Speech by Ms Buth Saman, Executive Director, Children and Life Association (CLA)
On Tuesday 8th March 2011 Community Links with Cambodia held a seminar at the Australian Volunteers International Office, in Fitzroy, Melbourne.
A event featured a panel discussion with special guest Ms Buth Saman, Executive Director, Children and Life Association (CLA). Below, is a transcript of Buth Saman’s speech.
1) Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge
Cambodia is well known to many Australians. Most people know about the genocide of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge when nearly 2 million people out of a population of 7 million died.
I was studying foreign languages at Phnom Penh University when the Pol Pot regime took power in 1975. They evacuated us from the city to live in the countryside.
2) Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge
During Pol Pot time, it was like we were slaves. We were forced to work 15 hours every day, 7 days a week and we hardly had any food, just weak rice soup. We started work at 4am in the morning and finished at 10pm at night. The work was very hard. We had to dig canals and work in the rice fields.
3) Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge
We were very tired and hungry. Often I was so hungry that it kept me awake at night.
We were always frightened and didn’t know when we would be killed. We knew that if we were sick, we would probably die. We always had to say ‘yes’ to Pol Pot people. If they asked us if we had enough to eat, we had to say yes even though we were starving. My brother was murdered by a Pol Pot soldier because he said that he didn’t have enough to eat. My brother was 21 years old.
There were always spies and Khmer Rouge people listening to everything we said. We could say nothing and it was like our mouths were sewn up. After about 4 months of the Khmer Rouge, one of my friends that I studied with at University made a mistake and said a French word. A village spy heard her say this and reported her to the Khmer Rouge who took her away and killed her. We never knew who was the spy.
4) Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge
This type of thing happened every day to children as well as adults.
5) Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge
It was a terrible time for Cambodia.
Rebuilding Cambodia
Since 1980, Cambodia has been trying to rebuild itself. It has been very difficult as all the people with education and knowledge were killed and we had to start again from nothing – no schools, no hospitals, no government departments, no roads because the Khmer Rouge destroyed them all. Although, Pol Pot was pushed out from power, the civil war went on until 1993 when United Nations helped us to have democratic elections.
During the 1980’s and 1990’s many international NGOs came to Cambodia to help. In 1992, I was employed by Australian Catholic Relief as a project officer. It was then I met Barbara who was the Community Development Team Leader. It was during my employment with ACR that I realised I wanted to improve the lives of poor people and communities.
1) Children and Life Association
Although it is many years since the Khmer Rouge and many countries are trying to help, Cambodia is still very poor with 85% of the people living in the countryside trying to make a living from agriculture.
My organisation, the Children and Life Association is based in Prey Veng which is one of the poorest provinces in Cambodia and we work in Mesang which is about 100 kms from the capital city of Phnom Penh and is one of the poorest districts in Prey Veng.
The reason I chose to work in Mesang District in 1999 was because during my employment with Save the Children Australia as Child Development Officer I met around 1000 street children and 60% of them came from Mesang. Their families came to Phnom Penh looking for work on construction sites or to do begging or scavenging on rubbish dumps to earn money for food and try to pay back their debts.
These families are very poor. Some have no land, some have no house either, others just a small piece of land so they couldn’t grow enough food for the family. When they can’t find any work locally they have to become labour migrants and move to Phnom Penh or even Thailand. It is very sad, but mostly they don’t make any money doing this and they can be even worse off.
This is the story of one man. He borrowed $200 to pay a people smuggler to take him illegally to Thailand so he could get work. The smuggler got him over the border but he didn’t know where to go or what to do. He was chased by the Thai Police and put in prison for 3 months and then taken back to the border. Some other Cambodians gave him a little money to return home but he had to pay a bribe to border police and so he ended up with nothing. He could only return home because a kind bus driver let him travel for free. The $200 he borrowed had an interest charge of 15% per month which is 180% per annum. The man had no way to pay it back and eventually his debt became around $1700.
2) Children and Life Association
Mesang District, where CLA works, suffers from both drought and flood. Farmers can only grow one crop of rice per year because there is no irrigation. Poor families only have a small piece of land, around 1 hectare. Also the soil is not fertile so the rice yield is low, only 1 tonne per hectare. This is enough rice to feed two adults for a year, but what happens when there is a family of 5, 6, or more people?
Struggling to Survive
I will tell you a story about one family in Mesang: They do not have enough to eat and they are hungry for more than 6 months of the year. It is a struggle to survive. All the family members including the children have to find ways buy food. The father migrated to Thailand to find work to pay off the family debt. The mother sells her labour in advance of the harvest which means instead of getting $4.00 she only gets $1.00 per day. The older daughter of 17 is sent to work in a garment factory in Phnom Penh. The 13 year old daughter has to look after her younger siblings of 10 and 8 while the parents are away from the home working. The children also forage for food such as wild fruit and small crabs in the rice field. Because of this the children cannot go to school regularly and the poverty cycle continues from their parent’s generation to their generation.
Debt and the Poor
For everyone, health is very important. In Cambodia, health care is expensive. It’s not like here where the government subsidises health. In Cambodia, often poor people have to borrow money to pay the doctor and buy medicine.
I will tell you a story about one woman who had a sick child and she had to borrow US$5.00 from a money lender to pay for treatment. She had to pay 30% interest per month which is 360% interest per year. The woman could not pay it back so the debt kept compounding until it reached US$200. The woman then had to mortgage her land to pay back the debt. So, for a $5 medical treatment, this family lost its land.
In Mesang, there are thousands of families who struggle like this and the children suffer too much from hunger, exploitation, abuse, poor health and no education.
CLA – the Organisation
CLA is a child rights and community development organisation. Child rights involve education, health, safety, having a voice and being listened to.
- In Cambodia, many rural people don’t understand that children have the right to be educated, for that reason many children drop out of school early because their parents want them to work to support the family.
- Even when families have rice to eat, the children may not be fed properly as parents don’t understand about nutrition and often a meal is rice with fish paste and no vegetables. Malnutrition is a serious problem in Cambodia and the death rate of children under 5 years is high.
- Parents sometimes send their children into risky situations for the survival of the family, such as working on construction sites, allowing their young daughters of 13 years to 17 years to work in beer drinking places or as domestic servants.
- In Cambodia, parents don’t consider or listen to the opinions of the children or even talk to them about how was school, what have they been learning. This has a negative affect on the development of children.
Our job at CLA is to work with families and the whole community so that children can have enough to eat, go to school, grow up healthy and strong, be safe and can express their own ideas and opinions.
CLA – community development work
How do we do this? Poverty is very complex so we have to tackle it in many directions.
CLA works with parents, children, the community, local authorities as well as monks at the pagoda.
CD – work and discuss together
CLA encourages parents to join Mother to Mother and Father to Father discussion groups, Self Help Savings Groups and a village Child Protection Network. These groups are the basis of the behaviour change that occurs in all the villages that CLA works.
In the M-M and F-F discussion groups, the parents are encouraged to talk together about their children and other issues that affect their lives. Very often, this is the first time that people can really share their feelings together and feel they have friends in the village. One of the shocking legacies from Pol Pot is the lack of trust and solidarity in villages. During that time, people learned to never trust anyone. Because they had been forced to work like slaves, they also don’t want to work together as it reminds them of Pol Pot times. Through the CLA groups, villagers overcome their fear of letting people know their feelings and also learn to work together and to cooperate and help each other.
Working with children
CLA is well known for its work with children. When we start working in a village, our youth team holds a meeting of children and young people. Children who express an interest can be trained as child peer educators. After their training they go on to form children’s clubs.
The Children’s Clubs
In each village between 30 and 150 children join these clubs. They learn to talk about their lives and the things that interest them. Over time, many social problems come to light such as family violence, drunkenness from rice wine and incidents of trafficking, abuse and gambling. Children as young as 12 years old also learn about their family’s debt as the parents send them out to earn money to help pay it back.
Under the care and guidance of youth outreach workers, the children are encouraged to write poems and songs, draw pictures and write role plays about their experiences and the behaviour they observe in their villages.
Village theatre
With CLA’s help, the children put on Village Theatre events where role plays are produced and acted by the children, songs are sung and poems read out. These events are very entertaining and deeply moving and the adults in the village can easily recognise the behaviour of their neighbours who are drunk, violent and cause social disharmony. The role plays also demonstrate clearly the way to improve the situation of life by joining mother to mother and father to father groups, self help savings groups and learning to grow vegetables and raise chickens and ducks so the family has enough to eat.
This is a very important part of CLA’s work. We have two programs that work together – sustainable farming and income generation.
Sustainable farming
Sustainable farming is where we teach people how to grow vegetables organically using compost and permaculture techniques and how to raise and look after poultry and livestock. We also encourage people to dig fish ponds as raising fish provides protein for the family and is also a very good way to earn income.
Income generation
Our income generation program provides families with micro loans from between $100 and $250 and provides training and mentoring to farmers in how to make a small business.
Through sustainable farming and income generation, families learn to grow enough food and also to make extra money so they can pay off their debts and begin to save for the things they need such as school clothes and materials for their children and a bicycle for family transport.
Health and nutrition
When families have enough to eat, only then can CLA raise awareness about health and nutrition. Cambodia has a very poor record of maternal and child health and this is becoming an important part of CLA’s work. We are teaching parents about nutrition for themselves. pregnant women, and children and also about personal and household hygiene.
When families have enough to each, CLA encourages the parents to send their children to school and helps them by providing school books and uniforms for the children.
CLA Approach
You can see that CLA has many programs that are holistic so that families can learn and change their behaviour and improve their situation of life.
I would like to give you an example of a CLA success story: Remember the man I told you about who borrowed $200 at180% per year when he went to Thailand looking for work and his debt eventually became $1700. When he came back from Thailand in 2009, this man, Sarin, saw how others families had improved their situation of life by joining the CLA program and learning how to grow and sell vegetables and raise chickens and pigs. He also heard how people had paid off their debts so he asked to join CLA program.
The first step for Sarin’s family was to join child rights training and learn that children need to go to school, to have enough food that is nutritious, that children should have their own voice to express their ideas and needs and that children should be protected.
In CLA’s sustainable farming program they were trained in basic agricultural knowledge. Sarin and his wife Sophiep were very eager to learn and to try the new techniques. They made compost and improved their soil and grew so many vegetables that they could feed their family, feed the animals and also sell some for income.
Sarin and Sophiep joined the income generation program and borrowed $150 to make business in trading chickens and selling fish from the ponds that Sarin dug by hand. In 14 months, Sarin paid back $1,000 to the money lenders and he expects to finish the loan within another year.
Sophiep joined the Mother to Mother discussion group. They learnt about health, nutrition, hygiene and the importance of education for their children. The women in the Mother to Mother groups always talk to other women in the village about the things they learn so everyone can know.
The family joined one of the village Self Help Savings Groups. There are around 15 families in each group and they agree to each save the same amount per month. Monthly savings range from 50 cents to $10 per family which goes into the group’s village savings box. To borrow from the fund, a family has to fill out a borrowing form and agree to pay monthly interest of 3%. Loans are normally quite small, less than $20, and they are used for emergencies such as sickness. In some villages, the group’s savings have accumulated to around $1000. When this happens the group makes a business plan together to do a joint business such as making fish paste together or trading in rice.
Sarin joined the Child Protection Network which are set up in each village. These networks spread awareness of child rights and, in their role of community ‘watchdog’, protect children and young people from traffickers and predatory labour recruiters. The networks provide feedback to the commune council and local government.
There are 4 children in the Sarin and Sophiep’s family from 3 yrs old to 13 years old. The school age children now attend school regularly. The 13 year old daughter has joined one of the village Child Clubs. In the Child Clubs, Child Peer Educators teach the children about child rights and lead discussions about what happens in their village. The children act as ‘community watchdogs’. They monitor whether all children in the village go to school regularly and when things are not right, they report to the Child Protection Network for intervention. The children also do many happy activities such as singing and dancing, drawing and role plays.
CLA has been working in Sarin’s village of Mrinh since 2005. There are 188 families in the village. During the past 5 years CLA has worked directly with 35 of the poorest families in the village with material support of seeds, watering cans, hoes and loans. However, the whole village was invited to the agricultural training and encouraged to join villages groups. At the end of 2010, at least 120 families were composting, growing vegetables and raising chickens, ducks and pigs.
Previously the village had suffered from domestic violence, drunkenness and many families had high debt levels and migrated for work. Now, there is a high degree of social harmony with greatly reduced domestic violence. About 10% of the families still migrate out of the village to Phnom Penh looking for work. The remainder can earn enough in their local village and don’t need to migrate.
Sarin, Sophiep and their children are now happy, healthy, and saving money to do business. Their lives are completely transformed.
CLA is very happy about the Village of Mrinh and all the families who have improved their lives and whose children are now going to school and eating good food.
In every village where CLA programs of Sustainable Farming, Income Generation, Education for a better future, Health and Child Rights and Child protection are implemented, we see changes like this. This is what we work for:
To give children and their families a good and safe life. To work with communities so they can change their village from being a place of poverty and hopelessness to a place that is safe and happy, where families have more than enough to eat, children are respected and their ideas and opinions are heard.
There are hundreds of success stories like that of Sarin and Sophiep and their family. CLA has implemented their holistic program in 70 villages. In another 90 villages CLA has done HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention and awareness raising in child rights, trafficking, violence and gender equity.
Trorkeat Program
I would like to say something about our friends in Australia who have supported us for 10 years, Community Links with Cambodia. Many of the members are here tonight and they have helped to put this evening together to help poor children and their families in Mesang where CLA works.
For just over two years Community Links with Cambodia has supported children and families in the village of Trorkeat. The Trorkeat Program has all holistic components that I have talked about and it is making a very big difference in the lives of children and their families. The CLC Experiential Tour visited Trorkeat in November last year and tour group members saw for themselves how the lives of families are being transformed. CLC is organising more experiential tours this year to visit Cambodia and come to Mesang to stay with CLA. If you wanted to join a tour, CLA would welcome you very much and take you everywhere to see what I have talked about tonight.
Thank you.
I would like to thank you very much for coming to this wonderful event tonight which is raising money for the Trorkeat Program. I can promise you that every dollar that is donated to the Trorkeat Program goes directly to the project to support children to go to school so they become educated, to help their families grow enough food so they all have enough nutritious food to eat, and to improve their health and hygiene.
Ms Buth Saman, Executive Director, Children and Life Association (CLA)
