Cambodia
A Volunteer Story: Willingness to Learn and Building Capacity
What happens when a three-day trip to Cambodia from Australia turns into a long-term journey? Being locally run and staffed is one of the core values of Children in Families (CIF); however, there are a few foreigners who volunteer long-term with CIF to help build staff capacity. For International Day for the Volunteer, we are…
International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Children In Families (CIF) is celebrating International Day of Persons with Disabilities today! The theme for 2018 is “Empowering persons with disabilities and ensuring inclusiveness and equality.” Children In Families’ ABLE Project is right in step with this objective. It’s even in our name. ABLE stands for “Accepted, Belonging, Loved, Empowered.”
Lost in translation: Part 2 Bridging the Khmer/English language gap
Earlier this week, we explored why the language used in social work matters. We looked at all the reasons why we at CIF insist on Cambodian social workers for Cambodian clients. If CIF believes so passionately in doing Khmer language based work with our clients, what do we do about working with organisations and people who…
Harmful or helpful: Exploring the ethics of missions and school trips
Short-term missions or volunteer trips are conducted around the world with the best intentions to care for children and their families and communities. People fundraise, visit, give and serve hoping to make a difference to individuals and to the injustices in our world. Increasingly, research is suggesting that these trips can be harmful to the…
Finding A New Family: How CIF recruits our foster parents
Frequently, when the terms “Foster Care” or “Emergency Care” are spoken about within many Western nations, a myriad of negative experiences and stories surface. People picture children uprooted time and time again. Children shuffled through a system, clutching a garbage bag to their chest filled with their only personal belongings. Children in Families (CIF) takes…
Menghong: Personal Dedication to Keeping Children in Families
Keeping a Girl in School and Family It was a steamy midday in the midst of Cambodian rice paddies. Menghong was sitting across from Bopha*, a widowed mother of eight, under the shade of a mango tree. He had had this conversation many times before with other families. He wanted to search for the right…
Wrapping up the GlobalGiving Campaign: The Gift that keeps on Giving
Children in Families (CIF) ABLE Project – our project supporting children with disabilities and the families caring for them – was recently featured in CIF’s GlobalGiving Accelerator Campaign. GlobalGiving is the largest global crowdfunding community for NGOs and charities. We had three weeks to raise at least $5000 from at least 40 donors. If we were successful,…
Friendship: A Passion for Children With Disabilities
Two Children in Families’ staff share their “messy” start to a deep and beautiful friendship. A motorbike, carrying a petite Khmer driver and her American passenger, was being carefully navigated down the dirt road toward the home of a local family. Recent rainfall rendered the road muddy and rutted. Suddenly, the driver struggled to maintain…
Emergency Care: Meeting Chenda’s Needs In the Unknown
Courtney Smith is an Occupational Therapist and a technical advisor to the ABLE Project at Children in Families. She shared with us her experience interacting with the Emergency Care project and why it is a crucial first step in helping children develop healthy attachments. I recently worked with a child called Chenda in our Emergency…
Infant Mental Health: An Interview With Mother’s Heart Organization
Vital Infant Years The early years of infants are vital to mental health throughout a lifetime. Studies are showing how impactful even the first few months of growth is in babies. Those months shape how their brain forms connections and develops. This is why nations are beginning to recognize mental health for infants through initiatives…
Child Protection as a driving value: A Chat with CIF’s Program Director and Kinship Care Manager
Child Protection is at the heart of everything CIF does. Earlier this month we sat down with Naomy, our Programs Director and Menghong, the Kinship Care Project Manager, to discuss the importance of child protection in our Kinship Care and Foster Care projects. We invite you today to be part of this conversation. The Importance…
Meet Chanthy: Bringing Love and Warmth to Emergency Care
Along the busy streets of Phnom Penh sits Tum Nup Tuek Church, a familiar landmark to the surrounding community. Chanthy, a devoted member and women’s ministry volunteer, attends every Sunday and considers the surrounding area her home. “I have siblings in the provinces, but I was born in Phnom Penh and have lived my whole…
Lucky to be fostering: One family’s journey to becoming CIF Foster parents
Maly and Nhean are like many Cambodian rural couples. They are well established members of their community, known and respected by their neighbors and involved in community life. They are subsistence farmers who supplement their income during the year with extra jobs. Nhean works as motodop – a motorbike taxi ferrying neighbors and visitors to…
Family Training: A Long-Term Approach
Over 20 adults and several children filtered into the rows of plastic chairs. They had come from throughout Prey Veng for foster care training with Children in Families (CIF). A balance of men and women attended. An occasional boisterous cry from a child would break their concentration, but it was a group intent on learning.
Growing up in Community
Loneliness is a common thread for many children growing up in challenging home environments or within foster care systems. Children often feel isolated, like none of their peers understand, or like the struggles that their families face are unique to their families. Some children have missed significant amounts of school because of financial hardship. Entering…
Celebrating Purple Day: A Child’s experience of Epilepsy in Cambodia
Sreypich and her foster family greet us with smiles as we ride our motos into their front yard. Today our ABLE staff have come for a visit to see how Sreypich is going. Sreypich has epilepsy and over the last seven months, ABLE has been working with her foster family to ensure that she is…
Finding a Permanent Family
Chanty has been waiting to have a child to call her own for over 20 years. Today, she proudly holds the paperwork from the court to say that Dany and Sambat are her legal children. For the first time in CIF’s organisational history, over the last few weeks five of our foster families legally adopted their foster children.
OSCaR and Social Work: Why Language Matters
Today is International Mother Language Day. The theme of the day is that “linguistic diversity and multilingualism count for sustainable development.” Put more simply, in the world of development, you need a good grasp on the language you’re working in for your work to be effective The UN goes on to explain “It is through…
Discover Family Based Care
Research shows that voluntourism to orphanages is harmful to children growing up in those institutions. Voluntourism refers to when people combine tourism with the desire to make a difference. They want to serve the people they have been visiting, often by volunteering at an orphanage. Despite their good intentions, this practice increases child protection and…
Compassion and Capacity Building: Sam Ol’s Journey to CIF
Across the Border Either coated in dust or rutted in mud, the refugee camp Sigh II – situated in the mountains of Thailand – was the birthplace of Sam Ol. His very poor and humble beginning set a stirring in his heart to fight for justice causes in society. It would become a foundation for…
Beauty in Muddy Waters
The mud comes up to mid-calf height. It is thick and sticky, leaving a dark brown coating on every surface it touches. We step hesitantly, searching for a firm footing, but our feet only sink further. Fortunately, the muddy path only lasts about three meters. Unfortunately, it is the only way in and out of…
A chat with Courtney: How Occupational Therapy in making a difference in ABLE
“So why did you end up volunteering for our ABLE program?” Courtney, the newest member of the ABLE team, pauses for a brief moment before she answers: “What impressed me most about the ABLE program was not only the excellence of the work they are doing, but their dedication to contextualize therapy and treatments for…
Celebrating ‘Anne with an E’ Part 3: Family- based care in Fiction
When we think of foster care and kinship care in popular fiction, we can very easily believe that kinship care and foster care are harmful.
Celebrating ‘Anne with an E’: Orphans in Popular Culture
Part One: An Introduction to Orphans in Popular Culture Ludwig Wittgenstein once said “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” Our language shapes our perceptions of what life is like, what our values are and the way we understand the world. The language we use matters. The way we tell stories…
A Case Management System – What’s That?
The Case Management System Last week we linked to a post from M’lop Tapang about a trip some of our staff made to Sihanoukville. Our CMS team went to deliver six laptop computers, and begin the process of helping the M’lop Tapang Social Workers migrate their work flow to the CIF Case Management System. Back…
Volunteering Short Term: The Excellent Amy!
Introducing Amy In the coming weeks on the CIF blog, you might notice a bump in the quality of our photos. That’s due to the work of Amy Higg. Amy is a professional photographer from Queensland, Australia. She put her business on hold for two months this year, spending that time volunteering short term in…
Children in Families is a Stars Impact Award Winner for 2016!
Super Exciting! We are super, super excited to be able to make this announcement: Children in Families has been named as a winner of the Stars Impact Awards for 2016! Any award is great news, of course. But this one is something special. The Stars Impact Awards are given each year to “strong, grassroots organisations…
The ABLE Program and the Staff Who Make It Happen
We would like to introduce you to the staff who work in our ABLE program. Meet Lisa. She is a Physical Therapist, and has worked at CIF for the past four years. Her time here has seen the beginning and growth of the ABLE program. She now serves as a technical adviser to our Khmer staff. ABLE ABLE…
Welcome Lynny
While we are sad to say farewell to our amazing General Manager, Jesse Blaine, Children in Families (CIF) recently welcomed our new General Manager, Lynny Sor. Jesse is passing the torch and will focus more on pastorship. We are excited for this incredible, resilient Khmer woman to join our team. She is a wife, mother…
Changing a Nation: One Child at a Time
Meet Naomy. With a gorgeous singing voice and bright smile, this intelligent, talented mother of two children – teenagers – has been our Program Director for almost three years now. She joined us from the collaborative organization, Chab Dai, where she spent four years serving as their Project Manager. Naomy is the oversight for Foster…
Foster Care: A Mother’s Love for Pisey
Success of a program (foster care) is best measured over time, looking at long-term results. In the line of work we do, we get to meet a lot of great families. Some are exceptional. Pisey’s* family is one of those. As one of CIF’s first families to foster and care for children, here is their…
Media: The Power of Dignity or Shame
A recent media campaign by a Cambodian NGO, portraying children in rags and labelling them as “a sex worker” or “a street kid” has kicked off a storm of discussion. How do we as NGOs portray or represent the people we are trying to help? While many children and families do live in poverty, we need to…
Orphanages to Family Care: Leakena at CIF
Meet Leakena. This amazing, 28-year-old Khmer woman started at CIF as our Outreach to Orphanages Manager in January 2016. She was previously a teacher’s assistant for toddlers at an international school. She also volunteered at Raven’s Hope International as a Liaison helping build spiritual growth, leadership development, and mission opportunities to young women from around the world. When Leakena heard about…
Trauma and Health: Address One, Help the Other
It is so damaging it can trim 20 years off of life expectancy. It disrupts brain development, immunity, hormones, and even DNA transcription. It is childhood trauma. In the linked TEDTalk, Dr. Nadine Burke, who serves in a community with low income children and families, addresses a study by Dr.s Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda…
Stories – Powerful and Valuable
“Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.” ― Ben Okri, Nigerian Poet and Novelist Humanity gathers together around stories. Whatever the format – a book, a movie, a tale told around the fire with friends, facing the flames, backs to the darkness – we as people grow in the sharing…
Kinship for Samnant
*Follow our CIF staff narrative on a field visit to check-in on a Kinship Care Family outside of bustling Phnom Penh. Names have been changed to protect identities.* “Do you want to go with me on a family visit?” My coworker, our Kinship Care Program Manager, peered at me from behind his computer. “Yes,…
Attachment And Bonding
A Safe Place – Attachment and Bonding We all need and long for a safe place – a location or person giving us space to wholly be ourselves and find comfort. Most people realize that they need relationships in which safety and freedom of identity exist. Clinicians call this attachment and bonding. But what happens…
Rithy* and Hope for Children with Disabilities
As Children in Families (CIF) grows we hope to never lose focus on what really matters – each individual. Recently one of our Kinship and ABLE program families offered to give our readers a glimpse into their life. We are excited to share Rithy’s* (name changed) story as a snapshot of how there really can be…
How do CIF, David Beckham, and Child Abuse Prevention go together?
When it comes to child abuse prevention…what do CIF and David Beckham Have In Common? Hint: It has nothing to do with exceptional soccer skills. While David Beckham may be best known for his career as a renowned English soccer player, he has recently been getting attention for something else – the launching of 7: The…