Cambodian government moves to limit orphanage boom

Sep 8, 2011

PHNOM PENH (AFP) - The Cambodian government on Thursday introduced guidelines aiming to better protect orphans and vulnerable children after childcare experts voiced alarm over an unregulated boom in orphanages.

The new standards emphasise that placing children in institutions should be 'a last resort', after Unicef said earlier this year that three quarters of the 12,000 children in Cambodia's orphanages had at least one living parent.

'At all times, efforts should be made to keep children in families or community-based care, with residential care as a last resort and a temporary arrangement,' the newly adopted Standards and Guidelines document states.

Cambodian Social Affairs Minister Ith Sam Heng told AFP the guidelines, drafted with the help of Unicef and other children's rights groups, were 'very important' in helping to keep families together.

Cambodian AIDS orphans have good plans for future

By Zhang Ruiling

PHNOM PENH, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- They are a hidden population, living with HIV/AIDS at a very young age. What we do know is that they are very vulnerable. It is this state of being hidden that puts AIDS orphans at special risk during their lifetime.

But those living with HIV in Cambodia are lucky. They live in the National Borey for Infants and Children, a state-run orphanage located in the suburb of the capital city Phnom Penh, which is supported by the government and humanitarian agencies.

"The center accommodates more than 100 orphans, among them 27 are living with HIV, and Sei La is one of them," Sani, a teacher at the center, told Xinhua while pointing at the boy who was orphaned at an early age when his parents died of AIDS.

Sei La is a typical Khmer boy with brown skin. He looks happy and healthy. He said he had just returned from school.

"How old are you, Sei La? Do you know China?" we asked.

"I am 15 years old now. I know China, it's a big country with a lot of people," Sei La answered with a shy smile.

"I am happy here. I have friends here and the teachers treat us like mothers. I study in the Khmer language school in the morning, and in the afternoon I go to English school," he continued.

"I have been working here for nearly 25 years. I love these poor children, they are just like my own sons and daughters," said Sani. Her warmth for these children is reciprocated, as Sani's proteges respectfully call her "Mama."

Sani told us that Sei La was a clever boy, and that he worked part-time in a small restaurant in the city every Sunday.

"Just clean dirty dishes, set tables, and serve as an assistant," he said.

"The payment is little, just 3,000 riel (about 0.73 U.S. dollars)," he admitted. "I only want to earn some pocket money, so I can buy some snacks and sometimes repair my bicycle, but first of all, I want to gain some experience for seeking a good job in the future."

When talking about the HIV/AIDS disease, Sei La looked calm while replying that he knew he was infected with HIV.

"I was very scared at first and hated my parents, but after I learned about HIV/AIDS, I know if I keep taking pills and do some exercise, the disease can be controlled," he explained.

We have reason to believe that Sei La has already overcome his fear and public prejudice, and learned how to stand on his own two feet.

On the playground, we saw a group of children playing frisbee and some girls playing on the swirls.

"I like here very much," Nani, a five-year-old girl, said while riding a bike in the yard.

Enjoying the sight of little boys and girls giggling and running around, one can hardly imagine that this is an orphanage and that these lovely children are AIDS orphans. At that moment, we gratefully realized that poverty and illness would never prevail over the purity of a child's mind, and that these children's aspirations for living and learning would rise above these impediments.

Mak Phanna, director of the National Borey for Infants and Children of the Department of Child Welfare in the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veteran and Youth Rehabilitation, told us that the Royal Government of Cambodia always paid great attention to children, especially the disabled and orphans infected with HIV. In effect, the government has adopted a law on HIV and AIDS, which went into effect in 2002.

Cambodia diagnosed the first case of HIV in 1993, and HIV prevalence in the country peaked at 3.7 percent in 1997. Chhim Sareth, director of the AIDS Health Foundation, Cambodia Care Organization, said Cambodia had one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the region, but the good news was that the rate was decreasing every year.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that 75,000 Cambodians live with HIV, but the prevalence of the virus among the population halved to 0.9 percent between 1998 and 2006. The measures taken by the government include publicity campaigns and education to raise understanding of HIV/AIDS. Also, a condom campaign, offering free HIV tests, has made some progress.

"It is unfortunate for these children to suffer this illness. However, it is very fortunate for them to have received various assistance. Through much support, these children have attended elementary school without paying any tuition, and have received treatment and medicines free of charge," Phanna said.

We also have high hopes for these children and wish them a happy and healthy life.

Cambodia's children calling 'Sophy' home

Thu, Apr. 24, 2008
By KARA LOPP
klopp@charlotteobserver.com
Charlotte Observer (North Carolina, USA)

MINT HILL --When Mory Om returned to her native Cambodia in 2001 after a 10-year absence, she didn't like what she saw.

"There were children walking around the streets naked with nothing to eat," she said. "When I was walking down the street, I was wondering `What was I to do?' "

Now after two more trips to Cambodia -- this time with Christian missionary groups -- she's figured out how she can help.

Om, called "Sophy" by her American friends, will leave her Mint Hill home next month to open an orphanage in Cambodia.

The store where she works, Home-Styles Gallery, which houses 50 vendors selling ladies accessories and housewares, is helping the effort by collecting money and children's over-the-counter medicines.

She's partnering with Warm Blankets Orphan Care International, a nonprofit Christian mission, to build the orphanage. But she still needs money for furniture, classroom supplies, food and more.

Cambodia is an Asian country bordered by Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. It was a happy place to grow up, said Om, 49.

But civil war in the 1970s ravaged the country -- and her family. One of 11 siblings, Om became separated from all but one brother, one sister and her mother. The four moved to the Charlotte area in 1991. She doesn't know what became of her other siblings.

Her younger siblings were sent to work in other parts of Cambodia, she said. Her father died in 1972.

During the war, Om was forced to farm and given meager food rations. Sometimes one scoop of rice was given for 20 people, she said.

After the war, she moved to the United States in 1981.

'Give them a good life'

Many of Om's co-workers at HomeStyles didn't know the passion she had for Cambodian orphans until recently, said vendor Susie Shoemaker, who sells makeup at the store.A former clinical nurse specialist, Om has had an alterations booth at HomeStyles for two years.

Om was nervous but she recently spoke to the store's 49 other vendors about her dream, explaining why she was leaving. When she did, the usually chatty, flamboyant women were stiff and silent, and many were crying, Shoemaker said.

"She has a heart, oh my goodness," Shoemaker said of Om, placing her hand over her heart. "If you hear her tell you about it, then you know what you're backing."

Shoemaker said she admires Om for leaving the frills of the U.S. behind.

"She's been here for so long and she's lived the good life," she said.

Describing herself as an independent woman, Om said she doesn't care about material comforts -- just her country's children. She will leave behind her boyfriend, brother and sister when she goes to Cambodia. Her mother died in 1999. She doesn't have any children.

"It's to save the children's hope and future," she said.

She already has the land where she can build her orphanage.

On her third trip to Cambodia in 2004, she bought one partially wooded acre, in the Kaoh Kong Province southwest of Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. The land is across from an established orphanage that teaches sports skills, she said. She paid $2,300, she said.

The established orphanage is run by Buddhists and its staff didn't want Om's help because she is a Christian, she said.

There's a small house on the property, complete with an outhouse. Her cousin is looking after the property now.

Om wants her center to focus on teaching children English. If Cambodians know English, they can make a good living as translators for missionaries or tourists, she said. Now many orphans live in landfills, where Om said she once saw a fight over one can of soda.

"If you give them English it's just like you give them a good life," she said.

Om admits her own English isn't perfect. She gets words confused --such as kitchen and chicken -- but she has the training, and passion, to help. She has been taking classes at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College toward an education degree.

But Cambodia is suffering now. The price of rice and basic supplies is at least double what it was since Om's trip to Cambodia last year, she said.

If she were anyone else, she wouldn't go to Cambodia now, Om said.

"If you were me you might cancel. I should've cancelled, it's a bad situation. But what I would like to say is trust in the Lord and obey his will.

"It's been my goal and my dream," she said.

Want to help?

HomeStyles Gallery, 11237 Lawyers Road, is collecting children's over-the-counter medicines and money for Mory "Sophy" Om to open an orphanage in Cambodia. To donate, stop by the store, open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. Donations also can be mailed to: Cambodian Mission Church c/o St. John's United Methodist Church, 4305 Monroe Road, Charlotte, NC 28205

On the Web

Visit Om's blog at:
www.theorphanageproject2007.blogspot.com

Widow Rescues Cambodian Orphans

Marie Ens

At 73 years of age, a former pastor’s wife wants her life to continue to count. She launched a mission in Phnom Penh to help widows and orphans.

By Emily Wierenga

Many of us dream of retirement as a time when we’ll no longer need to lift a finger. Not Saskatchewan native Marie Ens. When asked to retire from The Christian and Missionary Alliance in 2000, the widow decided to start an organization in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, called Rescue, which would allow her to keep on working.

“I didn’t want my life to consist of just sitting there, waiting to die,” says the 73-year-old author who spoke at MissionFest 2008 in Toronto. “I still wanted my life to count. Even after my husband passed away in ’91, I felt God say my missionary career wasn’t over.”

The former pastor’s wife and mother of four joined the Alliance in 1961. Along with her husband and children, she worked in Cambodia on and off until the country’s collapse in 1975, when they returned to Canada for a short while to plant a church, then headed to France where they worked with Cambodian refugees.

Whereas before she trained pastors and started churches, Rescue allows Ens to work with hundreds of orphans and AIDS victims at an orphanage called Place of Rescue.

“The work I’m doing now is more natural,” she says. “Now that I’m an older woman I want to be a grandmother.” With 12 grandbabies of her own and 140 at Place of Rescue, her desire has been more than realized.

When asked about her vision for the children, Ens replies: “That they soar like a kite. We [she works with a Cambodian director and houseparents] want them to reach their full potential. Whatever God has in mind for them we want to see fulfilled.”

Only four years old, the organization already consists of an orphanage, two large homes called “granny houses” for elderly women, another building for young pregnant factory workers and a transition house that assists the orphans with obtaining life skills and a job.

Following MissionFest Toronto, where Ens taught seminars on Third World countries and AIDS, she is returning to the land and people she has fallen in love with. “I hope to keep doing this for the rest of my life,” she says.

Emily Wierenga is a writer and artist based in Blyth, Ontario.
Originally published in Faith Today, April/May 2008.

The gift of love that crosses the oceans

Making a little contribution: Ginette Patey in her Wallington home

Hard at work: Among the subjects Makura is studying is English

Thursday 30th August 2007
This is Local London (UK)

In the land of Angkor Wat, a Wallington PA found spiritual enlightenment of a different kind. KEVIN BARNES talks to Ginette Patey about how she came to make her little contribution' to help Cambodia's abandoned kids

Ginette Patey passed the sandstone spires of the ruined Angkor Wat temples and encountered a vision from another world.

The PA from Wallington is hardly alone. Nearly a million tourists enter the suffocating Cambodian jungle each year in search of enlightenment.

Her moment of inspiration diverged from the norm, though, in that it came several miles beyond the cicadas and carved stone giants that guard the city of gods.

It was only when Ginette travelled south, leaving behind the idyllic ancient capital of the Khmer civilisation, that she knew her life would never be the same.

In the tumbledown rooms of Kampong Cham orphanage, the 65-year-old found more than iconography and spectacular architecture: she found the grandson she always longed for.

They called him Rat Makura (State February [KI-Media Note: it should be Rath Makara, State January]) after the month he was found, abandoned and half-clothed at two months old.

He was tiny, ragged and shoeless - dressed from head to toe in yellow. Ginette thought he looked like a "grubby little puppy in a basket".

When she enquired who cared for Makura and his 70 fellow orphans, nurses told her they relied on sponsors. At this moment something inside Ginette clicked.

Her own mother had died in her teens and although she had a son, James, 39, there were no signs of grandchildren.

She says: "I knew right then I had to do something. If I walked away from this opportunity, I'd regret it for the rest of my life.

"For me, Makura embodied every little sad face you see in those adverts.

"I thought, well, I can't afford all the orphans, but I can afford one of them. It would be my little contribution, my way of giving him the chance to have better life."

For the rest of her air-conditioned, two-week cruise along the Mekong River she found it impossible to erase the image of Makura, his eyes brown and pleading, from her mind.

Other tourists laughed at her. They told her to forget the orphanage, said there was no way her money would reach its target. But Ginette simply couldn't forget.

The instant she returned home to Herald Gardens she began to send £16 each month for Makura's upkeep, and £63 to cover his education for a year.

The money ensures the orphan attends a private school in the morning, where he is taught English, and a Cambodian school in the afternoon.

Ginette also puts gifts in the post - most recently, a football, a toy car, a satchel and shorts.

And, like all good grandmothers, she dutifully sends a card on his birthday and presents at Christmas.

Barely a couple of months pass without her calling to speak to staff or to hear how Makura's English is developing.

"He knows who you are," the director of the orphanage told her excitedly one day.

"He tells everyone his mother has blonde hair and blue eyes and lives far away."

Moved by this knowledge, Ginette had little need to trawl through holiday brochures to select a holiday destination earlier this year.

In February, 18 months after their first meeting, she retraced her steps to Kampong Cham orphanage to see Makura, now aged six.

When she stumbled on him, peering shyly around a corner, she nearly wept.

Ginette always believed that giving the boy direct aid was a more efficient way of helping the destitute than donating money to impersonal fundraising campaigns.

Her philosophy is: you can't save the world but if you can save one life it's better than none.

As she strolled through the orphanage grounds with Makura, and he slipped his small hand into hers, Ginette knew her support had made a difference, knew she had been accepted.

Still, she wanted to do more. Having received confirmation from the British Embassy that her sponsorship was above board, she set up a charitable account with Barclays. In an unexpected show of generosity, the bank then agreed to match her donations pound for pound.

So far about 12 sponsors have pledged funds to the Cambodian Orphans' Appeal. Ginette instructs them to ask for photos, so they can see the orphans with any gifts they send.

She plans to visit regularly but has all but forgotten the temples that brought her to the country.

Tourist guides may fete the labyrinthine architecture in Cambodia but it has taken this "grandmother" from Wallington to build a future for the country's 3,000 orphans.

To donate money to Aspeca, the organisation that runs 14 orphanages in Cambodia, or sponsor a child, email ginette.patey@googlemail.com

Mum to 14 ... at just 21

Tara Winkler with some of her charges. It took her just two weeks to establish a new home for the AIDS orphans and victims of child trafficking.

August 26, 2007
Caroline Marcus
The Sydney Morning Herald

TARA Winkler had an enviable life. She grew up in Bondi, enjoyed the beach lifestyle and was establishing a career in the film industry.

But after a holiday to Cambodia she gave it all up to devote herself to rescuing orphans from a life of abuse and neglect.

During that visit two years ago Winkler was deeply moved by the suffering of children she encountered at an orphanage at Battambang, in the country's west.

She established the Cambodian Children's Trust to support the orphanage, which she described as heartbreakingly run-down.

As the months passed, rumours intensified of underhand dealings by the orphanage's former director.

Early this year, Ms Winkler returned to Australia on a three-month fund-raising trip, and took measures to safeguard all donations to the orphanage.

She went back to Cambodia this month after learning the orphanage's director and staff had been removed by the former director and replaced with his relatives.

The former director allegedly has a history of embezzling donations from foreign sponsors, funnelling the money into his own property and livestock.

"It got a bit nasty and all of the children were being abused really badly - physically and verbally," Ms Winkler told The Sun-Herald from Battambang. "They have lost several kilograms each and look like little stick figures and really unhealthy."

Seven of the children have hepatitis B and one girl is HIV positive.

In a desperate bid to save the children, the young Australian set up her own orphanage - in just two weeks.

Battambang's Governor and government authorities gave her team full support to remove the children from the former orphanage and rehouse them, Ms Winkler said.

She now houses all 14 orphans, aged between 5 and 17, and has employed a full-time nurse, local director, social worker and cook.

"I wasn't prepared to be setting up my own centre so soon but I'm just relieved to have them out," she said.

"They're all from horrible backgrounds, with many the victims of child trafficking and others orphaned by HIV/AIDS."

In order to survive, the orphanage must raise $50,000 a year.

Ms Winkler intends to transform the orphanage into a sustainable "eco-village". She plans to spend five years and $2million introducing development projects that will enable the orphanage to support itself.

Her designs include buying a 40-hectare plot to establish a plantation as well as a fruit, vegetable and herb permaculture garden.

A medical facility, animal clinic, education program and English school are in the works.

To help, see http://www.cambodianchildrenstrust.org.

Click here to donate to Cambodian Children Trust.

HELPING OUT: 50-year teacher is humanitarian traveler

Ridgefielder Darla Shaw was photographed with one of the traditional dancers she saw perform while in Cambodia where she helped pre-school teachers learn literacy teaching techniques.

Shrymon is the subject of a book that Ridgefield’s Darla Shaw is writing on a day in the life of a child in a Cambodian village. The book will be given to donors who sponsor children through the Hearts and Hands for Cambodia program.

Apr 22, 2007
By Macklin Reid,
Ridgefield Press Staff (Connecticut, USA)

At an orphanage in one of the poorest villages of rural Cambodia, children sing “London Bridge is falling down” in English as well as their native Khmer. They play “Duck, Duck, Goose,” as the kids at any preschool in Ridgefield might. They have books and art materials, and are learning to read through some of the state-of-the-art teaching techniques used in the United States.

Behind it all is Darla Shaw, a Ridgefielder with 50 years of teaching behind her who is anything but retired.

“By the time we left, they knew our nursery rhymes, they were singing our songs, they were playing our games,” she said. “It’s amazing, in a couple of weeks time these children were so focused and excited to have us there.”

“We did things like Duck, Duck, Goose, London Bridge — all the typical things that they would have no knowledge of — the people would translate it, they would do it in English and Khmer.”

Dr. Shaw, a professor of education at Western Connecticut State University, went to Cambodia in January. She has lived in Ridgefield some 40 years and taught in the Ridgefield public schools for 38 years, before starting with WestConn 12 years ago.

Accompanying her to Cambodia were about 15 students from the graduate reading program she heads at WestConn — people in advanced studies of how reading can most effectively be taught.

Humanitarian travel

“It was a humanitarian travel program to Cambodia. It was for students, basically,” Dr. Shaw said. “But this has been my new thrust in life: humanitarian travel. I decided to go along, I feel I have expertise I can share in any country.

“No matter where you go, particularly in Third World countries, they’re looking for help with any kind of literacy, and they’ll provide an interpreter,” she said. “I did staff development there, and I’d have a translator beside me, and it worked very well.”

The first contribution the group made was in the form of supplies that they donated to the orphanage, which also functions as a kind of day care center and preschool for an impoverished village in the Cambodian countryside near Battambong.

“They never had any books, we brought over books — books in English, because they want them to learn English and Khmer,” Dr. Shaw said.

“Each of us could take two bags that were 70 pounds, so what we took was very little, except supplies and materials,” Dr. Shaw said. “...Books, markers and construction paper, any kind of art material. They don’t have any kind of educational games, educational toys — they have nothing.”

With the translators, Dr. Shaw and her students helped the workers in the orphanage learn ways to engage young students in learning to read. “I did emergent literacy — that’s like a preschool type of thing,” Dr. Shaw said.

She an her students work with the Cambodia teachers, showing them how to adapt teaching techniques from the West. “There were 150 children in the school and they had five teachers, and then I trained our students and their teachers in various literacy techniques,” she said.

At the end of the month’s stay, they put on a play. “They’d never put on any plays, or had plays, or performances. They kind of brought the kids together and made certain they had food and a playground, but they never had any kind of a cultural program.”

“As a culminating activity we put on the play ‘The Cambodian Cinderella.’ I have 75 Cinderella books in my collection and I had the Cambodian Cinderella. It’s much more violent than ours ... We kind of adapted it.”

The school also provides the children with food — a lunchtime meal — and with clothing, and toothbrushes. The children gets baths there.

“Our kids were so surprised — they bathed the kids every day,” Dr. Shaw said.

“The school is just so important to these families.”

Hearts and Hands book

As a result of the trip, Dr. Shaw is also writing a book about a day in the life of a child in the village. It will be part of the package given to donors who sign on to sponsor children through the Hearts and Hands for Cambodia program.

Dr. Shaw based the book on a day in the life of a girl, Shrymon, who wasn’t one of the orphans but comes to the orphanage and day-care center from the village where she lives with her family. Dr. Shaw had gotten to know her because she had a badly infected burn on her leg that the American visitors helped her get properly treated. “Otherwise they just use the native potions and sometimes it gets infected,” Dr. Shaw said.

“She just had this very sad look on her face.”

But she chose Shrymon because she was told her family was typical of a poor rural Cambodians.

“Twelve to 15 people, they live in one room, particularly in the rainy season. They might have places outside, hammocks outside, they cook outside. There’s no material possessions at all. And it’s one extended family,” Dr. Shaw said.

“This particular woman had 12 children; eight of them have survived, and she’s in her early 40’s, so she will have more. When we went to visit her, she had a child at each breast.

“We had an interpreter, and we asked if she had any hopes of dreams. She just said ‘food.’ It’s just survival,” Dr. Shaw said.

“They usually only have one meal, and sometimes that meal is just like rice with water.”

Writing the book has its challenges — there’s a wide cultural gap.

“It was really very hard to write the book, and not make it a sad book,” Dr. Shaw said. “...It’s their life, and they’re not sad, really. They don’t know anything else. They have very close families, very loving relationships.”

The book is aimed at an audience of Americans — donors.

“The book is very rewarding and uplifting and it shows how a school can change the ‘a day in the life’ of the child,” Dr. Shaw said.

“When they go to the school, their whole life changes, their whole concept of what they can do, what they can be.”

The work at the orphanage village day-care center is important, Dr. Shaw said, because very few families can afford the cost of travel to and attend real schools.

“A few will go on to grade school, and the percentage that goes on after grade school is so small, 2% or 3%,” she said.

Killing fields

The work is against the backdrop of Cambodia’s recent history — the war, the Khmer Rouge, the anti-colonialist revolution that turned into a violent purge against people the revolutionaries felt were tainted by association with the West.

“I knew what went on in Cambodia, and it wasn’t that long ago,” Dr. Shaw said. “They wiped out the brightest, the best, the creative, the artisans — they killed them off. They really lost a whole generation or two. These people are starting from scratch.

“We went to the killing fields. We went to the inquisition museum. This was where they tortured the people.”

One legacy of the county’s insane years is the shattered state of many survivors.

“The people are dying off in their 40’s. Even though they weren’t killed, their health is so bad, and they’re just not living,” Dr. Shaw said.

Rotary water projects

Dr. Shaw visited places where the Sustainable Cambodia project has been working to improve rural people’s lives.

“Sustainable Cambodia,” she said. “You begin to dig wells. You begin to filter the water. You build fish hatcheries.”

Rotary International is a supporter of Sustainable Cambodia efforts, particularly the water projects, and Dr. Shaw spoke to Ridgefield’s Rotary Club on April 6.

“You see all these big boxes, that are water filtration systems, and they all say ‘Rotary International’ — there’s a big Rotary seal on them.

Sustainable Cambodia also organizes “pig passes” as a means of donors in the West helping rural villagers in a way that will be passed on and grow. “You give $40 and they get a pig,” Dr. Shaw explained.

The villager who receives the pig has an obligation. Every time the pig has a litter — usually three or four piglets — one of them is passed on to another villager. “Then he begins to raise pigs,” she said.

The Sustainable Cambodia movement is based on the idea that there must be a better model for helping the people there than building factories and making them dependent on globalized economy.

“This was the most amazing thing I saw, how they transformed entire villages,” she said. “There are all these volunteers there showing them how to raise the pigs, and organic gardens, and fish hatcheries. They’re just starting something with bees. They had a cooperative rice bin, so nobody goes hungry.”

The Ridgefield Rotary, Dr. Shaw said, is considering getting together with some other local Rotary clubs to support both the water projects that Rotary International is doing with Sustainable Cambodia, and the orphanage school that she and her WestConn students are now working with.

She was impressed with the dedication of the volunteers.

“There were people from all over, some for a year, some for six months, getting no pay, putting their own money into the process, because they cared so much,” she said.

There was great cooperation among the different aid workers and volunteers.

“Everybody knows everybody, and you sort of network and piggyback and you help each other, and I find that very rewarding,” Dr. Shaw said.

“...We’re here to help the people. What can we do to help the people? What resources do you have? What resources do we have? It’s a real sharing of resources, and how can we work cooperatively to make life better for these people.”

Founders Hall talk

On April 19 Dr. Shaw gave another presentation, this one at Founders Hall. She’ll discussed “humanitarian travel.”

“About six years ago I spent the summer with Jane Goodall in Tanzania, that’s when I got my first taste of humanitarian travel,” she said. “After that I went to Cuba. I was part of the first delegation that went in to work on literacy in the schools, maybe five years ago.

“When I went to Cuba, I saw that you can make a difference.”

Since then she’s been on trips to the Bahamas and Puerto Rico.

“I’m going to Brazil and working on a medical project during March vacation,” she said. “Then I’m going in the summer back to Puerto Rico.”

She has her WestConn education students working with social work students from Fordham on a literacy project in the Dominican Republic.

She’s also involved in work with the Lakota Indians in South Dakota. “I’m very interested in oral histories and I’m going to be working with elders. I’m taking the oral histories from the elders and training the students to make their oral history books.”

As someone old enough to retire, she admits, a lot of her work stems from a desire to keep doing things with her life.

“I’ve got to,” she said. “I see people my age sitting there. I say, “When you go, you’re going to go.’ I want to go active.”

Marathoner raising money for Cambodian orphans

Brooke Barthels runs down Wisconsin Street while completing an over 13 mile run Saturday morning as practice for the Oshkosh Half Marathon. By running the race, Barthels is trying to raise money for children in Cambodia. Oshkosh Northwestern photo by Laura May

April 9, 2007
By Krista B. Ledbetter
of The Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisconsin, USA)

Brooke Barthels will celebrate her 27th birthday on April 14, the same day she's running the Oshkosh Half Marathon. But before thinking of herself, she's got her mind on Cambodia.

Since returning from a three-month backpacking trip through Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos in January, Barthels, of Oshkosh, has been training for both the Oshkosh half and Green Bay's Cellcom Marathon. But she's in it for more than the rush and the finishers medal. She's hoping to raise money for Cambodian orphanages.

"I've always been interested in helping with orphanages," the substitute teacher said.

After a war ended in Cambodia in 1979, children have been left without homes, without parents and with parents who can't afford to raise them.

"I was overcome with grief by how these children live," she said, after having spent time at a Cambodian orphanage during her time in Southeast Asia.

That's when she decided to help.

Barthel's ran her first half marathon in Japan, while in the country teaching, and followed that last year with the Lakefront Marathon in Milwaukee – her first full marathon.

"I've always worked out," she said. "And while abroad, the only way to stay fit was to run."

And she's certainly been abroad.

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 2004, she looked into joining the Peace Corps until she found herself at an international job fair, where she landed a teaching job in Honduras. After Honduras, she taught in Japan for a year.

Today she's stateside, having returned to her family in Oshkosh after her most recent trip abroad. But in the fall she hopes to return to Cambodia, hopefully with some donated dollars to give to the Cambodian Children's Fund to help supply orphaned children with clothes, food and needed supplies.

She's hoping people will support her half marathon and marathon efforts with per-mile sponsorships or donations of any sum. After the Oshkosh race this weekend, her next fundraising race, the Cellcom Marathon, is May 20.

After Barthels returns to Southeast Asia in the fall, she hopes to volunteer at an orphanage in Africa. If enough money is raised, she hopes to be able to help out the African orphanage as well.
Krista B. Ledbetter: (920) 426-6656 or kledbetter@thenorthwestern.com

Local [US] church helps build orphanage in Cambodia

4/8/2007
By JOYELL NEVINS
Staff Writer
Times Community Newspapers of Greater Dayton (Ohio, USA)

Even though Community Grace Brethren Church is nestled in West Milton, it's heart and hands reach out to the other end of the world. Most recently those hands have become an integral part in the recovery of the revolution-devastated Cambodia.

The Asian country Cambodia has been referred to by historians as a "beautiful woman who was raped". In 1975, a group called the Khmer Rouge, led by dictator Pol Pot, took power and although were officially pushed out by the Vietnamese in 1979, didn't leave the political picture until the late '90s. In their five year regime, approximately 2 million Cambodians were killed through the combined result of political executions, starvation, and forced labor, about 25% to 30% of the entire population. The goal was to get rid of education and original thought and start at 'ground zero'. As was often said by the Khmer Rouge, 2000 years of Cambodian history had now come to an end; April 17 (the day they took power) was the beginning of Year Zero for the new Cambodia: Democratic Kampuchea.

In order to create the ideal communist society, all people would have to live and work in the countryside as peasants. Urban areas - the 'roots of capitalism' - were evacuated by force, as people in cities were driven into the country. The Khmer Rouge created a faction between what they called the "new people," those driven out of the towns, and the "old people", the poor and lower middle-class peasants who had remained in the countryside.

The Khmer Rouge felt that new people had made an active choice to live in the cities and thus declared their allegiance to capitalism. All city dwellers became enemies of the new communist state. They were treated as slave laborers, constantly moved, were forced to do the hardest physical labor, and worked in the most inhospitable, fever-ridden parts of the country. New people were segregated from old people, enjoyed little or no privacy, and received the smallest rice rations. The medical care available to them was primitive or nonexistent. Families often were separated because people were divided into work brigades according to age and sex and sent to different parts of the country. New people were also subjected to unending political indoctrination and could be executed without trial (in one interrogation center, over 17000 people were questioned - 6 survived).

The Khmer Rouge regarded traditional education as an opponent to their communist regime. They executed thousands of teachers. Those who had been educators prior to 1975 survived by hiding their identities. Soldiers would feel people's hands, to determine if they worked with physical labor (if your hands were soft, you were likely to be killed). Like with Al Quaida, children were taught political allegiance and hatred. A special secret organization, called the Alliance of Communist Youth of Kampuchea, was considered by Pol Pot as his most loyal and reliable supporters, and was used to flush out any who were against him.

Like education, religion was not allowed either. The country's 40,000 to 60,000 Buddhist monks were defrocked and forced into labor brigades. Many monks were executed; temples and pagodas were destroyed or turned into storehouses or jails. Images of the Buddha were defaced and dumped into rivers and lakes. People who were discovered praying or expressing religious sentiments were often killed. The Christian and Muslim communities were even more persecuted, as they were labeled as part of a pro-Western cosmopolitan sphere, hindering Cambodian culture and society. The Roman Catholic cathedral of the capital was completely razed. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed. Even the Jews and Hindus were persecuted. A common torture tactic for Jews was to brand them with the star of David, using a white-hot metal rod, in the way used to brand cattle.

Vekhoun Tang was one of the persecuted Christian pastors. Out of his group of colleagues, Tang was the only one that survived. He and his family traveled the country - the distance of Cinncinati to Cleveland - on foot to escape, eventually ending up in Long Beach, California. That is where he met Pastor Steve Peters of Community Grace in 1991.

Tang had been praying about going back to Cambodia to build churches. Peters invited him to come to Community Grace's annual missions conference, and at the end of the conference, Tang said he would specifically like to start Grace Brethren churches in Cambodia. Their partnership has been extremely helpful in the movement of Christianity and the physical rebuilding in that country.

"He's the Billy Graham of Cambodia," describes Peters, "He is a mover and shaker and directs things very well."

1992 marked the first trip from West Milton to Cambodia, one of six Missions Director Woody Curtis and five Peters would make. Peters, Curtis and company met Ben Noun, a pastor discipled by Tang and who with Community Grace's help would found many house churches.

Another ground-breaking trip came in 1998. With the assistance of former pastor Scott Distler and the foundation Asia Hope (started by a pastor from Wooster, Ohio), Community Grace sent six guys with six suitcases of electronics. Miraculously the luggage was not searched or opened, and the equipment was used to start a radio station that reaches a large portion of Cambodia and down into Vietnam.

However, any time there are people involved, personal issues can come up. In November of 2005, it became 'increasingly obvious' that Community Grace would have to make another trip. A few weeks ago, Peters and Curtis traveled to Asia once again to smooth out situations.

Their other goal was to start an orphanage - institutions that are desperately needed in that country. The pair ran across a house that a wealthy man had built for his daughter, but had sat empty for years because she didn't want it.

The house has five bathrooms, four of which are Western toilets, which is absolutely unheard of, and even a 2 ½ feet deep pool. The man decided to lease it to the church for $150 a month - an extremely good deal. He even delivered paint for them.

Before Peters and Curtis left, the house had been prayed for, removed of spirit houses (places for Buddhist idols), and was starting to be fixed up. Since Community Grace as an American church cannot officially own property, they go through a foundation of four men. No changes can be made to the house or deed without the agreement of all four.

Peters and Curtis also found a staff. Both an administrator and a certified school teacher that they had worked with in the past suddenly became available while they were there. Then the pair found a widow to be the cook, fulfilling the Bible verse about caring for the fatherless and the widowed.

"God worked this out - it's just incredible," enthuses Peters.

Asia Hope will run the orphanage, and Community Grace will pay the bill. They left $2500 to start, for desks, mats, and other school supplies. The budget calls for $2000 a month, to cover everything from salaries to rent to medical needs.

"We're believing God that we can get the first year in the bank so we can expand as God brings the kids," Peters declares.

They already have at least 10 children who will come, hope to start with 20, and have room for 50 (in Thailand, an orphanage Community Grace helps with has a waiting list of 150). The kids lose their parents to crippling diseases like AIDS, are abandoned because of lack of resources, or simply tossed aside because their mom remarries and the new husband will have nothing to do with them.

Those children will all be screened by the staff to make sure they are actually without a mom or dad. With the rampant poverty, many parents endeavor to scam places they think can give their kids a better life.

"Money is so tough - it's a rough life," describes Peters, "It's just terrible."

The name of the orphanage will be Community Grace's Seeds of Hope. At the church in West Milton, Peters talks about an "army of kids" that have grown up in the church and have a heart for reaching people. Their goal is to make the same thing in Cambodia.

"That's our dream," Peters declares, "Each kid becomes a seed as they come to Christ and bring hope to their nation."

For more information, to sponsor the orphanage, or adopt a child, contact the church at 698-4048.

Cambodian orphans open hearts to student

3/22/07
By: Heather Jennings
thebatt.com (Texas A&M Student newspaper)

Fourteen anxious faces peered through the windows. They had been waiting all day for the arrival of the eight Americans. Suddenly the excited cry went up, "They're here! They're here!" Tiny feet shuffled into position as the door opened, and finally the children were able to say what they had practiced for weeks.

"Welcome to Cambodia!" all the voices said in unison.

For Crystal Mathews, a Texas A&M graduate student in agricultural economics, the welcome of these children was priceless.

"We had been traveling for 42 hours by the time we reached Phnom Penh, Cambodia," Mathews said. "We walked through the door of the Bykota House and immediately felt welcome."

This year, Mathews took her spring break in early February to minister orphans at the Bykota House in Cambodia. The Bykota House, which was founded one year ago, is sponsored through the Bykota Church in Carthage, Mo., and is now home to 14 orphans.

"I had been thinking about going to Cambodia since last summer," Mathews said. "I have a real passion for helping people, especially children. When the chance came to travel with a group from the Bykota Church, I jumped at it."

The plight of orphans in Cambodia is heartbreaking, Mathews said. After the age of 8, orphans cannot be legally adopted. Children that are not lucky enough to be adopted before turning 9 years old are often dumped out on the street, or sold into the child sex trade.

"It is estimated that 25,000 children are engaged in the Cambodian child sex trade," Mathews said.

The Bykota Kids, as they are lovingly called, have seen a lot in their short lives.

"Bee was one of my favorites," Mathews said. "He is 5 years old, but he looks 2 years old as a result of years of malnourishment. His mother tried to kill him twice, once by poison and once by throwing him in front of a car. His father and grandmother wanted to give him a chance to live, so they gave him up as an orphan."

The first night, she met Hosanna, 16 year old in a wheelchair.

"After knowing me for only a few minutes, Hosanna said to me, 'I feel as if you are my sister,'" she said

Mathews and the rest of the group spent most of their time playing games with the children and teaching them health lessons.

"Cambodia is filthy," she said. "In America, kids do not wash their hands because they don't want to. In Cambodia, they don't even know they are supposed to wash their hands."

A lot of the problems in Cambodia still stem from the dictatorship of Pol Pot from 1975 through 1979. During his rule, he killed about 20 percent of the country's population in killing fields or torture camps.

Mathews visited the killing fields while in Phnom Penh.

"The killing fields made me realize how blessed I am to be an American," she said. "On these fields, people were suffocated and buried alive, and babies were bashed against trees."

Cambodia is not under an oppressive dictator now, but the country is years behind in many ways.

"The average per capita income is $300 per year," Mathews said. "People are grateful for a job, any job."

The kids we visited are growing up in this society and are very low on the social status level, she said. A common response to this problem is to simply throw material goods at the kids, but that is not the right answer. They really just need to be loved.

"When we visited a government orphanage, the backs of the babies' heads were flat because they had been picked up so few times," Mathews said. "Kids are abused and neglected, but they feel like the have a family when they come to the Bykota House."

"Some people have told me that there are too many kids for the Bykota House to really make a difference in the orphanage crisis in Cambodia," she said. "However, the house has already changed the lives of 14 children, and it can raise up kids to change Cambodia from the inside out.

I am very blessed to have been able to share some of my time and my spring break with the children from Cambodia. Showing them love was a wonderful and heart-breaking experience."

The little faces watched as the Americans left. They had been able to hold the hands, touch the faces and see the love of their American family.

They are only a handful of the orphans roaming the streets of Cambodia, but they have been given another chance - a chance to live and a chance to change Cambodia from the inside out.