Day 18- Surreal

Sorry it's been a while...about a week since I've posted last! A lot has happened within the past week but the great thing is I took lots of pictures. So here's my week… at least some it:

I have continued working at COCD, learning about the different projects they have implemented and plans to implement in the future. From what I have heard so far, this organization is pretty incredible. They started up in 2008 with only a 10,000 dollar budget. Since then, in 6 short years this non-profit organization has multiplied their donations and expenditures by 50 fold. That means donations, grants, and partnerships have been contributing half a million dollars to help COCD run multiple programs that aim to provide children and families with the support they need to improve their lives.

One project run by COCD provides scholarship opportunities for school children. This scholarship includes paying for their school fees, uniform, school supplies, and for many, bicycles for transportation to and from school. Without these scholarships, many children are unable to go to school.

Another project headed by COCD is setting up self-help groups for mothers. Within village communities, mothers meet up on a regular basis and support each other through discussion and loan disbursement. With support funds from COCD, the women work together to save up money and when someone is in need of a loan to start a business, the group disburses loans according to those with the highest needs. This program helps get money flowing through the community and educates parents on how to earn money, start businesses, and save profit. This self-help group also helps focus household-earning responsibilities on the parents so the children can have a better chance of focusing on school.

Even though the head office is located in Phnom Penh where I am working, COCD has chosen to support children and families in some of the poorest regions of Cambodia. Yesterday I had the amazing opportunity to visit one of these regions in the Kampot province and see first-hand the clients served by COCD and what the current outcomes are from that support. This province is located in the southern part of the country, near the Gulf of Thailand and the Vietnam border. 

It's important to keep in my mind that these communities live in extremely rural areas, many without electricity or clean water. Cars are rare commodities and starting a business usually means buying a cow. I don't know about you, but for me this kind of lifestyle is really difficult to wrap my mind around because this is something you rarely see in the United States. What we see as poverty is pretty good for the people of Cambodia.

I am not saying poverty in the United States isn't a big deal. It is a HUGE deal and the main reason I decided to do this internship abroad is to gain another perspective on poverty. I hope to take this experience and apply it back to the system in the states. Poverty is poverty no matter where it is and it's an awful reality of the world we live in, but I know we can do something to fix it especially if we gain a wide perspective on what can be done to help.

So here's some photos of  my trip to the Kampot province. The trip was pretty surreal. It was incredible but not necessarily in a good way. On the positive side though, there are invaluable improvements in the villages thanks to COCD's support:

Here's the first family we visited. This beautiful young lady on the left is a COCD scholarship recipient. I really love this picture of her because of her eyes. She has very old eyes, tired, one's that look like they have been through a lot. Can you guess her age? To me she looked to be about 9 or 10 years old. She is 13. Many children are smaller than average for their age, appearing much younger than they actually are due to a lack of nutrition and healthcare. Her sister stands behind her in the picture on the right and because of needed support around the household, she does not go to school.

Here is the second family we visited. They are actually two families: the boy and girl on the left from one and the boy on the far right from another. All three are scholarship recipients.The boy on the right told us he was earning all 10s in school which is awesome!

 Here is one of the lovely mothers. She is part of a self-help groups set up by COCD.

For the third and final visit it was pouring with rain and the road to the house was barely big enough to fit a motorcycle down. So we threw on some rain ponchos and trudged through the rice fields!

 Aren't we so cute in our ponchos?!

So this is the Executive Director of COCD, Mr. Pola. He found a coconut and was very proud of himself!

But you can see in this photo how truly sincere he is when it comes to helping the children of his country. Even after only knowing him for a couple weeks, he has already shown me what a great role model he is to everyone around him and a great leader at COCD.

This last village community we visited was pretty big. There were lots of children of all ages and mothers from the local self-help group.

Here's some other pictures I took along the trip. It started bucketing in the photo on the left and it was so loud on the roof I couldn't hear anything anyone was saying.

 The region we visited is famous for two things: their coconuts (delicious) and their duck (even more delicious).

Here's a little bit of an embarrassing (oops haha) picture of Thy (pronounced like the letter 'T'), a staff member at COCD and one of the first people I met when I arrived in Cambodia. I noticed when they cooked the duck, they cooked ALL of the duck. He has the foot held up to his mouth...a whole foot with talons and everything. He ate it of course!