If you had 5 days in PHENON PHEN

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what would you do?
Here is what we did:

Fri -
Search for a room - kill time until 9:30

Sat
Move to the Okay GH
Meet Borey - try for dump
Rain - Toel Slang
Dinner - Chenla Center
Bugs

Sun
Village - schools under trees and then bike shopping
Toel Kork - all day school
Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity Aids Hospice - Sister Lilly
Mass - Lunch
Computer for HIV
Circus
Walk river front pizza

Mon
Nutrition Center
Lunch
Central market
3:15 class
240 street - Dinner

Tuesday
Toel Kork all day
Aspara
Traffic jam

Wed
9:00 class
Hot and tired
128 street
Dinner with Borey

DUMP
Below is a story about the dump that we were unable to get to due to the flooded roads.
Scott Neeson, an Australian, who gave up a rich life as a Hollywood movie executive to go live in Cambodia. There he helps poor children escape their lives as trash pickers and get an education. You can find his story on the internet.

Because when you change the life of one child of Cambodia, in Cambodia that means you save at least two or three generations ahead. You give education to one boy or one girl -- that means this boy and this girl will have a better job and will feed 15 people in their family. He's changed the lives of several hundred children and probably several thousand families. When people see him they have to think good thoughts about America. There's nothing worse than awareness, unfortunately, nothing worse than having your eyes open.

TOEL SLENG Museum will give you a disturbing and uncensored look into the darkest side of the human condition. While walking through the courtyard or down the corridors, it’s hard to imagine the site’s simple origins as the Tuol Svay Prey High School. However delving into former classrooms shatters any illusion of normalcy. A single rusty bed and disturbingly gruesome black and white photos are all that adorn some rooms, but stand as testament to the unthinkable horrors that happened here. There is one museum where silence doesn’t have to be requested - the power of speech is simply lost here.

In 1975 Pol Pot’s security forces turned the school into Security Prison 21 (S-21), the largest centre of detention and torture in the country. Almost everyone held here was later executed at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. Detainees who died during torture were buried in mass graves inside the prison grounds. During the first part of 1977, S-21 claimed a terrifying average of 100 victims per day.

There’s a compelling new photo exhibition examining present-day lives of some S-21 survivors and perpetrators.

A visit here is instrumental in comprehending Cambodia’s past and present.


SALESIAN SISTERS
In Phenon Phen we were greated with love, enthusiasm and wamth by Sister Ched from the Phillipines, Sister Leeza from India, Sister Mehi from Vietnam and Sister Dori from Columbia. These Salesian sisters operate a Secretarial School in Phenon Phen for young women from 19 to 26 years old. After 2 years of high quality training that includes a lot of moral formation and confidence building, the girls do a 2-month internship and are often hired at the end of that time. They do interviews all over the city for many kinds of businesses and offices, including the American Embassy. From more than 300 applicants each year only 60 can be accepted. They are chosen on the basis of potential and great need. About half of these will live at the school where they receive room and board. The other centers for young women teach tailoring and cooking/hospitality courses, also for 2 years.

The first technical school in Phenon Phen was completed in 1993. A year later Battambang and Sihanoukville schools were added and the Salesian Sisters opened vocational training centers in Phnom Penh. A technical school was opened in 1997 in Sihanoukville, a literacy center and children home was opened in Poipet in 2004. Other literacy centers were opened in Battambang for labor children of the brick factories with the intention of freeing them from factory life and providing an opportunity for a normal school situation. On February 12, 2007 His Majesty, Norodom Sihamoni, opened the Don Bosco Hotel School and thanked DBFC for its presence in the reconstruction of Cambodia.

As an NGO, the DBFC is a project with an assignment agreement to the Cambodia Ministries. It's primary purpose is to provide basic education and appropriate technical training to orphaned and marginalized youth that are poor and have no sources of support. These children will be prepared for future integration in the society. The new situation of today's Cambodia challenges the Salesian priests, brothers and lay educators to find new initiatives. As a result of poverty, many children were denied access to basic education and therefore, to professional and technical education. Therefore, since 1991 the Don Bosco Foundation of Cambodia has evolved into a new style of Salesian presence.

Between 1995 and 2001, the Salesians have trained more than 1500 youth. Presently 1378 students undergo education. Plus, they give food, school uniforms and financial support to 5000 at risk children throughout the country. The Technical Schools and Training Centers in Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, Battambang and Poipet are still in the process of expanding and developing.

To meet the needs of children living and working in Brick Factories in Battambang, Don Bosco has two literacy centers to educate 210 children through an intensive three-year curriculum after which they are reintegrated into government formal high school curriculum.

In response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Cambodia, around 450 AIDS orphans and/or children living in AIDS affected families are offered support in order to access to education and health care.

In addition to helping members from the poorest elements of a society, the Salesians have always had a special concern for homeless youth, orphans and young people in difficulties. The Don Bosco Literacy and Skills Training Center Project to support street children and disadvantaged youth in Poipet (border town with Thailand) is a strategy to fight social evil, promote basic education, and improve the life chances of the children and disadvantaged youth.



JUANA - from PERU
Juana works with the Disabled and Mental Retardation, MS, Down’s Syndrome and Cerebral Palsy children in Cambodia. When she first came to the center all the children were in one room just being housed. She has been instrumental in changing the entire program and now there are separate rooms for school and physical therapy and the kids are thriving. You can see the joy in their faces.

Recently the government decided that they wanted the land where the center is located and they were told they would be moving. According to Juana, the new building will not be as accommodating as they had made this location, but after all this is Cambodia and the Government does what it wants.


Babies in Waiting
Phnom Penh Orphanage Pessimistic Without Foreign Adoptive Parents
By Matt McKinney and Lor Chandara The Cambodia daily

A sprite wrapped in pink blankets, 1-year-old Chiranan stood up in her crib at the government orphanage on Monivong Boulevard on a recent afternoon to survey her surroundings. Chiranan was one of the lucky ones last September: a US couple was asking about her. They wanted to adopt. A first world life with a solid education and health care seemed within reach.

"As we've always known there are plenty of real orphans in this country, so adoptions are a good thing for everybody," said US ambassador Kent Wiedemann. "Valid adoptions are in everyone's interest," he said, adding that a permanent ban on adoptions would be "inhumane."

Last year 51 children left the Nutrition Center with families: Eighteen went to Canada, 13 to France, 8 to the US, 1 to Singapore, 1 to Britain, and 10 were adopted locally.

A fifth of the center's orphans are healthy, one-third of the center's children are HIV positive while another third are disabled. The remaining children suffer from tuberculosis, liver problems, problems caused by food shortages before they came to the center, or conditions caused by inadequate care. Many of the children were abandoned. One who arrived two months ago lost his mother when she died giving birth; another was left behind when his mother began a 15-year prison term.

The burden placed on the center is helped only slightly by Cambodia's razor-thin budget for social services. A government fund provides $4 a month per child to pay for meals and 24-hour care, according to Yuon Sovanna. That translates into about $6,000 a year.

Some of the 127 children who live at the Monivong Boulevard orphanage, 51 of them are girls, are sponsored by foreigners or foreign institutions that send monthly checks to the center for food, medicine and clothing.

"It's the best," she said of the orphanage. "It's very clean. They smile a lot."

"We had to wait and wait," said the woman. "So when adoptions were allowed a lot of people put forward their applications."



Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity Aids Hospice - Sister Lilly

When she first arrived she was close to death, needing surgery that her family could not afford. The Sister also learned about her younger brother who was only months old and needed surgery also. They could not immediately take care of both but when the doctor heard about the brother he decided to do both of the surgeries at the same time. The mother took the boy home after surgery and the girl stayed. The girl came from a very poor family and would often be seen crying and when the sisters would ask why she would say that she was sad because her family did not have anything to eat. The girl was found stashing anything that would keep and others saw and asked she told them that she was saving it for her brothers and sisters when she went home. The Sisters began giving her a little extra so that she could eat a little and save a little.

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Photos

Then and Now
Photo's of survivors

Mother Teresa's Missionary AIDS
These children all have HIV and are recieving medication and doing well.

7 and 2
Blue shirt is 7 years old the other little boy is about 2

Malnurished, now healthy
Will be adopted