Hello all,
We have had such an action-packed week in Phnom Penh that we didn’t have a chance to update the blog to let you know what we’ve been up to until now. We started off the week by working with the organization Cambodian Living Arts (CLA), which was started by our friend Arn Chorn-Pond (with whom we met on our first night in country). The non-governmental organization (NGO) provides Khmer music, dance, theater, and other traditional performing arts.
We also visited and toured the facilities of Tourunesourire D’ensant, which helps children who are forced to pick trash from the dump by paying for their schooling and providing additional skills training education in one of 25 different professional vocations; Fair Fashion Cambodia, a clothing and accessories design company that provides rescued sex workers with a fair wage and skills training in the garment industry; and Digital Divide Data, a social enterprise organization which combines the business model of an IT data entry corporation with the kind of social goals often found in non-profit organizations such as ongoing skills training, medical benefits not usually offered in Cambodia, and recruitment of staff from underprivileged backgrounds.
We also spent several afternoons at Aziza’s Schoolhouse (a small 2 classroom school that offers supplemental schooling to some of the poorer students in the capital). Whereas some families cannot afford the books, uniforms, and school fees to send all their kids to school, Aziza’s Schoolhouse seeks to alleviate the burden on these families by providing additional classes in English, health education. and vocation-specific skills. We danced aerobics with Aziza’s students alongside the nightly crowds at the Olympic Stadium, and even brought three of them along with us as translators during our time spent at the orphanage in Kampong Cham and the village school in Stuong! We will all have the opportunity to support Aziza when we meet at Yale as our girls will be selling t-shirts that they designed in collaboration with the Aziza students as a fund-raiser! Bring your checkbooks!
NGOs and fair-trade clothes,
Jenn and Nate
