Friends-International Blog

Andong community on the outskirts of Phnom Penh is now a hive of  Home Based Production activity,and a great place to illustrate that as well as female caregivers, male caregivers can be actively involved in production activities to support their families through income generation. The community center is home to a screen printing project, creating [...]

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On International Families Day, one Cambodian mother recalls how the Mith Samlanh program supported her to keep her family together… ‘My husband died leaving me with six children, so I moved to Phnom Penh in search of work. It was very difficult and I didn’t have enough money to send my kids to school here [...]

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Today a team from Levi Strauss & Co., who are corporate supporters of Friends-International, arrived at our Phnom Penh headquarters on a mission. That mission? To find out more about Friends, the work we do, and in particular how our Home Based Production initiative works to support caregivers to put their children to school. First [...]

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This week has seen Friends Board Members, Program Directors, International Coordinators, managers and staff from across the world gathering together in Phnom Penh at the FI HQ building for our annual sharing meeting. This is a rare opportunity for us all to get together, to share our achievement from the previous year and to look [...]

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Menghourng Ngo reports on the excitement and achievement of the Mith Samlanh graduation ceremony held last week in Phnom Penh. ‘On Friday last week, Mith Samlanh held a graduation ceremony for its students at Club Friends. The students who successfully graduated came from the many different Mith Samlanh vocational training classes – skills, life skills [...]

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Cambodian Sihanoukville-based NGO M’Lop Tapang is a long standing Friends CYTI Alliance partner.  Within the CYTI Alliance, sharing of best practice is a key outcome for Alliance members. So it was with great excitement that our Friends-International Peuan Peuan (Thailand) program team based in Bangkok said ‘welcome’ this week to a team from M’Lop Tapang [...]

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James Farley, our Social Work Technical Advisor has shared this case study with us about a good outcome for an abandoned baby thanks to our  Kaliyan Mith Short Term Foster Care Project in Siem Reap, Cambodia. ‘In October 2012 Kaliyan Mith Siem Reap were contacted by Angkor Children’s Hospital (AHC)  regarding Baby V*, a 3 [...]

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Mith Samlanh this week hosted a huge football sports competition among its students at Club Friends to entertain and inspire the students and to boost football as a sports activity that many can join in with. More than 40 students joined the competition and the noise generated by the big crowd put a competitive edge [...]

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One hand holds the customer’s hair, the other moves deftly with scissors, as former glue user Srey Phear*, 20, concentrates happily on the new hair style she is creating for her customer. She is employed at a beauty salon near Independence Monument and also studies accounting at the Human Resources University in Phnom Penh. “My [...]

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Sport is a great way to build confidence in marginalized young people. This  half-time report on the mixed fortunes of our Kaliyan Mith youth football teams in Siem Reap from our man on the touchline, Friends Social Work Technical Advisor James Farley, gives us the lowdown on progress to date… ‘As the Siem Reap 7-a-side [...]

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