Cambodia Expedition 2016

On Friday, April 17, 2016, forPeace volunteers joined forces with Tabitha Foundation for another successful house building expedition in Cambodia’s remote Putrea Village. Volunteers from around the world experienced Cambodian culture first hand as they worked side by side with local villagers and families enrolled in the Tabitha Savings Plan.  

In addition to giving service, volunteers had the opportunity to develop in-depth insight into the aftermath of the Vietnam War and genocide of the Khmer Rouge; the current challenges of poverty, gender disparity, and inadequate healthcare, and potential solutions; the impacts of international interest in land and natural resources; as well as the political influence in the region. One volunteer wrote, “I am leaving Cambodia with greater awareness and understanding of the heart-breaking history and survival of a beautiful people. forPeace has given me an opportunity do something to promote self-reliance and economic stability. I am grateful to have been part of this humbling and rewarding work.”

Cambodia continues to feel the effects years of war and genocide have had on its economy, infrastructure, and its education and healthcare systems. The demand for quality housing is rising as the country’s population continues to heal and increase. The Cambodian government has said an additional 1.1 million houses will be required in the next 14 years to accommodate an additional 18 million people within that time period.

Since 2003, an average of 1,000 houses are being built every year through Tabitha’s Family Savings Program, which is designed to teach families how to save a small amount of money each week to provide for their basic needs, increase their sources of income, and ultimately purchase wells and rebuild dilapidated and inadequate houses. The Savings Program impacted 541,908 families with 4,335,264 dependents from 1994 to July 31, 2016.  Since 2003, an average of 1,000 houses are being built every year.

2015 Service Learning Expedition in Support of Tabitha Cambodia

An international team of volunteers ranging from high school students to retirees, representing the United States, Germany, Israel, Korea and Great Britain, fondly looks back on seven extraordinary days of learning, serving and exploring Phnom Penh, Kompong Speu, Preah Vihear and Siem Reap.

Together with local Cambodian friends and supporters, the team immersed into the family and community development program of Tabitha Cambodia. The program is extraordinary because families move from desperate poverty and living on the streets to owning their own home and small business, producing crops and raising livestock as well as providing their children secondary education—all within a five to seven year time period. At that point, the families “graduate,” thereby making room for new families to enter the program.Tabitha begins the process again. Tabitha has grown holistically from serving a handful of destitute street women to providing, during the current fiscal year of September 2014 through August 2015, its life changing program to 55,960 families who have a combined 447,680 dependents. The overall impact of applying the Tabitha principles of permanent poverty elimination for twenty years in Cambodia has resulted in 529,886 families with 4,207,088 dependents to move into a stable, sustainable rural middle class life with multiple sources of steady income. These statistics are eyebrow raising giving reason to consider and study the principles whereupon they are based.

forPEACE annual service learning expeditions provide opportunity to get involved and observe Tabitha in action. The experience includes an overnight stay in the countryside. This year the team worked in the village of Putrea, located in a remote area of Preah Vihear, close to the Thai border. There, the volunteers helped build simple houses side-by-side with families enrolled in the Tabitha program. It was a glimpse into authentic, rural Cambodia. Tabitha Director, Janne Ritskes, recently summarized the spirit of housebuilding in the following letter:

House building involves young people, middle aged people and the older, young at heart folks coming from all parts of the world to help build houses for families who may not get a house without their help. The impact of the houses on our families is immense. In Cambodia people believe that to die in their home will ensure a safe passage to the next life.

A few years ago, a team came and built for some of our families. At the end of house building we have a simple ceremony handing the houses over to the families move in. It is a time when we are reminded what a gift these families have given to us - the volunteers. It is the gift of a privilege – the privilege of sharing but a small part of our lives with our families here. We need to be reminded of this, as often we come with the belief that we somehow have a right to do this – that we are entitled to not only build but to be treated as special people simply because we came. It is our time in this small ceremony to thank the families for allowing us to come and to help finish a small home.

It is also the time for the families to thank us – to try and express in some small way, the gift they have received from our volunteers. These expressions are all very similar in content but expressed in various ways. At this particular handing over ceremony – one of the women spoke. She was in her mid-forties, raising her own 6 children as well as helping to raise 6 orphans from the village. She had developed cataracts and it was difficult to see the world clearly. She said to the team: “you will forget us in 6 months or a year and that is right – you have busy and full lives. But -on the day that I die – it is your face that I will see. Thank you for that gift”. For her and all our families, the gift of a permanent home – a house that will allow them to be safe – to live with dignity - to die in peace, is truly a gift beyond measure.

For us at Tabitha Cambodia – house building is about friendships between very different peoples and backgrounds – it is an opportunity to learn about dignity and about respect for each other – it is about change – a change of attitude from those who have so little - to realize that those of us who have so much are capable of doing hard physical labor – of us, who have so much, beginning to understand the strength and skills of those who have so little. It is a time of realizing our own inner strength as volunteers work in a hot climate doing unfamiliar and physical labor – realizing at the end of the build that we can do so much more than we thought we were capable of. It is a time of realization for our families -how different life is when the entire family can sleep under one roof - what it’s like to sleep through rain - what’s it’s like to not have to worry about flooding and losing life – a new sense of freedom and dignity.

I thank my God for my own home and safety, I thank my God for all you volunteers who come and share your life with so many here. I want to thank all of you who are unable to build but support financially the teams that come. It is all so very good.

Janne

2015 Recap: Cambodia Service Learning Expedition

Below is the recap as recorded through the lens of several volunteers. Many thanks to an outstanding team! Their camaraderie, willingness to learn, reaching out, giving of themselves, was exemplary. We hope the narrative of team 2015 will inspire readers to volunteer with team 2016.

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Day 1: Tabitha Savings Program

Having assembled in Phnom Penh, this year’s team, with members ranging from high schoolers to retirees, from five countries, piled into a van and headed southwest from Cambodia’s capital into the countryside. Buildings gave way to scrub and trees, paved roads gave way to dust (and grew bumpier and bumpier) as we made our way to the rural countryside of Kampong Speu, where the Tabitha savings program has been in effect for almost five years.

It was apparent that the living standard is low—evidenced by the fact that the average rural Cambodian income is roughly 1 USD per day. It is a challenge for families to save as little as 25 cents per week, which is the requirement to join the Tabitha savings program. This commitment takes courage for the family and faith in Tabitha to make good on its promise of weekly visits to collect and safeguard their savings. After ten weeks, the first miracle occurs: The savings are returned with ten percent interest, amounting for a full week of savings at no cost to the saver. This is the fundamental attitudinal change that allows families to step out of poverty—realizing the inherent power through generating income through savings. This ten percent interest spurs self-efficacious saving and income generation, which in turn builds to meet the needs of family and create other sources of income.

As we drove through Kampong Speu, our van was flagged down several times by families recognizing the Tabitha staff and wanting to show us what their savings had brought. One family started with chicks (.50 apiece), saved for a pig, and then earned enough to buy cows—used in Cambodia for meat and plowing land for crops. Another woman saved for a well (clean drinking water is valuable and a rarity in the countryside), enabling her family to grow crops year-round and sell water to her neighbors. She eventually saved enough to build houses for her extended family.

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Day 2: Nokor Tep Women’s Hospital

Today we drove to the garment district on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where construction on the Nokor Tep Women’s Hospital is underway. We heard about the vision and urgent need for such a hospital from Janne Ritskes, founder of Tabitha and co-founder of Nokor Tep.

Sanitation and birth and labor practices in Cambodia contribute to gynecological infections. The planned hospital is unique in its focus on women’s gynecological health, and will include an Education and Prevention Unit, a Research Unit, and mobile clinics to reach women from all parts of Cambodia, as well as a built-in “beauty parlor” to eliminate the shame that prevents many rural women from visiting doctors.

Funding for the hospital thus far has purchased the land, laid the foundation, and paid local Khmer contractors and construction workers, who receive training and fair pay, mixing the concrete themselves to ensure it is of proper quality and to save money.

The phrase “Nokor Tep” in Sanskrit means “city of compassion from the gods,” or “city of angels.

”The planned inscription for the entrance reads: “Welcome my sister, my daughter, my mother, my wife—do not be afraid for we ( 1 Million People) are with you. Come -we welcome you, we will comfort you and treat you. You are not alone—we are with you."

The million references the million small donors Ritskes hopes to attract in order to complete and maintain the hospital.

For more information and to donate, visit nokortep.com.

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Day 3: Understanding the Khmer Rouge

Today we visited two sites in an effort to understand Cambodia’s recent history: Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields. Witnessing the brutality and the scope of the atrocities committed was an emotionally difficult part of the trip.

Beginning April 17, 1975, and lasting for a period of four years, approximately 1.7 million Cambodians died as Pol Pot and his army murdered and starved the country in a radical effort to create an agrarian utopia. This brutal and catastrophic regime was followed by years of civil war.

Tuol Sleng was a site of torture used by the Khmer Rouge that now serves as a museum, while the Killing Fields, an execution and burial site, serves as a memorial to what the country endured.

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Day 4: Orientation/Travel

We met at Tabitha headquarters in downtown Phnom Penh to receive a unique orientation from founder Janne Ritskes (and do some shopping from its incredible selection of local cottage industry goods).

She provided historical and cultural context through eyewitness stories of her staff giving unfiltered history from the cambodian perspective, rather than through the foreign policy angle of Western nations. Janne also went over etiquette and how to behave in the villages: how to show respect by properly greeting villagers, wearing modest clothing, and obeying cultural norms about physical touch and pointing.

Joining our group of volunteers for the orientation and trip were Srey (Tabitha staff) and our Khmer friend Keo Botevy and four of her children: Mara, Ma, Nana, and Kasy. Botevy is the mother of a group home in Phnom Penh for 34 children whose parents are unable to care for them. She values the opportunity for her older children to provide service and see sites outside the capital, and their joining us for housebuilding is a highlight for the team as well.

After orientation, we loaded up into two vans and a Tabitha vehicle and headed northwest for the long ride to Preah Vihear, a rural province near the Thai border, where we would build. We were surprised to find that the road was paved all the way there, but later came to realize it was because foreign mining and lumber companies had stripped the majority of lumber and natural resources (soil for gold and precious stones) from the area.

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Day 5: Housebuilding!

Houses are usually an item families save for using the Tabitha savings program, but everyone needs a home, and circumstances such as death, illness, or other difficulties can make that need especially pressing and that dream particularly difficult to achieve.

We raised money to provide six houses, and local village council deliberated over and decided who could benefit the most from such assistance. Tuesday morning we sealed the deal by offering our labor to attach floorboards and siding with hammer and nails and make the homes ready to live in.

Volunteers, Tabitha staff, our friends from the group home, and a few locals hammered away for hours, taking breaks to keep cool by guzzling water and occasionally dunking heads. As each house was completed, families took advantage of the shade the new homes provided and set up hammocks underneath. After the last nail was in place, we gave the new homeowners gifts of housewarming quilts.

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Day 6: Koh Ker & Beng Mealea

After putting floorboards and aluminum siding on six new houses the day before, we faced the hot sun and buses full of tourists to explore tenth-century Khmer empire ruins.

By this time our multicultural/multigenerational group of Germans, Americans, Israelis, Koreans and Khmers had bonded. We spent the day climbing over stones, taking pictures, and talking about everything from development and environmental issues to favorite soccer teams and KFC—and the high schoolers even gave each other Khmer and English names.

We got a chance to experience the temples built by the Khmer empire, which are of tremendous cultural, historic, and artistic significance. Not only were we able to learn of the great accomplishments of the past, but the foreign volunteers were humbled by the legacy of our Khmer friends and the realization that through recognizing and honoring their heritage Cambodians are gaining the confidence to rebuild their country.

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Day 7: Social Enterprise & Touring Responsibly

After Beng Mealea, the group split ways. Some returned to Phnom Penh, while others went on to Siem Reap for additional touring.

In Siem Reap, we visited Artisans d’Angkor and the Paul Debrule Hotel and Tourism School. Both facilities offer skill development, apprenticeships, and job placement in the emerging Cambodian hospitality industry with fair wages for young well-trained professionals. Artisans d’Angkor is a school of Khmer artisanship that trains and employs persons with disabilities, as well as provides a store to sell their products, while Paul Debrule School includes a first-rate restaurant for students to prepare them for all aspects of restaurant and hotel management positions.

We take great care to teach our teams how to give business to hotels and restaurants that support ambitious social vision and fair employment for Cambodians, such as Lotus Blanc (run by Pour un sourire d’enfant) and Friends. During our almost twenty year history of offering Service Learning expeditions, we have carefully cultivated a partnership with Cambodian entrepreneurs who have committed themselves to rebuilding their country through generating respectful, dignified employment with solid potential for upward social mobility. An exemplary group of young businessmen created the Frangipani Hotel group, with houses in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. The chain actively recruits employees from very underprivileged segments of society, makes great effort to facilitate further training and education for its employees and has a laudable and strong charter forbidding sex tourism at any of their establishments.

Angkor Wat has made Cambodia a growing tourist destination. Responsible tourism, in itself, can be an important contribution to the development of a country. forPEACE aims to teach the team members strategies how to support good social enterprise while traveling in any country.

For more photos from our 2015 expedition, please visit hbp2015.iankyddmiller.com

Cambodia: Service Learning Expedition 2012

by Steven Dee Wrigley, Global Outreach Alliance Director

Mother-Daughter Teamwork

Margret Ellwanger manning the first-aid table.

SALT LAKE CITY, USA — We’re back from another amazing service learning adventure to Cambodia. Already we’re missing the good people there who radiate so much goodness and love.

Villagers ready to move in to their new homes.

We again partnered with Tabitha and forPEACE to help get 10 families off the streets and into new homes through the culmination of a micro-savings program.

This has to be one of the most joyous scenes…witnessing the joy that comes from simple efforts to improve quality of life.

A previous volunteer said: “All of us were changed by the profound exchange of love and service: we had given them new houses to live in, they had given us a new way to understand living.” We come with open eyes and ears to learn and absorb the lessons our friends in the global village have to teach us.

Our team was also able to spend some quality time at CICFO. CICFO is a children’s home in Phnom Penh that we (Global Outreach Alliance and forPEACE) work to support. They are a remarkable organization ran by two wonderful, miracle-working volunteer Khmer “mothers.” This children’s home, which cares for 31 children, is unlike any orphanage we have seen before. We do not always support orphanages as their model simply creates “orphans” and dependency on donor dollars–then, the cycle continues–more and more orphans pile in and more donor dollars come to support its viscous cycle of “feeding” children. Consequently, transparency suffers, and well-intended people soon are funding institutions that pocket money and neglect children’s pressing needs for long-term, sustainable development and education.

CICFO Family

However, CICFO is different. They have self-reliant enterprise projects (e.g. chicken coup, organic mushroom farm, hand-made bracelets and greeting cards, and a fruit tree garden), all of which help lighten the load of donors and allow them to educate their children about future possibilities for generating income and self reliance. They focus on education and teaching skills all while preserving their beautiful culture. They even work to get the children back to their families or in responsible families’ homes (which is unheard of with most orphanages). They are not the typical “institutionalized orphanage.” They create a wonderful home for these children all on a shoestring budget of $1.85 per each child, per day. That is remarkable considering that it includes everything to take care of the children (i.e. rent, utilities, medicine/checkups, nutritious meals, clean water, education and private tutoring, school uniforms/books, transportation to/from school and activities, etc.).

Many orphanages we have seen conversely rip your heart out and then stomp on it because they are mismanaged and solicit additional donor dollars by purposely downgrading the level of poverty–they keep the facilities dirty and unsanitary, they don’t feed or clothe the children adequately, they don’t educate, etc–all because if things were better looking, then they could possibly lose funding. In orphanages, double dealing and corruption often runs rampant–not to mention the most mind-blowing disease of all–sex and labor exploitation of precious children. It sickens us! But not here at CICFO. It’s a home. It’s a family. It is a wonderful breath of fresh air! It truly is a small heaven on earth.

Reflecting on the forPEACE/Global Outreach Foundation House Building Team Expedition 2011

by Sallie Poet, forPEACE Volunteer

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Riding across the countryside of Cambodia I was refreshed by the patchworks of greens—the yellow greens of new rice shoots against pale shining waters, swaths of palm greens like large brushstrokes, and blue greens growing grayer as the checkerboard fields receded back and back. Our air conditioned Mercedes minibuses shared the road with three wheel carts led by sinewy white cows and uniformed school girls doubled up on bikes riding home for lunch as well as the ubiquitous motor bikes freighted with baskets, pigs, branches and families.

As we turned off to the country roads of Battambang, we began to see small rectangular houses on stilts in villages. Constructed of green corrugated metal siding, each house boasted individualized “home improvements”—a thatched awning here or a brick porch there. Families clung to the posts and stared at us. As we debarked, we were met by a village of mothers, fathers, elders and beautiful children with their hands peaked together bowing and smiling to welcome us.

Ten framed structures waited for us. We went to work right away, first pounding nails to secure the floorboards. “Let’s race to see who can drive the nail in faster,” I said to my daughter. She put in three nails by the time I had finished one. All of us wore plaid krama scarves, the traditional Cambodian cloths used like bandanas, which we drenched with water to keep us cool.

Some of the 6’5 college boys were under the direction of the 5’2 Cambodian master builder, Mr. Luong, who taught them how to drive a nail through metal. A representative from Tabitha Cambodia did quality control, and though we did not speak the same tongue, we knew she insisted that we take off the siding and realign it correctly and straighter. We ate lunch under the palms with French bread, peanut butter, mangosteeens, bananas, salty chips and icy water, and by the end of the day we had completed all 10 structures.

Fathers were nailing the TABITHA plaques on the outside and children were hanging out the square windows before we left. We returned the next day to dedicate the houses, and took pictures in front of the houses we worked on with the family who was to reside there. Then we went to see the wells.

We walked on muddy berms and causeways to see the field wells. Fresh water pumped into partitioned fields and flooded the patties. The skilled farmers could control the flow and location of the water, literally giving them power over life and death as the water gushed out of the wells. The family wells also brought life.

We visited one woman in another village who had received her Tabitha house a couple of years ago. She showed us the thatched shack where she had lived before, and then proudly showed us her new green stilted home and its improvements. Because she had this fine edifice, she was able to start a noodle business, feed her family of 7 and take in 2 kids that would have been orphans. I was so moved that the effects of these houses and wells are so far reaching.

Our accommodations were much nicer—we stayed in old hotels with beautiful dark wooden stairs. We crooned to Karaoke at night and ate omelettes made to order for breakfast. We made new friends from Australia and neighboring communities. We rode the tuk-tuks and ate amazing salads of lemongrass, cilantro, fruits and glazed chicken, fish, noodles, rice—and a few brave ones among us even ate fire-ants, tarantulas and crickets!

We went to the UNESCO World Heritage sight—the giant temple structure of Ankgor Wat. We marveled at the amazing hydrolics, the concentric structures, and a spirit of sacred space pervaded the whole huge complex.

Back in Phnom Phen we marveled at the Buddhist temples a and the Royal Palace and bought beautiful silk souvenirs at the night markets. We toured silk farms and breakfasted every morning under a shaded green canopy courtyard. Our final activity was one last morning with the amazing children at the CIFO Orphanage. Sharing music, Red Rover, dancing, games and sports made us love the kids even more.

Returning to the hotel we planned our reunion, made pledges to Facebook and each set off for different adventures. Several stayed to research microlending in Cambodia, some went off to shop the silk tailors of Vietnam, some planned to stay longer and work at the CIFO orphange, some went back to schools, families and jobs. All of us were changed by the profound exchange of love and service: we had given them new houses to live in, they had given us a new way to understand living.