23:00
Viva Review 2010
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Viva + 6 churches + 40 local projects = children kept safe It’s 23:00, and 12-year-old Chantrea is fast asleep in her own bed.That might seem fairly unremarkable; but it took more than fifty different people to get her there.
An escapee from Cambodia’s notorious sex trade, Chantrea’s nights used to be spent wide awake, waiting in the filthy back bedroom of a local ‘bar’ for her next customer. Now, thanks to the combined efforts of Viva, local police, social workers, project staff, teachers, doctors, carers and counsellors, she finally has a chance of a new life. These dedicated workers are all vital links in the long chain of people that pulls girls out of the mire of the child sex industry and into a place of safety. And what we have seen this year is that the most pressing need is actually not to find more of these ‘links’, but to help the ones already in place become stronger and more successful. So we have been working through our city-wide network in Phnom Penh to make sure that every part of the chain is equipped to offer vulnerable girls the help they so desperately need. One of the first things we did was help to provide funding for some of the local projects that make up this chain. This made it possible for them to do things like open a new centre that provides counselling and safe housing for girls like Chantrea; offer education and vocational training to vulnerable young people; and start community projects such as mushroom farms and fish hatcheries. As these programmes have developed over the year we have seen many traumatised children rescued and restored, and many more protected from trauma entirely. The growth of the projects has allowed them to offer greater help to at-risk families and children, ensuring that they never have to experience what it is like to be trafficked or exploited.
They learnt how to best manage scarce resources, be financially accountable and plan strategically to create a stable environment for the children they care for. Through this training we not only saw the projects grow stronger individually but also begin to function better together. As a network they have now organised a phone helpline, manned by volunteers from several local specialist projects. Children and adults can phone in to report cases of abuse, alert staff to potential traffickers, or ask for advice or help. Through the network they can then be put in touch with the relevant project or local authority. Our place in the chain has changed regularly as we have spent time with the different parts of it, connecting them and helping them grow stronger.Yet from every vantage point we have seen the same result: more girls like Chantrea able to sleep soundly in their beds at night.
We also wanted to help these organisations be as confident and capable of running their new initiatives as possible, so nineteen of them went through the Viva Equip Projects training.
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