The slideshow below shows the construction of the first house at a new Cambodian NGO, Who Will's Children's Village, which is supported by CamKids and which I visited on my recent trip to Cambodia.
The village will ultimately comprise 10 family houses and ancillary accommodation to enable the project to function as any normal local village community. Each house will have three children’s bedrooms, a supervisor’s suite of bedroom and en-suite shower room and a kitchen/living room.
Initially each of these will have a house mother with space for up to 12 children. The house mother will be responsible for bringing up her family as if their true mother. She will buy the food from the market, cook, clean and generally be their mother.
As the project evolves, the house mothers will be replaced by married couples with a maximum of 2 of their own children. They will be offered occupation rights to each house that will be conditional on them agreeing to “foster” up to 8 disadvantaged or orphaned children. These couples will probably be from poor local families so should have good connections in the area. Who Will will retain a supervisory role with a local Village Manager living in the village to ensure that the standard of nutrition, health, education and discipline matches the strict rules/code of conduct that will be established.
Ultimately, the directors of Who Will expect that this village will appear to be just another country village and it will be fully integrated into the community and the children will not carry the unjustified stigma of “coming from an orphanage”. Who Will’s role in the future management will likely entail subsidising food and education costs in addition to its general supervisory position.
CamKids is proud to be supporting this project, which is run by a board of directors in Cambodia, which includes a long-term friend of the charity and former Chairman of Sunrise Orphanage in Phnom Penh.
Mark Purser
CamKids Trustee
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