Bhavia and Linda

Our programs in Cambodia are implemented by our partner organizations.  The student sponsorship program and women’s empowerment and savings programs are run by the staff at Southeast Asia Development Program (SADP).

The Operations Director is a very old friend of mine.  Kosal was my interpreter in 1994 when I was doing the research for my book, Soul Survivors:  Stories of Women and Children in Cambodia.  I was very happy to see her again on this visit.

Kosal and Bhavia

Our university students meet every Sunday, and they take turns presenting a topic and leading a discussion.  Linda and I attended the first part of their meeting and invited them to ask us questions.  One student wondered why people in America would want to sponsor a student in Cambodia.  I tried filming each one of them and asked them to say their name, university and career goal in English.  This activity created a lot of giggling.

Sponsored University Students

I also met with the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center.  We are funding their anti-trafficking work that I mentioned earlier.  The president of the board of directors, Kien Serey Phal, is featured Soul Survivors.  I’m happy that we have such excellent partner organizations in Cambodia and long-term relationships – over 17 years.  We’re all looking older!

Bicycling to market

Friendship with Cambodia’s tours to Cambodia feature visits to our partner organizations including our sponsored students in secondary school (we visit them in their villages) and in university, our empowered rural women, the street children’s shelter and anti-trafficking programs that we support, and other NGOs.  The next tour will be in December 2013 (2 years from now).  Please join us!

Entering the South Gate of Angkor Thom

New Goddess at Angkor Wat

~Bhavia

Bhavia and Linda

My favorite hotel in Phnom Penh is called Le Rit’s and is the only hotel run by a non-profit organization (NGO).  The NGO is called Neymo and was started by the French, but is now Cambodian-run.  It is a training program for vulnerable women and includes cooking, hotel management, crafts production, and retail stores.

Offering alms to a monk

Neymo's crafts training program

Crafts woman at Neymo

It is centrally located, on a quiet street, not far from the National Museum.  The guest house is small, safe, quiet, friendly and beautiful.  They have a gift shop and their restaurant serves excellent Khmer and French food.  For breakfast we had traditional noodle soup with fresh prawns, bean sprouts, soy sauce and a squeeze of lime – delicious.

Linda enjoying noodle soup

For lunch, it is always fun to go to Friends because the staff are so enthusiastic – former street children in-training.  We enjoyed their tasty tapas including pumpkin soup and green papaya salad and their fresh fruit drinks.  Lady bugs (watermelon juice with lime) and fresh lime sodas are my favorites.

Friends Restaurant

A terrific social enterprise restaurant and guest house called Boddhi Tree is located across from Toul Sleng museum.  They hire and train disadvantaged youth.  The food is wonderful.  Amok, a rich fish curry custard served with rice, is worth a trip to Cambodia.

Linda at Boddhi Tree Restaurant

~Bhavia

Bhavia and Linda

Kosal is the Cambodian student my husband and I have sponsored in school since he was in high school. I had the great fortune to spend four hours with him on my visit to Cambodia. This year, Kosal is a junior at Cambodia Mekong University. He is majoring in Community Leadership, a degree similar to Nonprofit Management. He loves to lead problem-solving and leadership training seminars. Kosal’s English is fairly good, and he has no problem trying to speak with foreigners. From what I have gathered he takes more credit hours than is required for graduation, and all of his textbooks are in English. These books are heavy and costly (just like in the US).

Kosal and Linda

It is too expensive to live in the dorms on campus, so, like all of our other sponsored students, he found a cheaper place to live in the community. Kosal invited me to visit his home. It is what we might call a budget student studio, Cambodian-style. It is one room, approximately 15×15 feet. The kitchen was one burner plate on the floor, and there was one small bathroom stall. He shares this space with his two sisters.  They moved from their rural home two years ago to follow their brother and to pursue better educational opportunities in Phnom Penh.

Kosal runs at the nearby public track almost every day. He enthusiastically told me that exercise is good for everyone!

~Linda, a proud student sponsor

Bhavia and Linda

Linda and I took two days off from shopping and meeting with NGOs to visit Kep, a sleepy town on the Bay of Thailand.

A former French resort area, Kep became a ghost town during the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979.  Even today, over 100 empty shells of old villas are scattered around. Most of these haunted houses were claimed by military men who are waiting to make a killing when real estate values increase.

Empty houses

Situated on the waterfront, Kep has beautiful sweeping views of the bay and scenic islands. On weekends, Cambodians flock to the coast to rent their private 15 ft x 15 ft breezy, thatched gazebo along the waterfront.  It’s a great place to have a picnic and relax in a hammock.

Fishing boats

Lush hills rise up behind the little town, whose main feature is the Crab Market, a cluster of restaurants and shops.  There is an odd collection of giant statues – golden deer, giant crab, and the “White Lady.”  Guesthouses and resorts suited for every budget are in town and on the hillside.

Giant gecko

We stayed in a resort that was built on stilts on the steep hillside in order to protect the environment. The sad irony is that they used Cambodia’s old growth timber to build it.  Cambodia is rapidly becoming deforested because of government corruption.  Foreign companies pay bribes to officials to cut down the community forest, sell off the timber, and plant a eucalyptus plantation.  Local people depend on the natural forest for their livelihood. They harvest wild fruits and vegetables to eat and sell.  They tap the resin trees and gather materials for building their houses and making mats and baskets.

Old growth tree

On another environmental note, all our hotels were willing to refill our water bottles with filtered water, so we didn’t have to keep using new bottles of water and were able to reduce plastic waste.  Using iodine to purify your own water is another option.  Just add EmergenC to improve the taste.

Activities in Kep include a trip to Rabbit Island to see the beautiful beaches, a tour of a pepper plantation (world-famous Kampot pepper -  now sold by Friendship with Cambodia), and trekking in nature. Or you can just relax and enjoy the view, like we did.

Sunset at Kep

~Bhavia

Bhavia and Linda

Sex-tourism is “in your face” in Phnom Penh, where it is common to see white guys with young Cambodian girls in restaurants, bars, on the streets, and in tuk-tuks.  They are sexually exploiting the girls.

Some fellows are naïve and think they just met a girl in bar and now have a girlfriend.  They don’t realize the girl was forced to be a sex worker.  Cambodian girls don’t date.  Their parents protect them until they get married.

Tourist with 'his' Cambodian girl

One out of ten girls in Cambodia is deceived and sold to a brothel.  The trafficker tells the parents of a poor rural girl that he can get their daughter a job in a garment factory or as a house keeper, and he gives the family her first month’s wages.  Then he takes her to the city and sells her to a brothel.  There she is raped, forced to be a prostitute, and not allowed to leave for a few years until her “debt” is paid off.  Eventually, the young woman may have the option of leaving, but by this point she is usually drug addicted, feels enormous shame, and believes that she has no other option than to continue her life as a sex worker.

Friendship with Cambodia funds anti-trafficking campaigns that focus on warning rural families about traffickers, promoting respect for women, and training police and judges about the laws that protect women.  We also fund rehabilitation programs.  On this visit we found a new NGO, called Daughters, working to help the sex-workers who have the option of leaving their job.

Daughters

Daughters’ approach is to immediately give the young woman employment, so she has an alternate source of income.  Then they help her with vocational training and rehabilitation.  Rather than house the young women in a shelter, the women find their own place to live and keep their social networks.  The young women choose to join the program, so the success rate is very high.

Daughters' boutique

Daughters has an attractive contemporary clothing and accessories boutique and a nail salon that offers massages for women.  Upstairs is a great café called Sugar ‘n Spice.  It is located on Street 178, very close to the National Museum.  Linda and I bought some of their jewelry and cards to sell for Friendship with Cambodia, and we enjoyed lunch in their café.  We’re excited to add their products to our crafts program inventory.

Sugar 'n Spice Cafe

The hotels we include in our book Responsible Travel Guide Cambodia take a stand against sex-tourism.  They require everyone registering at the hotel to show ID, which the girls don’t have, so they are not permitted to stay.  When you check-in, you have to sign their registration form that says you are not allowed to bring guests into your room.  Some of the hotels have signs stating their policy posted at their entrance.

Some hotels take a stand against sex-tourism.

Children are highly vulnerable to sex-trafficking, especially in Cambodian cities where there are large populations of migrant and/or displaced peoples.  Pedophilia is a terrible problem in Cambodia.  There is a certification that tuk-tuk drivers can get called “Child Safe” which trains drivers how to respond when a customer appears to be taking a child to his hotel room.  The driver can call a hotline and someone will come to protect the child.  We suggest choosing and supporting the Child Safe certified drivers.  Our driver, Phal, is certified and we highly recommend him.  His email is sarphal2009@yahoo.com and his phone is 012 576 321.

Use trained Child Safe drivers.

To learn more about preventing sex-trafficking in Cambodia, please visit our website: http://www.friendshipwithcambodia.org.  If you are traveling to Cambodia and would like tips on how to be a socially responsible tourist, Friendship with Cambodia’s Travel Guide is an excellent resource: http://friendshipwithcambodia.org/programs-education.php

~Bhavia

Bhavia and Linda

Rural Cambodia, where 85% of the population lives, has not changed much.  It remains very impoverished.  Phnom Penh, the capital city, is always undergoing change as the population grows and a middle class emerges.  These are a few changes I noticed on this trip:

Exercise in the parks is more popular than ever.  Large groups gather along the waterfront and in the parks for line dancing and Khmer aerobics classes. Children and older women enjoy the new exercise equipment installed along the river including StairMaster and Nordic Track machines.  Circles of men play the Cambodian version of hacky-sack.

Exercising in the park

Until a few years ago, there weren’t buildings taller than about six stories in Phnom Penh.  Now there are high-rise apartment buildings, many built by Koreans, Cambodia’s largest tourist group.  High rise business centers are going up across the river from the palace in Phnom Penh.

New high-rise buildings

Each year there are fewer cyclos (bicycle taxis) and more cars – Toyotas, Hondas, Lexuses, and Land cruisers. In the 1990’s the word for car was “Camry,” the way Americans call tissue “Kleenex.”  On this trip, I saw a restaurant named Camry.

Because the traffic jams are so bad in Phnom Penh, the VIPs now have police escorts.  Whenever you hear a siren, you know some big-wig in a black Mercedes with dark tinted windows is pushing aside the traffic, led by several policeman on motorcycles.

Coffee is replacing Jasmine tea as the trendy urban drink.  There are coffee shops everywhere, including Spinelli from San Francisco.

Coffee shop

Young people in Cambodia are beginning to dress in more Western styles. Teenage girls wear mini-skirts in new shopping malls. Teenage boys with stylish haircuts wear tight low-cut straight-leg jeans. Clothing shops often have 20 mannequins standing in front of the store modeling jeans with their butt cracks showing.  Sometimes there are 4 stores in a row like that, enough mannequins to fill a movie theatre.

~Bhavia

Bhavia and Linda

Bhavia and I discovered a great new shop called SMATERIA while shopping for FWC’s crafts program in Phnom Penh.  It is a fair-trade “social enterprise.”

So, what is a social enterprise?  It is a private company that is set up to support a group of disadvantaged people.  In this case SMATERIA supports better living conditions in the shanty-town of Andong. This community is located near Phnom Penh and houses displaced persons.  SMATERIA employs 22 women in a project that works to reuse plastic and divert it from the waste stream.

Plastic bags are everywhere in Cambodia: in the streets, countryside and rivers. SMATERIA transforms this discarded plastic something desirable, such as attractive and unique handbags made from reused plastic netting from construction sites. 

In addition, this company adheres to the following codes:

 *Complies with international working codes

*Supports female workers by welcoming their children into the workplace

*Encourages the creation of small independent firms

*Believes that, one day, fair-trade practices will be employed equally by both large and small-label producers.

Stay tuned for the date and location of our Spring Trunk Show in Eugene, Oregon where this line of fashion products will be on sale!

 ~Linda

Bhavia and Linda

There is no “Cambodians with Disabilities Act.” Stairs are often steep, narrow and uneven. There are no buttons to push for automatic door opening. Sidewalks are used for off-street parking or shop extensions. For low-income people with disabilities, transportation equipment is crude and often improvised. 

Rehab Crafts is a training and employment program for people with disabilities.  We bought products at their shops in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. The employees’ challenges come from, surviving landmine explosions, polio, gunshot wounds, and congenital deformity.  More craft producers, living in villages, work from home. Everyone at Rehab, including the financial officer, administrator, sales people and crafts people, live with disabilities.

~ Linda

Carving elephants

Carver

Making purses from rice bags

Quality controller

Tailor

Retrofitted motorcycle to help with mobility

Bhavia and Linda

One of the saddest scenes in Cambodia is the begging children.  Most often, the children are being used by adults to get money from tourists.  We saw an 8 year-old girl holding a one year-old baby who was screaming.  The little girl went down a back alley and put the baby down until she stopped screaming.  That’s when I took these pictures:

A common scenario is that the child is forced to beg and the baby is “rented.”  This is usually the case with the beggars in the tourist areas – at Angkor Wat, on the riverfront in Phnom Penh or the Russian market.  Another similar situation is the children who sell flowers, postcards or books to the tourists.  They stand at your table at the restaurant, waiting.

“Think Twice” is a new campaign in Cambodia that begs tourists to think about what they are doing.  Although a natural response is to want to help out the child by giving them money or buying from them.  But, in fact, this hurts the child.  That working child is being denied an education and a childhood, and is being put at risk for sexual exploitation.

There are organizations, like Krousar Thmey (New Family) that Friendship with Cambodia supports, which address the needs of impoverished children.  The Think Twice campaign says that instead of giving $1 to a street kid, give to an organization that helps them get an education and have a positive future.

In Cambodia, it is against the law for 1) a child under 15 years old to take work that affects their education, 2) any child to work at night, and 3) anyone to be forced to work.

As I write this, Linda is keeping tabs on the location of the giant gecko in our room.  It’s almost a foot long with a big head and bulging eyes.  Fortunately, it’s staying on the wall. 

~ Bhavia

Bhavia and Linda

It is time to make the journey from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh on Cambodia’s version of the Greyhound bus, a six-hour trip. Bhavia and I have just wrapped up making fair-trade craft purchases from eight different NGOs and socially responsible shops over two days.

Jewelry making

The design, quality, and quantity of the craft products has increased dramatically for Friendship with Cambodia’s craft program over the last three years.  As an official volunteer buyer for Friendship with Cambodia, it is a shopping paradise for me. I can’t wait to start scheduling our 2012 retail craft events!

A heartening trend is the increase in craft products using recycled/reclaimed materials such as, paper, metal, and plastics. We are carrying lots back.

Hearing-impaired artisan painting

More shopping news to come as we make our rounds by tuk-tuk in Phnom Penh. 

Tuk-Tuk at the Royal Palace

~ Linda