Details of the Project:
Our supplementary project description for the period 2009-2010 Voluntary Help to Cambodian Children.  1) Project titlePrevention of child prostitution and achievement of basic education for children 2) Geographic focus The project is located in the city of Battambang, in the Battambang region, a province in North-Western Cambodia. The region is situated about three hours (90 km) from the Thai boarder. After the 30-year long war during the Khmer Rouge regime ended, 30 000 refugees have come back from Thailand, and 15 000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have returned to their region of origin. There are a lot of mines in the area, which makes some places impossible to use for farming. Hence, many families living below the poverty line have chosen to move into the city, and are living in the shanty town of Cambodia’s second largest city.
 3) Project objectivesPhase I: through daily food distribution to children, but also to single mothers living in the street, Cambodian street educators search out and approach small girls and boys who pass their whole days collecting garbage or begging in Battambang city. Through dialogue and confidence building, the educators start to communicate with the child, give him or her something to eat and speak to him or her about the organisation’s possibilities to host those who don’t have any parents.Phase II: the educator contacts the parents or «guardians», and analyses the family’s economical and practical problems, and then suggests solutions for taking care of the child, for example, placing him or her in a safe house. The child brings back a small amount of money to the house; hence, the family counts on his or her small contributions to survive. It follows that it is necessary to support the family financially in order to free the child from working in the street and to be able to demand that the child receives basic education in exchange. Phase III: giving the child access to a normal life, through offering him or her a roof, food and the possibility to take part in the basic education offered by the local school, but also, if it is necessary, placement in a Khmer family. The child must find a satisfactory place to live, where he or she has a role to play: to be useful and do something constructive within a Khmer family.  4) Number of beneficiariesa) Daily food distribution in the street: between 50 and 100 children.b) 30 families in difficulties (girl mothers are our priority). 5) Expected resultsSignificantly reduce the number of children who live and work in the street, and to give them access to basic education. Also, get children away from bad company and warn them for drugs as well as prostitution and the diseases that are connected with it, while giving them the means to fight for themselves.
Note: photos copyright: www.info-avec.org Text corrected and translated by: Charlotta Friedner
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It is around nine o’clock in the morning. I am on my way back from the market, and I take street no 2 towards the white elephant pagoda, thus being in the city centre. In front of me, on the other pavement, I see three boys dressed in rags. Their heads are shaved and two of them are beating the third, who is lying on the ground. They are 11 and 13 years old, and they are enthusiastically kicking the lying boy, the youngest of the three, in the head and in the stomach.