The Safe Reception Center

The Cambodian economy is at a critical pass. To the strains caused by the transition from central planning to a market economy, which the country shares with all economies in transition, the burden of the war has been added. Its current macroeconomic developments reflect the country emergence from almost two decades of armed conflict and isolation to the changing world economy. While most of the former centrally planned economies have had access to various forms of foreign assistance to smooth the impact of the reforms on output and living standards, Cambodia was cut off from foreign financial support and had to fend for itself. It has seen an inordinate proportion of its resources and income directed toward financing conflict. The Cambodian economy has until recently also labored under the constraints imposed by a centrally planned, command-and-control approach to economic management. Although in many respects the progress made during the past decade in recovering from the devastation of the 1970s has been impressive, in effect, a quarter of a century of progress has been lost.

Long after the decline of the Khmer rouge Cambodia’s children are still facing hardship. Read on to find out about the main challenges confronting the children of Cambodia. Scarred by years of brutal warfare the children of Cambodia face a bleak future in the face of the burdens that lie upon them. Many children in Cambodia live in unimaginable conditions such as orphaned, street children, and extremely poor. With the odds stacked up against them they find it hard to keep a positiv e attitude about the future. The homeless children and their families live on the streets and are therefore known as street children. Naturally they are vulnerable to so much harm both physical and mental because of not having their basic necessities of life fulfilled skills.

The pathetic situation in which the children of Cambodia are living goes to show the tragic consequences of the events that took place in the recent history of the country. The inability of the government to handle the problem is yet another testament to the poor political management that has its impacts on the lives of the Cambodian children. The northwest provinces are the most war-ravaged area in Cambodia, particularly many of the districts in Battambang. The interference of prolonged civil war led to many problems including socio-economic, social structure, and education access. It is estimated that around 65% of the population in these remote areas are illiterate. The high illiteracy rate leads also to lack of social development, self support and lack of understanding of the consequence of any forthcoming concern. Due to the ignorance and poverty in these remote villages in the Battambang area we have located many children have been dropped out school and become gangster and drug abuses to make many problem in society. During the case identification assessment, the program staff members disclosed that children in the selected areas are lacking in any external support. They are basically a burden to their families as they are no t capable of earning money to assist in family support. This is started from day-to-day feeding up to a long term living responsibility.

CHO is dedicated primarily to working alongside the vulnerable and poor children, disadvantaged community, and remote vulnerable children, where poverty and the sense of social structure and human dignity have degenerated. CHO has begun to restore the breakdown of civil society to a normal traditional way of life through the promotion of civil society transformation amongst children bases, mutual participation and capacity building to meet their own needs in a sustainable way. Based to the children promoted, CHO has providing formal and non-formal education support to underprivileged children in the some of slum villages of Battambang and Pailin province. Because of the educational problem, skills and child rights have been main points of the hottest issues for children in our targeted area. In this term, we could foresee that there will be far from realistic that the disadvantaged children of the targeted population cannot benefit of such important service such skills. The lack of school’s and education center access to the requirement of them, and especially, the extremely low level of family economy of the people in the Battambang and Pailin province, it is obvious that they will not have the chance to attend a complete course such English language, Computer and life skills of primary declaration of Child rights as stated in universal of United Nation.

CHO, has implementing the activities to promote of child rights in respond to the necessities of poor children whose unable to improve of life skills, English Languages and computer skills and established an optional center at CHO office to receives t he children with large amount 212, as most of them from the background such as orphans, street children and extremely poor children of Battambang city. The center to provide them with English language, Computer skills, social moral, game activities and some of them receives life skills.

This is to give opportunity for those poor children to have full access to proper skills and/or at least they can read and write the English language and can use computer in the bases, and more they know some of life skills for their future plan. This responses answer to three different problems, one is to offer the chance for younger age children who cannot attend in fee schools and secondly, by the time they will completed the skills, by then they grown up and their families aren’t to pay basic cost for their children and third this opportunity it may reduce some of social problems from the m, as become gangster, drug abuses, trafficking and labor exploitation. This is mean that CHO is responses to the social problems which ha ve had occurred to Cambodian children, however, CHO still shortage of funding to support, but the activities is continuing with our commitment staff and well being to work with children. To make children’s life more interesting, purposeful and to promote their development a lot of activities and events are organized within as well as out of the village. Education was the challenging part in the working process of children development programme. We prepared for activities to educate our children. All our children from 6 to 18 years old will be improve their basic and social knowledge of Child rights, English language , computer and life skills, which was leaded by our educator, therefore, our educators have trained directly to those children with smoothly cooperation.