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.

The beauty industry is proving a popular path

Salon students at Friends International's Mith Samlanh tend to their customers last week. (Photo by: SOVANN PHILONG)

A recent renovation at Mith Samlanh will offer more varied training for the growing number of students in the beauty sector. (Photo by: SOVANN PHILONG)

Monday, 16 March 2009
Written by Nora Lindstrom
The Phnom Penh Post

A variety of schools, from expensive private courses to a free program offered by an NGO working with street children, offer a lucrative career choice.

From the roadside barber to the top-end salon, the beauty industry in Phnom Penh offers something for everyone, at very affordable prices. While the quality remains highly variable, recent market developments are likely to result in the offering of more professional services as more beauty therapist hopefuls seek formal training.

"We need to keep up with the market so our students can find good jobs," said Natalie Elverd, a technical adviser at the NGO Friends International, in reference to recent renovations at the beauty rooms and nail bar of the organisation's Mith Samlanh school.

"We did the upgrade because we need to follow changes in the local economy. There has been an increase in salons, so we wanted to improve placement opportunities for our young people by providing them with a better learning environment to gain increasingly better skills," she said, adding that the renovations were made possible thanks to aid from the Australian government.

The Mith Samlanh students, who were formerly street children, are given the opportunity to choose a career in hair and beauty care from a variety of other potential careers.

While the beauty rooms are open to the public only during the centre's monthly flea markets, the nail bar inside the Friends 'n' Stuff shop is open on a daily basis and allows students to gain experience in a real working environment. "The idea behind opening this business for the students is for them to have hands-on training with the public. It gives them the opportunity to gain confidence and improve their [future] placement opportunities," Elverd said. She added that the training at Mith Samlanh also encompasses personal hygiene, customer service skills, how to care for and sterilise tools and how to keep the workspace clean.

"The training is of good standard, as well as constantly improving. The students are very popular and in high demand in the employment market. We often have job opportunities waiting for them," said Elverd, who herself has 20 years of experience from the Australian beauty industry.

There are several other beauty schools around Phnom Penh as well, catering to vast amounts of beauty therapist hopefuls, mainly girls. While the training at Mith Samlanh is free, many private schools charge significant amounts of money for their training programs.

Christina's Beauty School on Sihanouk Boulevard has achieved a good reputation in the Cambodian beauty industry during its almost decade- long existence. Here, an eight- to 10-month full course costs $590 and covers a curriculum of 19 subjects, while shorter courses focussing on specific skills are also available. Owner Sun Heang said the school is attended by more than 300 students, with recent graduates usually earning between $50 and $100 per month, depending on skills. "Once they finish the course, we also offer them the opportunity to work here in my salon, or else we help them find employment somewhere else," she said, adding that there is constant interest in the courses she offers.

"THE TRAINING IS OF GOOD STANDARD, AS WELL AS CONSTANTLY IMPROVING."

Socheat Beauty School offers training similar to Christina's, albeit at a slightly higher cost of $750 for a full course. Srei Oun, 23, has been studying there for approximately eight months along with some 100 other trainees. "I like it here. I have a lot of friends, also. My favourite thing is cutting hair," she said, though was slightly insecure about how much longer it would take for her to master all the skills necessary for a good job in the industry.

Srei Oun's sister Srei Neang, 27, has been a hairdresser for 15 years and in contrast to her sibling learned the trade through working her way up. "I started by working at Central Market when I was 12 doing manicures and pedicures, but have since worked at the salons of many top-end hotels," Srei Neang explained. "You can make a good living as a hairdresser," she added.

Srei Neang thinks it's better to learn while working, as opposed to going to school. "You can practise in reality straight away, and also you earn money," she said, noting that formal training can be too expensive for many people. Nevertheless, she does acknowledge that there are many salons in Phnom Penh where staff have no training whatsoever and that this is a problem. "They can open anywhere, but they don't know how to do [the services provided]" she said.

As the industry develops, services provided are likely to improve as more salons have professionally trained staff. A downside of this may be an increase in prices, yet for the time being hair and beauty treatments remain affordable to most, even if their quality is sometimes dubious.

The revamped Nail Bar at Friends 'n' Stuff will be open for business at the next Friends flea market, on Saturday, March 28.

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)

3 Americans, 1 Briton drive Trabant cars to raise money for charity work in Cambodia

By SOPHENG CHEANG, Associated Press Writer
AP - Thursday, January 10

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Three Americans and a Briton, after traveling through 21 countries, have arrived in Cambodia by means of two unlikely vehicles - the much maligned Trabant cars produced by the former East Germany.

Throughout their six-month journey, their cars broke down some 320 times. But despite the odds, they reached Cambodia in their quest to raise money for street children in this impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

The Trabant, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, is made mostly of plastic and has a top speed of 80 kilometers (50 miles) per hour. Its considerable deficiencies have long been the butt of jokes.

John Lovejoy, a 26-year-old American who is the team leader, said Wednesday that the journey has so far raised US$16,000 (euro 10,880), still far short of the original target of US$300,000 (euro 204,000).

He said the money will be given to Mith Samlanh and M'Lop Tapang, two non-governmental organizations working with street children in Cambodia.

"We're passionate about this cause and knew we'd have to take an unusual spin on traditional fundraising tactics to really get the word out," said Lovejoy, from Washington, D.C.

The trip started out in Germany in July last year. It initially included eight people from Europe and the United States, but four dropped out along the way due to problems with the vehicles.

He said that on some days the cars had to be fixed up to 10 times.

The group traveled the cities of Europe, the desert of Turkmenistan, the mountains of Tajikistan, the Kazakh steppe and Siberia during winter, said Dan Murdoch, a 25-year-old Briton from London.

Last month, his team made it across China, spent Christmas and New Year in Laos before arriving in Cambodia via Thailand on Monday, Murdoch said.

"The last few weeks have been really challenging, the cars have been giving us a lot of grief," he said.

After traveling more than 26,000 kilometers (16,100 miles), the group left Phnom Penh Wednesday for Sihanoukville, Cambodia's coastal city, to continue their fundraising and enjoy the beach after the tough trip.