Issues

After meeting your team, you are going to choose an issue to work on together. That issue will become the centerpiece of your training. Over the past 30 years, during the Cambodian genocide of 1975 - 1979, over 20% of the Cambodian population was killed by a communist party known as the Khmer Rouge. Over 1.7 million Cambodian men, women and children were brutally killed and entire families were wiped out. As a result, many children found themselves orphaned, homeless and struggling to survive.

As is common in many developing countries, Phnom Penh is a city of contrasts. While there are some well-to-do businesses and offerings, the city is populated with low-income neighborhoods and slums. The social ills confronting local leaders include chronic poverty, debt, poor health due to poor sanitation and lack of access to clean water, landlessness, low land productivity, natural disasters, lack of capital, high unemployment, poor skills and low levels of education, a torn social fabric which is the product of the Khmer Rouge genocide and subsequent on-going civil war lasting right up to 1997. Many have come from the countryside to Phnom Penh looking for work and ended up in the slums.

Our partner, CCH Cambodia, works with children who come from the Steung Meanchey Municipal Waste Dump. The rubbish pickers who build makeshift huts and are charged extraordinary rents by local landowners populate the dump. Roughly 2,000 people, about 600 of whom are children, live and work there. The dump itself covers about 100 acres, or almost 6 hectares. It is flanked by private property on which rubbish pickers build makeshift huts and are charged extortionate rents by landowners.