Trip Report – September 2014

I returned 2 weeks ago from a very eventful trip to Siem Reap, but more on that later.

For those of you living in Australia you may have seen a recent program that was running on the ABC called Head First which was presented by a journalist called Sabour Bradley. He did one program called “the Orphan Business” which concentrated on one particular NGO in Cambodia which is working to rescue children from unscrupulous people who actually buy children from poor families to pose as orphans to bring in donations which they then keep themselves, the children become a money making enterprise. Of course anything that happens to reduce corruption and exploitation of children in this area is supported by us but I was concerned by the image he was portraying of “orphanages “in Cambodia. So I wanted to make sure all our supporters understand what we actually do and how we ensure these practices do not occur.

Some facts about Imagine Cambodia

1. We know the background of most our children and in the cases where we don’t it is because no one does. Every one of our children is officially registered with the local authorities with all their personal details as best we know them and they are listed as being under our care. That registration is legally binding in Cambodia. If we don’t know much about background
   (as with our youngest boy Samnang) the closest to the truth that we know is what he is officially registered as. Sadly it is not unusual for Cambodians to not know their birthdates as an example.
2. Where children have part of their own families still living and contactable, we involve them as we can and the fact the children are with us is with their knowledge and understanding. Some of our children were abandoned and some were simply unable to be cared for by their families.
3. We do not allow unauthorised visitors into Imagine, everyone who visits is known to us and the staff is informed beforehand. We regularly ask for visitors to acknowledge and sign our Child Protection Policy
4. We do not collect money in Cambodia, on the streets or anywhere else. All our funds come from foreign donations primarily in Australia and the US.
5. 100% of all money donated to Imagine goes to the running of the centre and the care of the children. There are no other expenses except for some fees taken by banks.
6. We don’t do shows or tours. We don’t believe our children are performers, they are children and we are trying to build a home.
7. We rarely have volunteers because we believe it is an unnecessary imposition on our staff. We do from time to time have assistance with teaching English but that is known and planned in advance.
8. We have no relationship with any volunteer tourism organisation.
9. We are an authorised Cambodian Foundation with a majority Cambodian Board. We are NOT a foreign NGO.

Our view has always been that we do our job, we do what is best for our children and the community they live in and we keep our heads down. I know of some of the centres Sabour Bradley visited in Siem Reap in the making of his documentary and we would prefer they stop because it gives us a bad name and it is questionable what value they provide to the children.

If anybody wants to know more about how we operate or about any of our policies please do not hesitate to contact me and ask the question.

This particular trip was timed around the results of the National tests. Education standards in Cambodia vary widely between schools and areas of Cambodia and the way the Government has tried to get around that is to have a national test regime for all students finishing Grade 12. This system has turned out to be somewhat of a fiasco over the past 10 years and it was well known that copies of the tests and even the answers could be bought. Universities and Colleges were giving such leeway to students that it could be as late as 2nd or 3rd year of a University course before a student was required to show evidence of passing the national test.

This year the Government tried to tighten up and no one really knew what to expect. Results and tests could not be bought and the standard of the tests themselves was increased, but we did not know by how much beforehand. The process was monitored by Transparency International and Universities were instructed to ensure that no student could enter without a pass in the national test.

Whilst those are good aims the problem was that the pass rate came back at 26% and only 11 students in a total of 90,000 received a A . Neither of our 2 boys who sat ( Da and Va) passed and they were very upset. The problem for the Cambodian Government is that they now didn’t have enough students to enter University courses , so they set a new date of 13th October for students to re-sit the tests. This is actually after tertiary institutions and senior High School starts for the new year so whilst the aims were good the implementation was very poor. They have replaced one problem with another.

We decided that the best chance for Da and Va was to make sure they received good tutoring. They did have tutoring for the first exams but we were disappointed with the quality. This time they have gone to Phnom Penh and are staying with Theary’s family and have been receiving a mixture of one on one and group tutoring. This has cost us quite a bit ( in Cambodian terms) but we really want these boys to have the best chance they can to pass.

That was the first thing that happened but the trip started badly in another way as well. Early one morning we were travelling to the centre in a tuktuk driven by Imagine’s regular driver Ratah, when a 2 year old boy ran into the tuktuk and fell and we ran over his leg. Initially I thought he was badly injured and we immediately got him to the hospital but a series of events followed which will take too long to describe in this report. The result was that he was fine, not even a broken bone, but the incident turned into an attempt by the family to get money from Imagine and from Ratah, despite the fact that he was not at fault at all. It turned out ok in the end but it is another example of how poverty changes the behaviour of people. It is hard to blame this family for trying to get money from us because they are poor and the opportunity was there.

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful and I got to spend a lot of time with the kids as they were on holiday. I was joined by our friends Chris McLoughlin and Leigh Hocking for a few days at the end of the trip and it was great to show them Siem Reap and Imagine. Our children are so welcoming and love to have the opportunity to show off their reading skills in English. Chris told me that she couldn’t believe how happy they were and when that is a visitor’s reaction it must mean we are doing some things right. However, I do think that both Chris and Leigh were a little surprised by the 2 kilos of frogs we barbequed one night at the house.

For all of our friends, family and supporters who live in Melbourne please don’t forget the fundraising dinners at Hellenic Republic in Kew on November 12th and 13th. Please bring your friends and let me know if you can attend as soon as possible. If you need a copy of the official notice please email me and I will send one to you.

Peter Joyce
Director