FI Newsletter - January 2008

Working at Friends is never dull. Admittedly, some of us lament being stuck behind a desk a little more than we’d like, but accept that it’s a necessary part of what we do and try to get out in the field as often as possible.

We do get to see and experience some amazing things, so we’ve added a new section to our website where our staff will share their experiences and photos of what its like working in the field. Read how a game of ping pong calmed the nerves of one shaky FI staff member after an earthquake in Aceh, and about a small boy in Laos who has found a happy new home with a foster family.

In 2008, Friends-International will continue its international expansion, with many exciting new projects around the world. To effectively meet the needs of vulnerable children across the world, we are widening our focus. We will continue to provide support to street children, but will expand our services to include services for all marginalized urban children and youth. In 2007, we helped over 500 000 children. In 2008 we hope to be able to reach out to many more.

To do this, Friends-International now has 5 main projects.

Friends Alliance - includes all projects initiated by Friends-International across the world. These projects are all linked together and aim to provide services of the highest standard to children and youth, their families and their communities.

CYTI Network - Friends-International works with and supports other organizations to provide a full range of high quality services specifically designed for children and youth around the world. These are linked together in the CYTI-Network. Friends-International currently has 19 partners in 7 countries. By 2010 Friends-International will have 50 partners in 15 countries in Asia, Africa, South America and Europe, and be helping 250 000 children everyday.

The ChildSafe® Network - involves key members of society and travelers to actively protect urban children and youth from all forms of abuse, by training them to recognize and respond to dangerous situations. The global ChildSafe Campaign, run and facilitated by Friends-International, encourages everyone to look at how their behavior can impact children. Together, we can all help to create supportive environments where children are protected.

Urban Action - Friends-International encourages and supports young people to design, develop and implement their own projects in their communities for other children and youth. In the process they gain confidence and self-esteem and become role models, providing inspiration to other vulnerable youth.

Good Money Enterprises - Because life is a good investment. In order to ensure the financial sustainability of its projects and reduce donor dependency, Friends-International has its own income generating initiatives. All profits are re-invested into projects.

We appreciate your continued support, without it we would not be able to reach as many children as we do and build brighter futures for them. The team and I look forward to sharing more of our exciting work with you in 2008.

Sebastien Marot,
Executive Director, Friends-International

The First Cambodian Street Children Network Research

Cambodia’s Street Children Network (CSCN) is a network of organizations who share the objective of increasing the collaboration between services in order to protect and develop the best interest of street children and vulnerable children in Cambodia.

The CSCN has been co-founded in April 2007 by Friends-International, and Mith Samlanh, and includes M’lop Tapang, Goutte D’Eau, Krousar Thmey, World Vision, and CCASVA. The CSCN is currently preparing Cambodia’s Street Children Profile 2007 that will allow the CSCN members to analyze and understand the ongoing changes within the street children population in Cambodia and in their respective target zone.

Over the last 10 years, Friends-International and Mith Samlanh have published yearly Street Children Profiles; these profiles have proved to be invaluable in tracking changes and trends amongst the street children population

For the first time this year, CSCN will present a profile covering street children all over Cambodia. The Profile is divided in two parts.

Firstly, each member will conduct a “One Day Snapshot Survey” quantitative) on 20 December 2007 to collect a rough statistic of children on the street in Cambodia. Geographically, each member is responsible to do the survey in the area of their field work: Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Poi Pet, Kampong Cham, Neak Lung and Kampong Som. Secondly, a detailed presentation of the situation of street children (qualitative) to better understand the situation of street children in Cambodia will be conducted. Friends-International is the survey and will be in charge of data analysis and of preparing and publishing the final report.

Our new Transitional Home “Seila Angkor”

In November, Friends-International Siem Reap opened its first Transitional Home, named ‘Seila Angkor’, which means ‘Angkor stone’. This name was given by the children who live in the home.

In our new house, all children are taken care of by a house father, social worker and a cook. The children receive, lodging, safety, life skills training and non formal education. They will also study at the new Educational Center when it is opened at the end of 2007.

Initiated in 2005, Friends-International’s Siem Reap project, Kolyan Mith provides a comprehensive range of services for vulnerable children, youth and their families. Project activities include providing outreach services to children and youth living on the streets; supporting young people detained in the Siem Reap Prison; the provision of temporary accommodation through the Transitional Home; providing a safe space for young people through the Drop In Centre; providing education and training; and developing a community wide child protection network through the ChildSafe initiative.

Recently, Kolyan Mith activities have been extended significantly and now include working directly with key government personnel to build their capacity in delivering essential services to the community. Friends-International together with the Siem Reap Governor signed a Memorandum of Understanding in April 2007 which enables both parties to work together to develop a sustainable project for vulnerable children and youth in Siem Reap province.

Back to School

Once again September was a busy month for our Education Centers, with many children in Cambodia and Laos returning to school, or going to school for the first time. This year all the school uniforms for the children at Mith Samlanh were made by mothers in our Home Based production project.

In Phnom Penh we supported 777 students to go to school, in Kampong Cham 132 and in Laos, another 402 students received support to return to public school. This year, all of the school uniforms for Mith Samlanh children, were produced by the mothers from our Home Based Production project and some former MS students who now have their own business. In total, 2,424 uniforms were produced by 15 people at home in just 4 months!

The mothers and students who made the uniforms were all technically trained in Friends@240, and sourced all the raw material by themselves. Of course, this came as an additional activity on the top of their regular production. The school uniform orders totaled $9090, which was shared between the 15 mothers and students who did all the sewing.

The coordination effort of the Home Based Production team has been tremendous, receiving orders from diverse MS teams and dispatching them, organizing training sessions, checking quality and managing payments........great work!

“A green week in Ban Soungfafa for Vientiane's Street Children”

During the recent Francophonie Conference held recently in Vientiane, the Vientiane Capital Social Welfare Department and the "Peuan Mit" project worked together to organize a safe area for street children living or working on the streets of the city in order to avoid street "clean ups".

Between the 19th and 25th November, 70 children joined Peuan Mit’s ChildSafe Camp in Ban Soungfafa, 20 km from Vientiane. 32 children who regularly stay at Peuan Mit joined the camp with 38 other children, who live or work on the streets of the city.

The camp offered the children a safe place to stay and many recreational activities took place during the week with the children organizing traditional games, sports competitions, rehearsal for the new children’s show and volunteers from Lao Bang Fei organization organized hip hop dance workshops. A medical supervisor from Peuan Mit provided medical care and the head teacher from Makphet restaurant (Peuan Mit’s hospitality vocational training on Sethatirat road) worked at the camp and prepared food with the children and young people, who really loved having him there and wanted him to stay and cook for them everyday at the center! Peuan Mit is a project for street children, their families and their communities run by the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (MoLSW) and the NGO Friends-International. The official name of the project is: “Building a Sustainable Street Children Project in Lao P.D.R. Implementation and Capacity Building”.

Peuan Mit’s 3 main objectives are to reintegrate street children into the Lao society (family, school, workplace); to prevent new children from becoming street children and to train the social workers of the MoLSW in all aspects of the projects so that they are eventually able to run the project themselves in the future. The Peuan Mit teams provide medical care, non formal education, vocational training, life skills education, and recreational activities (games, sports, dancing and painting) to up to 1200 children per month.

The week was an opportunity for Peuan Mit social workers to get to know new children and to establish trust with them through recreational activities and counseling sessions.

Beside the team being on call 24 hours a day hours at the ChildSafe camp, staff were also on duty at the Peuan Mit center to welcome children who had not joined the camp and a group of staff went on outreach on the street of the city to let as many children as possible know about the camp. M. Onsy, Head of the Vientiane Capital Social Welfare Department came to visit the camp and the children during the week with a group of officials from Vientiane Capital. The ChildSafe camp has been made possible thanks to the support of UNICEF, the European Union and Aide et Action. In other news, the children at Peuan Mit have received their measles vaccination during the national vaccination campaign supported by UNICEF. New rules for the center which were developed with the children, have been put in place and a small workshop was held with the children to present them. I Our training restaurant in Vientiane, Makphet, has been included in the new Laos Lonely Planet and Guide du Routard. The restaurant will also start opening for dinner in early 2008.

Repatriated mothers from Thailand receive support from Friends-International

Chea Ty came back from Thailand two months ago and is the first woman to join Friends-International’s reintegration project for mothers repatriated from Thailand (funded by DCA). Here is her story.

Chea Ty and her family moved to Poipet, on the Thai border, to find employment. After one year working on the border she went to Bangkok with her one-year-old daughter. “I heard that I could make a lot of money on the streets of Bangkok begging with my child, but I got arrested very soon and sent to a center with other Cambodian women. I spend three months in this center with my baby.”

In the center she met the Friends-International Thailand team. The team has been working for nearly to two years with children and youth in four Thai government shelters, providing basic education, life skills and counseling activities. Over the last five months, Friends International has also been supporting the reintegration of Cambodian mothers by providing skills training and preparing support plans for them upon return to their home country.

The Friends-International Thailand team proposed to Ty to join another Friends project back in her home province of Kompong Cham. Upon her return to Kompong Cham, Friends International supported her to resettle in her village where her mother and sister live, providing emergency support to help Ty save her only asset, her land, from creditors to whom she owed money. Ty participated in sewing training and quickly started to produce items which she then sold back to the organization.

“At the beginning it was difficult and I was scared to learn how to sew because I never did it before. But the teacher helped me a lot as well as the other women who were learning with me. Now I can make beautiful belts and also dolls.”

After three weeks of training, Ty is now producing at home. She started to earn money on her own with her products and can take care of her baby. Friends International staff conduct a follow-up visit every week. Now she hopes she will be able to get her son back who is in an orphanage and also her six-year old daughter who is still in Poipet working with her father.

“I don’t want to go back to Thailand again, it was too difficult. I want to stay here and produce more so I can have enough money to take care of my children.”

ChildSafe Network

The ChildSafe network has grown over 62 per cent since June, Since June, the ChildSafe Network has grown 62% with a total number of 914 trained members including Intrepid Travel and ANZ Royal. The diversity of members allows the network to reach out to even more of the community and involve them in protecting children.

Cambodia
In June the first ChildSafe Center opened in Phnom Penh, providing information for travelers and training for childsafe members. The new ChildSafe Center provides information to the community and travelers about the role that they can play in protecting children against all forms of abuse, and what to do if they see a child in danger. The Center is part of Friends-International’s ChildSafe program that is creating a network of community members who look out for children who may be in dangerous or potentially harmful situations and who are trained to take appropriate action.

Our new ChildSafe Alliance member, ANZ Royal Bank officially joined the network at a ceremony held at Mith Samlanh. ANZ Royal is the first financial institution to join the network. ChildSafe Network believes that everyone has a role to play in protecting children and ANZ is in a unique position to actively support and be involved in doing this through its large network of staff and clients across Cambodia. The partnership will enable ANZ Royal to provide effective community services protecting children in Cambodia while enhancing ChildSafe’s campaigns through greater visibility and reach.

Intrepid travel, has become our first ChildSafe travel partner, with staff in Cambodia and Vietnam receiving training on how they can protect children while traveling.

Thailand
As ChildSafe begins developing its network in Thailand, starting in Bangkok, ChildSafe representatives were present at UNIAP's COMMIT (The Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative against Trafficking) session in Bangkok on November 5-6, 2007. With the Greater Mekong Sub-region countries attending, Friends-International was one of three organizations to present on best practice approaches in curbing child sex tourism and child trafficking in this region.

Indonesia
Friends-International was invited to attend the Children’s Forum Workshop in Banda Aceh in August to help build a media campaign to educate locals to not give money to begging children. It was sponsored by ILO and the DinSos, the provincial government.