Friends-International Blog

Saturday 1st June 2013 was a very exciting and important day in Cambodia. Not only did International Children’s Day fall on that date, but it was also the day that our long-standing partner organization, M’Lop Tapang, celebrated its tenth anniversary! Named after the sheltering Tapang (umbrella) tree, the organization was started by a small group [...]

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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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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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We have some truly fabulous supporters at Friends-International, and one of those is 14 year-old Jessica Brandon from Los Angeles, California. Along with her friends Emma Kofman, and Hannah Kelson, Jessica recently organized a neighborhood bake sale to raise funds to support our activities, and raised an amazing $435 on the day (thanks to Jessica’s [...]

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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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For International Women’s Day, we focus on two of our amazing female staff from the Peuan Mit program in Lao PDR. Let’s meet Davanh Keoninanluck, the school follow-up and case manager (part of the Peuan Mit Reintegration Team) and Parsialy (Sia) Boualong, a non-formal education teacher and case manager, part of the Drop In Center/Outreach [...]

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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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The World Economic Forum (WEF) is held in the tiny Swiss town of Davos in chilly January each year. The movers and shakers of the economic world meet there, along with Heads of State, cultural ambassadors and others to discuss the economic state of the globe and look for innovative approaches to tackling the most [...]

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