Riverkids report for Nov 2008

Riverkids heads towards the end of 2008 with a good couple of months behind it. November was marked by two momentous events for Riverkids: the fun fair and the talent show. Organized by Riverkids staff and Singapore volunteers, both events were huge successes and went a long way in strengthening the spirit of the community and its bond with Riverkids.

The fun fair, held on 23 November, was put together by 35 students and four teachers from Admiralty Secondary School in Singapore with, of course, Riverkids staff. Held with the aim of emphasizing that healthy family relationships is one of the best ways to prevent child trafficking, the various activities and booths set up conveyed this message.

The Get Ready Girls put on a skit about trafficking while the younger girls staged a charming performance, much to the delight of parents, staff and other visitors. Educational booths presented information on child trafficking and how to detect it, good parenting, and personal hygiene—three key areas in the work of Riverkids. But it wasn’t all serious stuff; there was also fun and games with origami, ball games, and fishing games, and lots of prizes donated by the kind volunteers from Admiralty.

For the talent show, held on 3 December, 27 students and two teachers from Raffles Junior College worked hard with Riverkids staff to make it a success. RJC students spent about a week preparing the children for the talent show, teaching simple musical skills, juggling, photography, and art basics.

All this paid off, as the children showed off their newly discovered talents on the day to an amazing turnout of over 350 parents and relatives from the Phsar Touch community, local authorities, NGO representatives, and Riverkids staff and students.


Evidence of the event’s success came in the way of coverage by a popular Cambodian newspaper, in which Mr. Sophon, the executive director of Riverkids, was quoted saying, “Our purpose is to provide an opportunity for the children to show some of the skills which they have learned with the volunteers and also for them to spend time together with their families. Through these activities, we also hope to raise awareness of the value of children and the value of education.”

Which was the aim of the event—to show the parents, and the children themselves, what wonderful achievements children are capable of, so that they will believe in themselves more and understand how special they are.

Beyond these two events, Riverkids has also made headway with a micro-financing project that is due to start in January 2009. Micro capital of US$2,000 has been provided by Oxfam Quebec which will go towards starting a business run by Riverkids’ community members.

The social workers are currently looking for 15 community members to benefit from this scheme, as well as to possibly hire three staff that can provide basic business and vocational training. In the meantime, Riverkids staff Pheakdey, Sinoy and Sok Lee are looking for viable products to sell.

Other training is also being given by guesthouse and social enterprise Changiville, to Get Ready Girls. The girls who study there have been lent two bicycles to help them get to and from Changiville (which is outside the city), and are given food by NGO Pour un Sourire d’Enfant (PSE).

To continuously train Riverkids’ house mothers, who are primary caregivers, two volunteers from the Medical University came to talk about vitamins and nutrition.

Activities and incentives are extended to the children to help keep them in school and better themselves. Break dancing lessons, which have been in the pipeline for awhile now, are coming together and provide fun respite for kids who spend most of their day on the street collecting scrap. To balance the modern with the traditional, Khmer dance is also going to be taught. Two dance instructors and a drummer have been found, and they will come to Riverkids twice a month. And kids who attend school regularly will be rewarded with fruit and soy beans!

Being given the chance to go to school may sound like an opportunity that Riverkids’ children would relish, and many of them do, but staying in school is indeed a challenge when you’re faced with family instability, poverty, debt and lack of basic sanitation and health care. Minor problems have huge negative impacts on your life. So every month Riverkids’ social workers travel around our communities to stay engaged with our children and their families, and to help those in trouble, so that the kids have a better chance of staying in school and off the streets.

This month, for instance, social workers indentified 15 children who had dropped out of school, of which slightly more than half re-enrolled in either state school or an NGO school, with most of the rest not returning because they had left the city, either to Cambodia’s provinces to away to Vietnam. Other children had stayed away from school because their families moved to avoid from creditors, or because of domestic violence, illness and injury, absent parents, unemployment and a whole array of such problems.

Riverkids tries to persuade these families to keep their children in school, and also offers concrete help like rent, milk, food and medical treatment, so that the adults see the immediate benefit of cooperating with Riverkids.

A case that stood out this month was one where three former Get Ready Girls with a family history of prostitution had dropped out to work in a coffeeshop where pimps are known to operate. Each of these girls had their reasons for doing this: Death or loss of employment of the family breadwinner, and inadequate income from other work, all resulting in huge pressure on the girls to take on the better paying work in this coffeeshop, even if it was risky.

Fortunately Riverkids was able to get the parents of two of the girls to return their daughters to school, at PSE, by committing to supplementing PSE’s weekly donations of rice with fish, meat and vegetables. For the third girl, who had been making well below what she needed to get by in her previous job, Riverkids committed to topping up her salary to a more acceptable level if she returned to that job.

Dental treatment is hard to come by for Riverkids’ families, and so many children suffer from tooth decay, infections and poor dental hygiene. But with volunteers and other NGOs, Riverkids was able to extend dental treatment to a number of children this month. The children were treated at Keo Hout Hospital and CSI Clinic (also known as Medical Mercy Centre), taken there by Singapore volunteers and World Vision staff, respectively.


Riverkids staff continue their training at NGO Chapdai and the Social Services of Cambodia, and this month attended workshops about “Dealing with Trauma” and “Counselling and Social Work.” And because of our experience and achievements, Riverkids staff are in some instances providing the training!

Executive Director Mr Sophon, for example, held a presentation at Chapdai on the Community Game that Riverkids created. This game, modeled after the well known board game, Life, imparts life skills and problem solving skills, and is contextualized with life in a slum and child trafficking. It has proven so effective in helping to educate Riverkids parents about how to raise children and prevent trafficking that we are now sharing it with other organizations.

Well done everyone, and have a good year end!