(Photo opposite: Dustin in Tanzania) My first introduction to Cambodia was several years ago when I was passing through on my way from Ho Chi Minh to Bangkok and I vaguely remember the sights and sounds that I first experienced in this country. Several years later I was posted in Cambodia while working for a large international student travel company leading groups of students and volunteers in various service projects around the country. After living two years in Cambodia, I have watched the country and the people grow in leaps and bounds. It is easy to label Cambodia as the new sick man of Asia with its nearly non-existent infrastructure and economy, to the casual visitor Cambodia may appear to be working backwards compared to its more stable and wealthy neighbors. However, all is not lost, the genuine and warm hospitality of the Cambodian people promises to rescue the country from almost overwhelming odds.
Whether you are working with orphans in Battambang and Phnom Penh or fishing with locals along the mighty Mekong you will always feel welcome and at home with your new Khmer friends. They will be your ever present companions as you explore and experience everything that Cambodia has to offer. Eager to share their country, lives and stories with you, they are sure to become some of your best memories. Their faces and bodies marked by hardship, they embody the bright future that Cambodia has been waiting for. Smiling up at you, the children of Cambodia will provide you with an unlimited supply of heartfelt inspiration.
When I was first posted in Cambodia, it was a complete surprise, my boss had told me to go and investigate an orphanage to see if our company was interested in supporting the children that lived there. When I arrived I was met by two or three of my colleagues who had been in Cambodia for a few weeks before me. I had been at the orphanage for about ten or fifteen minutes when my phone rang and I was notified that I would be living in Cambodia full time. It was a surprise to say the least, and at first I had no desire to live in Cambodia. Having lived and worked all over the world, I was pretty “Asia’d Out” and of all of the place in Asia Cambodia wasn’t exactly on the top of my list. But in the months that followed that sentiment changed along with myself.
My first six months in Cambodia I spent my time working at a dilapidated orphanage on the edge of a polluted cess pool of human waste and garbage known as “Hope of Children”. It was quite the experience to work with children living in such conditions. After about a month of working with the children and experiencing their way of life, I simply could not take it anymore. I decided that if no other support was available then I would do things myself. I stopped accepting my paychecks and started to divert them towards projects at the orphanage. Within the first few months of working at this orphanage I spent over ten thousand dollars, dumping in every penny that I could scrape together to improve the lives of the children. Working daily to renovate and repair, while enlisting the help of anyone I could find locally. I made connections with the local Spanish mission that provided mutli-vitamins and free medical care to the children, I rallied support online from donors to purchase sanitary items like toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap and other good. Things were going very well and the children had gone from living in filth and poverty to having three hot meals a day. As with everything in life, all good things must come to an end. A sneaking suspicion had crept into my head when I had first arrived about the management structure of the orphanage. It was led by a very soft spoken monk and a group of older orphaned girls who were in their late 20s. The type of relationship between the two groups was never clear, but both my staff, myself and visitors had always remarked about the way they would interact with each other. It was not long after everything had been improved that I learned a great deal about the history of the monk, the girls and of this organization. To cut short a very long story, the monk had been molesting children in the orphanage since early 2003 and had been forced to relocate his center multiple times because of recurring issues with money, abuse, and even the odd accusation of murder. It was quite the shock and unfortunately it was the children who would pay the price. I had no choice but to withdraw support of the center and lose everything I had worked so hard for. Nearly seven months of daily interaction with these children came to a grinding hault when documents were sourced from the Ministry of Social Affairs citing dozens of incidents of sexual misconduct on the part of the monk. It was a very depressing turn of events that really shook me to the core. I had never expected to be blindsided by such events.
For the next few months, myself and my staff went hunting around Cambodia, we were determined to seek out other children in need and rebuild what we had lost in the past. It took us about two months to find a new center that we could work with and we felt safe funding. The new center was known as C.P.C.D.O. Or Children And Poor Communities Development Organization, funded by a foundation from Holland the center was the perfect location to begin more projects. We began work with C.P.C.D.O. in April and launched a wave of new projects to help renovate their desolate looking facility. Their property appeared to be abandoned when we first arrived, the only signs of life were dirty hand prints that sprinkled the walls. The story was very similar to the previous orphanage, with fifty children living in conditions that would make hardened prison inmates cry themselves to sleep at night. The children lived in little more then tin shelters, they slept in steel bunk beds with hard wooden planks as their only padding. These kids were very different however from those that I worked with in the past. They were radiating positive energy, they were in rough shape, but they were very happy. We set to work immediately sanding, painting, building, repairing and planting. We tackled every project that we could find with the help of our student volunteers from the United States. We spent days preparing and planting rice in neglected fields, we plowed gardens, built fences and graveled the play area to reduce the amount of gruesome injuries the children would manifest after games of soccer. I spent four months renovating this facility with the help of my students. At the end of August when the students returned to their families to prepare for school I began the hunt for funding to continue to support the orphanage as they were notified that their funding would be getting cut short in the years to come. The company that I had been working for had made a killing from selling trips to work with orphaned children in Cambodia. They had netted themselves a healthy profit of nearly $160,000 in the span of three months, when I approached the company for support they denied my requests for any additional or on-going support. This created some underlying tension between myself and my employer, I had dedicated the past year or more to helping the people of Cambodia with my meager salary and after running a successful summer of student service trips they did not feel obligated in any way to provide the orphanage with any kind of benefits. At the time I was in no position to argue, I loved working with my kids at the center and I did not want to leave them so I did not press the issue. A few months later I had another incident with my company, this time they pushed me a bit too far and I resigned. I was unsure of what the next steps would be, I had spent a long time in Cambodia with no desire to really leave the kids that I had worked so hard to help. It took me a day from the time I resigned to the time in which I was on the phone with a website company negotiating a deal to start my own company.
The idea to start my own non-profit student travel organization came while sitting at home trying to think of what to do next. I did not want to leave the kids I had been supporting, I wanted to remain and see them grow up and help them better their lives as best I could. I was at a complete loss of ideas and words when the idea jumped at me. I began to write feverishly on the computer, producing page after page of text, assembling photos and reaching out to everyone I had ever known for support to launch my organization. I was determined to “right the wrongs” that my company had committed in the past. I felt horrible that the company had used the most vulnerable kinds of children to make a cool profit. I was determined to make that money back and to provide ongoing support for the children. During the early stages of planning I often involved the children in my ideas, the organization would revolve around them and provide full support for them. At one point a meeting was held with the children and they were asked about their feelings towards such a project. Their encouragement and support of me really propelled the project forward as I developed the website and wrote the content for the site. Less then twenty days after resigning my organization Global Student Outreach was established, legalized and ready to do business as the only non-profit student travel and service company in existence.
In early 2010 Global Student Outreach in cooperation with the Hidden Hearts Foundation will begin construction of a new sustainable, zero-energy facility for the orphans of Battambang, Cambodia. The first of its kind in Cambodia, our new project will provide examples of sustainable living for community leaders and citizens of Cambodia. Allowing villagers from the surrounding area to visit our facility to participate in seminars and training on how to live cleaner and more productive lives. The orphanage facility will also provide English, computer, and sewing classes to impoverished children who cannot afford to pay private school fees but still wish to study, while housing and caring for over fifty children on a daily basis. With the help of donors from around the world we will be changing our land to fit its new purpose as a home and school for these amazing kids, and for the surrounding communities. This project promises to make a hefty contribution to the welfare of the children while providing ideas and solutions to rural communities. Global Student Outreach is committed to seeing this project through as well as providing quality student service programs for volunteers and students to be a part of as we continue our work to enrich their lives of Cambodia’s children. The project will differ from anything that parents, students, staff or Cambodia have ever seen before as a service project that will touch thousands of lives throughout the country. This summer we will need many student volunteers to not only to continue work at the current orphanage, but to assist us in building our new orphanage which is also in the small town of Battambang.
Since I began working in Cambodia I can truly say that I have been changed as a person. Those who knew me when I was younger barely recognize the person that they see now. The children have impacted my life in a way that I never knew they could and I dont think there will ever be a way in which I can repay them for the things that they have taught me. I value my experience working with these wonderful kids more then any of my other adventures abroad and I hope that I can continue to support and care for these kids for many years to come. It is my goal to see these kids grow and be successful in their lives and hopefully they will have learned as much from me as I have from them by the time they enter society as adults.
To read more about Dustin’s work in Cambodia see his web site: http://www.globalstudentoutreach.org/
* More Articles on Living in Cambodia
* Real Estate in Cambodia
* Banks in Cambodia - Worldwide Banking Directory
* Universities in Cambodia - Colleges & Universities listed by Country
* Embassies and Consulates of Cambodia
* Hospitals in Cambodia
* Newspapers in Cambodia
