A new venture

Leaving Cambodia in April is going to be extremely difficult. We have adapted to life quite well here and most of the time have relished the experience. However, our links with Cambodia will not be broken - far from it. In fact we now have a new charity(!) that we have set up. We are currently doing research on the situation of children who live in prisons in Cambodia. The aim will be to establish a project that will provide these children with a safe and clean environment in which to live, free from violence, with access to education and to medical/social care. The project will be run by Cambodians but managed from the UK.

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Prey Sar Prison

At the weekend we took a visit to the Phnom Penh prison. The prison is not too far from the Killing Fields on the edge of town. It is a "model" prison because lots of NGOs come to monitor it. There is a women's, men's and youth prison. Even though it is a "role model" prison it doesn't mirror a western prison at all.


On the way

We were lucky to go because of a University Project which is presently helping the youth offenders recognise the importance of law and their rights. The Project is very impressive. It is run by students at a Cambodian University - This in itself is great to see as so much is done by international NGOs which could be done by Cambodians themselves. The Project was very professional and the ideas that they are running and the way they are running the workshops are excellent. They have about 60 children attend so the class is BIG! Last weekend they were studying the rights of the child.





The gates of the prison

You can read more about the Project here http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.cambodia/browse_thread/thread/6e332b19c0dc1a92

We then met with the prison director to discuss our ideas for the prison. I'll put more about this later when things are better established...