• Mith Samlanh http://www.mithsamlanh.org/ Friends-International
• Friends Without A Border https://www.fwab.org/cambodia

For more statistics on Cambodia, read the UN Millennium Development Goals report: http://www.un.org.kh/undp/media/files/pages/CMDG_current_status_19092010.pdf)

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M’Lop Tapang

M’Lop Tapang has been working directly with street children and families in Sihanoukville, Cambodia since 2003. They currently work with over 1200 families and over 3500 children at ten specialized centres in the Sihanoukville area providing shelter, medical care,sports and arts, education and training, counselling, family support and protection from all types of abuse.

M’Lop Tapang’s main objectives are:

• Outreach
• Child Protection
• Community Shelters
• Drug Use and Harm Reduction
• Medical Care
• Education
• Vocational Training
• Arts & Music
• Sports & Recreation.

In Cambodia, nearly half of all deaths in children under 5 are attributable to undernutrition. Proper feeding of infants and young children can increase their chances of survival. It can also promote optimal growth and development.

CW Asia Fund has been raising awareness for the staggering number of children living in severe poverty, supporting front line organizing such as M’Lop Tapang whose nurses and outreach community healthcare workers provide health education to families at the community level about malnutrition and how to make a healthy porridge for their babies, effectively implemented village by village, slum by slum. 

The Tapang tree, also known as the umbrella tree, provides shelter from the elements. MLop means shade or protection in the Khmer language.

In 2003 M’Lop Tapang (MT) was created, by a small group of foreigners and locals. What began as a simple initiative to feed and offer safety to six children who slept under a large Tapang tree on the beach every night and who were extremely vulnerable to exploitation, quickly blossomed into a much wider program.

Nearly half of all deaths in children under 5 are attributable to undernutrition. Proper feeding of infants and young children can increase their chances of survival. Proper feeding can also promote optimal growth and development. M’Lop Tapang nurses provide health education to families in one community about malnutrition and how to make a healthy porridge for their babies.

Today we work with over 3500 street living and working young people and their families at 10 centers in the Sihanoukville area. M’Lop Tapang provides street children access to the learning tools, specialized services, resources, and opportunities they need to build a better future. We offer regular meals, shelter, medical care, education and training, counseling, family support / reintegration and protection from all types of abuse as well as increasing community awareness about issues affecting street children.

 

 

As M’Lop Tapang continues to grow the purpose of the organization remains to provide protection, just as the tree provided protection to those young people years ago who sheltered under its branches.

 

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Angkor Hospital for Children

Angkor Hospital for Children (AHC) is a non-profit paediatric teaching hospital working to provide free, quality health care to impoverished children in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Along with providing quality health care to children in Cambodia, AHC is a training site for improving the skills of health care workers. In 2005 it was officially recognized as Cambodia’s first teaching hospital, one of only two in the country. Today it serves as a training site for the World Health Organization’s Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses Program.

AHC’s mission is:

To provide quality pediatric health care to Cambodian children and free care to those living in poverty, as guaranteed by the Cambodian constitution; to work with the Cambodian Ministry of Health to strengthen Cambodia’s healthcare system through the training of doctors, nurses and health workers; to play a central role in improving public health for all children.

Outpatient Department Inpatient and Low Acuity Department Emergency Room and Intensive Care Unit Surgical Department Dental Clinic Eye Clinic Home care department

HIV/AIDS program Physiotherapy Radiology Pharmacy Laboratory Satellite Clinic Social Work

AHC’s vision is:

Cambodian children have access to quality medical care wherever they live, regardless of their ability to pay and Angkor Hospital for Children exists as a centre for excellence in paediatric healthcare and training, fostering development and expansion of the public healthcare system.

Watch Videos from the Angkor Children’s Hospital on their YouTube Channel

 

It was a privilege to spend most of January with Angkor Hospital. As a broadcast professional and teacher, my goal was to help the hospital produce powerful stories in order to engage current and prospective donors. With online communications growing rapidly through outlets like social media, videos and stories can be an important tool to demonstrate the unique programs, success stories and challenges at the hospital. I thought that it would be most helpful for me to teach Chamroeun how to produce these videos, rather than my taking over and producing a large number of stories.

Chamroeun had only had two weeks of formal training in graphic design, two years ago. I taught him how to use close-ups, sound, and interviewing skills in order to tell these stories. I encouraged the staff at the hospital to tell personal stories, either of individual patients or families. The one full story we did, from start to finish, involved a healthy 3-year-old boy who had been admitted to AHC when he was a severely malnourished 4-month-old. While the boy was in hospital, his mother took part in the Nutrition Program and she was taught, through the hospital’s demonstration garden, how to grow her own vegetables. She now has a beautiful garden, enough vegetables to feed her family and to sell the remainder for profit. A great success story.

Now that Chamroeun has these skills, he can continue this work with his colleagues. This will undoubtedly help to expand the hospital’s ability to connect. Watch Chamroeun’s video:

Emma McLagan

 

Read about the history of AHC (.pdf)

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The Angkor Satellite Hospital for Children

The Angkor Satellite Hospital for Children Clinic (ASHC) opened in February 2010 in Sotnikum 35 kms from Siem Reap. The satellite clinic is of great importance allowing swift access to medical treatment without the exorbitant cost of transportation thus encouraging families to seek treatment before their child is seriously ill.

Based 35km from Siem Reap and with a population of over 300,000, is Sotnikum, the village where the SC is located. The distance to Siem Reap, delays or prevents families seeking health care for their child. Our mission is to provide quality health care services to this rural population while strengthening the government health care system by directly partnering with the referral hospital, where the SC is based on-site.

Since its inception, the clinic’s major achievements have included treatment of:

• over 50,000 children
• more than 47,000 outpatients
• over 4,000 inpatients
• and nearly 2,000 emergency cases, with hundreds of ambulance transfers to AHC’s ICU

Providing high quality pediatric health care to rural communities, in partnership with the government hospital, the Satellite Clinic (SC) was established in 2010 and is seeing over 50 children every day. Read about their achievements in their 2013 Annual Report.

Satellite Clinic facilities consists of three main departments:

• Outpatient
• Inpatient
• Emergency Room

We actively coordinate with health centers at the village/community level. Although there is no ICU facility it can provide immediate life support, resuscitation and intubation. Patients will then be transferred by ambulance with a medical escort to the Intensive Care Unit at Angkor Hospital for Children.

Education of hundreds of health workers reaching over 150,000 children
Setting and achievement of models of best practice and standards for all health practitioner partners
Outreach clinics 2-4 times a year. Taking healthcare: quality treatment, education and prevention to rural areas without access to quality care.

It has been a long-standing goal of Angkor Hospital for Children (AHC) to be able to host Khmer medical students and interns. We are therefore extremely excited to announce the launch of our new program that welcomes 25 students from the University of Health Sciences in Phnom Penh.

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Mith Samlanh / Friends International

Mith Samlanh (“Friends” in English) is a local organization working with Cambodian street children, their families and the community to develop creative projects that effectively support the children to become independent and productive members of the community. Mith Samlanh was the first NGO to receive the Best Practice Award in Cambodia and was selected as one of the Top 100 NGO’s in the world.

To increase Mith Samlanh’s sustainability and to provide former street youth more opportunities for their futures, Mith Samlanh runs a range of income generating activities. They include: training businesses where students from the Vocational Training Center gain experience in a real business environment; social businesses where parents are provided with income generation support so that they can send their children to school rather than to work in the streets. These activities are also income generation ventures with profits used to fund other projects and contribute to the purchase of Mith Samlanh’s main center. Mith Samlanh is able to fund 44 per cent of its own financial needs directly from the income from these business ventures.

Mith Samlanh is a Friends International Program established in August 1994 as a non-religious organization working with street children in Phnom Penh. The non-governmental organization (NGO) was established in response to the needs of street children, their families and their community.

The projects of Mith Samlanh aim to facilitate the children’s social reintegration into their families, the public school system, the workplace, and their culture.

The PBS TV Network in the USA has featured the work of Friends-International in Cambodia during its nationally syndicated NewsHour programmeL

Mith Samlanh’s main objectives are:

• Outreach
• Prevention,
• Education
• Drug Recovery
• Transitional Home
• Child Safe Network

Mith Samlanh serves over 1800 homeless, vulnerable and abandoned children each day, providing them with:

• Food
• shelter
• medical care
• training and educational facilities

Friends the Restaurant is a training restaurant run by former street youth and their teachers.

To help Mith Samlanh’s hospitality students gain practical skills and prepare them for employment, we operate so called training restaurants. In Phnom Penh, Romdeng, (#74, Street 174) has been designed to promote Cambodian culture and food, while at Friends the Restaurant (#215, Street 13) students are trained in Asian and Western cooking.

The focus of this training is building self-esteem, self-respect, very high standards of hygiene and of course, hospitality skills. When the students have finished their training, we help them to find jobs. We are grateful to all the businesses that offer employment opportunities to our students. There is nothing greater than to see them working independently either in their own business or in one of the many eateries around town. If you would like to support us (by hiring our graduates, giving donations, ideas, suggestions, or comments) please ask our restaurant staff or contact us via email.

All profits from our restaurants are reinvested into Mith Samlanh’s projects for former street children and youth.

Mith Samlanh

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In 2000, Adrianne Dartnall and her partner Rick Lennert lost their only child, twenty one year old Danielle, when she was killed by a drunk driver. Devastated by the tragedy they sought to find meaning in their lives and to honour the memory of their daughter, who had wanted to be a teacher and loved children. Since that time Adrianne and Rick have been traveling each year to impoverished villages and communities in developing countries. They volunteer their time and talents working to improve the lives of children and their families living in poverty. In 2004, in response to the interest of more and more people who wanted to donate and be a part of the work they were doing, Adrianne and Rick formed a non-profit organization called Kids International Development Society (K.I.D.S.).

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