Projects Abroad, Newsletters from Cambodia

A dirty weekend involves rolling up your sleeves, putting your old clothes on and getting dirty!
In November a team of volunteers gave up one of their weekends to go and renovate a nearby orphanage in Phnom Penh - New Future for Children. Projects Abroad have been sending volunteers to help work with the children and teach English at this orphanage for the past 3 years. A few months ago New Future for Children moved to a new building surrounded by a leafy courtyard and a vegetable garden. However the walls of the courtyard were stained and very dirty so Projects Abroad decided to go and give the courtyard a make-over.

The fifteenth day, of the tenth month, of the Khmer calendar marks the Pchum Ben festival. This is a time when the spirits of the dead ancestors walk the Earth. And the living can ease their suffering by offering them food to eat. People pray in front of food and candles during the first day of the Pchum Ben festival (Festival of Death) at a pagoda in Phnom Penh. Pchum Ben festival is a popular holiday in Cambodia. it consists of 15 days of praying for the deceased, Visiting the temples and bringing food to monks.

Some of the volunteers decided to spend a weekend at the beach this month. They packed their bags and headed out of the bustling capital city and made their way down to the south west coast of Cambodia to the gulf of Thailand. After a week of working in the city it was fantastic to step onto the white sand beaches and be surrounded by palm trees and blue sea!

We were not sure what to expect in Cambodia, but we were looking forward to it nevertheless. No one could have prepared us for what was ahead of us! We were met by at Phnom Penh airport after an exhausting flight and were driven in a small car (which wasn’t quite big enough for both our suitcases, so we had to have one in the back seat as well) to the apartment. We were both by now, exhausted, having been awake for the previous 24 hours, so after finding our beds we slept throughout the day.

You are probably aware that June 01st, each year is celebrated as International Child Labour Day. This day is enshrined by the United Nations and celebrated by each of its signatory member states. The Convention of the child was adopted and ratified in accordance with RESOLUTION No. 44/25, dated November 20, 1989; of the UN General Assembly and came into effect on September 2 1990, as stated in article 49. The convention on the right of the child is the most widely used treaty across all UN member states. The treaty for the first time, has considered the human right of a child, ensuring that the world is aware thet a child is in fact a Human Being.

On 14^th May 2008 is the 55th birthday of the new King Sihamoni who ascended to the throne when his father, King Norodom Sihanouk, resigned three years ago. You can hear the fireworks being set off on the waterfront by the Royal Palace. This is the second of three days of holidays established to honor the king.

The Khmer New Year festival originated from Bramhmanism, a part of Hinduism, which was a religion that Khmer people believed in before Buddhism. Usually, Khmer New Year is celebrated for three days. The first day of New Year is called "Moha Sangkran", and it can be described simply as the inauguration of the New Angels who come to take care of the world for a one-year period. People need to clean and decorate the house and also prepare fruits and drinks for the New Year inauguration and to welcome the New Angels at every single home.

With funding from Projects Abroad, Volunteers Katie Badger, Alan Flood and Cosmo Montagu helped to get the farm at the Lighthouse Orphanage in shape after the wet season, helping out with re-ploughing the soil, making a new sign and planting the seeds (and a fair amount of just playing with the kids too.!)