Happy Football Cambodia (HFC) provides support for disadvantaged youth in Phnom Penh. These include homeless and orphaned children as well as the children of families living in extreme poverty. HFC provides a program which teaches these children the skills of football (soccer) and offers the opportunity to learn how to be part of a team. The children receive the appropriate clothing and footwear required to play the game as well as coaching by some of the best in the country. Both boys and girls are welcome to participate in the program. Each year, the team is represented at the Homeless World Cup. Ivanhoe is proud to support HFC in its endeavours to improve the health and wellbeing of impoverished Cambodian youth through participation in the game of football. Click here to visit the HFC website.
International Baccalaureate Organisation
The International Baccalaureate Organisation (IB) operates in over 3300 schools in 141 countries of the world. Its mission is to create a better world through education. It aims to promote intercultural understanding and respect and develop inquiring, caring and knowledgeable young people who will make a positive contribution to society. In Phnom Penh, we are proud to work alongside the IB in its endeavours to support primary education in a small number of primary schools. Ivanhoe’s alumni service project teams and primary teacher education service project teams also work with the IB in supporting these primary schools. Click here to visit the IB website.
Plan is Ivanhoe’s partner in the Friends Forever program. Plan focuses on supporting communities by helping to improve their access to education, clean water, sanitation, health care, child protection and productive agriculture. It supports over 68,000 impoverished Cambodian families. Ivanhoe students spend over a week working closely with Cambodian students and Plan staff teaching them to speak English. When they are able to speak English adequately the Cambodians can gain employment as tour guides and waiters in restaurants in the Angkor Wat tourist region. But perhaps even more importantly, the program is about building respect, understanding, relationships and friendship between people from vastly different worlds. Click here to visit the Plan website.
Tabitha helps poor Cambodian families to get back on their feet by encouraging personal savings and providing them with the skills with which they can gain employment or work in cottage industries such as creating exquisitely handcrafted items for sale. It also works with volunteers, such as Ivanhoe, to raise additional funds to build simple houses in rural villages for needy families. The basic frame and roof are in place before the volunteers spend a day putting in the flooring and walls. The house is then presented to the new occupants, who have had to save for years to meet the small financial commitment that is also required of them. You can help us with donations by clicking here. You can also visit the Tabitha website here.
World Vision has several aid programs operating in Cambodia. In previous years we have worked with them when visiting orphanages and outreach programs for street kids in Phnom Penh. This year we will visit a program World Vision is running in Battambang. The purpose of this program is to eradicate the use of child labour in Cambodia. Children who are currently employed in industries such as brick factories are provided with new skills, such as hair dressing, in the hope that they will no longer be exploited as cheap labour and that instead they will be able to gain meaningful employment when they come of age to do so. Click here to visit the World Vision website.
Cambodia Service Project 2012 