Organization for Street Children Celebrates 15 Years

A group of young children are learning how to draw in Friends International and Mith Samlanh Organization in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (Photo: Courtesy of Friends International and Mith Samlanh)

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Nuch Sarita, VOA Khmer
Washington, D.C Friday, 25 June 2010

“Our Cambodian and foreign customers love to order the famous fish amok, curry saramann and beef stir-fried with red ants.”

Friends International, a development group that helps street children build life skills, celebrated its 15th anniversary Friday, with an exhibition of children’s art and a cocktail party at its newest restaurant.

The group has helped thousands of children “who face daily violence and experience a high level of drug use to reintegrate into their families, public school, vocational training and then employment,” Map Somaya, its program director, told VOA Khmer.

The art exhibition shows works from children created during the lifetime of the organization at Romdeng restaurant, which belongs to the organization and is used to help train children in restaurant work, from designing menus to preparing and serving food.

Friends, which also goes by the Khmer name Mith Samlanh, has a team of 250 staff that help around 19,000 children per year, including primary classes for 750 children and 11 vocational courses for about 850. It also provides temporary accommodation for many.

“Our Cambodian and foreign customers love to order the famous fish amok, curry saramann and beef stir-fried with red ants,” said Sophon, a student chef at Romdeng.

Artwork on display includes work like “Flowers in the Garden,” by a nine-year-old named Vatey, who said she likes nature and escaping outside when she feels angry. Seeing flowers and trees make her calmer, she said.

For Children, Brick-Painting Funds Hope

Tiny paintings are providing art therapy, and funding, for some of Phnom Penh's poorest.

By Ros Sothea, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
23 June 2008

Click here to listen the Khmer audio program

On a small 1 centimeter by 2 centimeter brick, Chea Veav painted a picture of himself and his mother walking on a small road surrounded by green rice fields and a mountain. For the 10-year-old boy, the painting was an unrealized fantasy, an imaginary trip with a mother who abandoned him two years ago, following the death of his father.

Chea Veav now lives with his grandmother in a Phnom Penh slum, dependant on the collection of morning glory from the riverbank for survival.

But Chea Veav's art and the painted bricks of other children are helping raise money and awareness and acting as therapy for the children, helping them overcome traumas of the past and imagine a better future.

"I feel hurt that I can't live with my mother, but drawing pictures makes me happy," a skinny Chea Veav said, in tears.

About 70 more children have joined in the brick painting, all of them between the ages of 8 and 20, and most of them orphans that live in the capital's poorest communities. Provided sponsorship by Mith Samlan, or Friends, organization, the children spend three hours each morning drawing pictures on their bricks.

Individual sponsors can then pay to "purchase" the bricks, though these are in fact kept by the children. More than 1,000 bricks decorated with schools, flowers, forests, rice fields and cityscapes were used to build a wall at Friends' Phnom Penh center. Proceeds have gone toward payments for the center.

"On a brick, children can draw what happened to them in the past, what they dream in the future, and provide children with creative ideas," said Sem Ratana, cultural programmer for Friends.

Chea Veav said his brick drawing was a representation of a future hope.

"I draw people going to the mountain, representing my mom and I visiting Tamao mountain," he said. "If my mom comes back, I can go to the mountain."

Cambodian street kids spearhead Khmer food revival

Tue Jan 15, 2008
By Gillian Murdoch

Phnom Penh (Reuters Life!) - First kill your tarantulas by pressing hard on their bodies then remove the fangs and wash the spiders thoroughly, advises the glossy in-house recipe book from Phnom Penh's Romdeng restaurant.

Served with a lime and pepper sauce, the crispy arachnids, fried to remove their venom, became a delicacy during Khmer Rouge reign over Cambodia when Pol Pot's plan to create an agrarian utopia forced millions from cities to the country.

The spiders are part of the restaurant's mission to champion Khmer food from the present and dating back to the Khmer Kingdom of over 1,000 years ago while also helping provide work and a new life for street kids.

Virtually annihilated during the Khmer Rouge's reign that ended in 1979, Cambodia's traditional specialties are less well-known than Western-friendly pad thais and rice-paper rolls from bigger neighbors Thailand and Vietnam although many regional dishes have their roots in Khmer cooking.

But with Cambodia rapidly developing, restaurants such as Romdeng are helping spearhead a comeback, said founder Sebastien Marot and top chef Sok Chhong who put together the cookbook "From Spiders to Water Lillies."

While the spiders may seem like a gimmick, the restaurant also has a serious social mission -- getting young people off the streets and into employment and education.

Run by Cambodian non-profit Mit Samlanh or Friends, Romdeng and its sister restaurant Friends are staffed by former street kids who design the menus, cook the dishes, wait tables, and even sew the silk cushions for the chairs.

So what will Cambodia's breakthrough dish be if tarantulas are not to everyone's taste?

The country is considering submitting its "prahok" fish paste and peppercorns from the southeastern town of Kampot for trademarking as distinctive national products but it is "amok" curry that probably has the widest crossover appeal.

Milder than other curries, as Cambodia's traditional dishes were first cooked up in the days before traders introduced chili to the region, it is named after the dark green amok leaf that's shredded into the dish as a seasoning.

Not surprisingly in a country crisscrossed by the Mekong and two other mighty rivers, the Tonle Sap and the Bassac, fish and shrimps feature heavily on Cambodian menus.

A range of local vegetable dishes also get a creative spin, in dishes like morning glory and water spinach salad, and sautéed rice and chive flower cakes on green papaya salad.

As there are no starters or mains in Khmer culture, all the food comes at once, and there are also no knives so don't wait for anything more than your fork and spoon.

Washed down the meal with a bottle of local Anchor beer, a shot of honey-flavored Khmer rice wine, or fancy combination juices such as sweet tamarind, guava and honey.

True converts to Khmer cooking can end the meal with a commitment by buying the cookbook that feeds its profits back into the endeavor.

Romdeng:#21, Street 278 Phnom Penh (Tel:+ 855 92 219 565)

http://www.streetfriends.org/CONTENT/BUSINESS/romdeng.swf-

Friends: #215, Street 13, Phnom Penh (Tel:+855 12 802 072)
http://www.streetfriends.org/CONTENT/BUSINESS/restaurant_final.

(Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)