RULE OF LAW

Cambodia: focusing on the big picture

By Denise Arnold, partner, Lyon O’Neale Arnold Lawyers Ltd

At 1 am on Boxing Day, full of multiple Christmas dinners, we boarded the plane for Cambodia. Three of us were spending the two weeks of the ‘stat hols’ following up on the projects of the Cambodia Charitable Trust (CCT). First, we needed to see that our donors’ money is all getting to exactly where we want it. We’ve all heard the horror stories of development money and resources shrinking in a waterfall of corruption, mismanagement, and misguided ideas, until only the last few drops reach its intended destination. At CCT, we will not let that happen. One hundred per cent of our donors’ money goes to Cambodia and our programmes. Secondly, we were working with our Khmer representatives to see what else is needed, what next, how to further develop our programmes, and so on. It’s important to us that the projects are driven by Khmer for Khmer.

The main thrust of CCT’s work is:

• Education: working in poor rural communities to remove the barriers to education, and to develop schools into effective, ‘Child Friendly’, learning institutions.
• Human Rights: supporting lawyers and NGOs in Phnom Penh working to help poor communities prevent forced land eviction and relocation.

As always, Phnom Penh slapped us in the face with her staggering contrasts – walking along the riverbank looking at families living in squalor in tiny fishing boats, with new high-rise buildings going up in the background; sitting in an air-conditioned café drinking fruit shakes and eating olive bruschetta while outside a beggar breastfed her tiny, ragged, filthy baby. Everywhere we went, the huge chasm between the rich and the poor was tragically evident.

Supporting the crafts
We visited several NGOs where women make craft products. It was a sort of bizarre shopping spree; we were rifling through beautiful silk bags and scarves, jewellery and trinkets, just like we would on a girl’s shopping morning at home, except these things were made by women who have been trafficked and abused; who were homeless and hopeless, until an NGO started giving them a chance.

We took the products home to sell through the ‘Cargo Shed’ in Tauranga. Buying these products supports the organisations which are providing the women with work and support, and raises a little money for the programmes of the CCT, so it benefits the vulnerable people of Cambodia twice. Cool!

After two nights of relative luxury in Phnom Penh, we took a deep breath and headed south to the rural areas where we support eight schools. Breakfast of noodle soup with pig’s entrails on the way on the first morning was a little hint of things to come. 

School visits
We visited schools, two or three a day, for four days. From the comfort of home, that doesn’t sound like much, but it was gruelling on quite a few levels. Despite it being the ‘cool dry season’, the temperature was in the early 30s, and there’s no electricity in the schools, so no lovely air conditioning or fans. The roads are dire; driving was renamed ‘potholing’ for the duration of the trip. Some of the children made us want to weep – those who looked lethargic, with dull skin and eyes; those who looked hungry or ill; the few disabled children (on the whole, it seems disabled children don’t get to go to school, one of our future projects is to address that). We had to keep reminding ourselves to ‘look up’ – that is, to focus on the big picture, the whole school, the programmes. If we had stopped to look at the individual children and their tough lives, we would still be there, stalled. Not easy though, keeping going. 

The schools are doing really well, compared to their state when CCT first started working with them. The school sponsorships have been providing books for the school libraries, and its wonderful to see the children in the libraries reading, with comfortable tables (for little Khmer children that is, they look like hell to this old Kiwi gal) for them to sit at, and shelves to display the books. All provided by the CCT. It was particularly heartening that, in some of the libraries, the children and teachers were too busy with their work to take much notice when we left the room. This is exactly the sort of ‘light touch’ we are aiming to achieve.

Our donors also pay for books and teaching materials for the teachers, and stationery for the children. Also, because teachers in Cambodia are paid very poorly, it is common for children to have to pay their teachers, or for the teachers to take frequent and regular days off to earn extra money. We pay a small teacher subsidy to the teachers in the schools we support, in return for which the children get a truly free education, and the teachers attend school every day. In some of the schools, it is clear that the extra resources and funding are really making a difference, and the development of the school is greater than the sum of our support. Classrooms have more children’s work displayed, playgrounds are less littered, libraries are a vibrant and central part of the school rather than a redundant add-on. In many schools, we have employed a part-time librarian to facilitate the development of the library.

On this visit, as well as the usual resources (sourced from Cambodian producers to contribute to the economy), we took a pile of simple games from New Zealand. Squatting at a low table teaching a group of teachers how to play Snakes and Ladders, with a large, admiring audience of other teachers, parents, and children will be an abiding memory for me.

In some of the schools that are coping well, we started a programme of weighing and measuring the children. We provided scales, and the schools had height measures on the door jamb of the library all painted on ready for us. Souen, one of our reps in the schools, taught the teachers how to do the measuring, and provided charts for recording the information. Initially, the children were very wary of the whole process, but there was soon a queue for the novelty of being weighed and measured. The schools will repeat the process every three months – so our reps can check on any individual children who stop growing or who are already outside growth norms for South-East Asian children. The big picture of this information will also be a good measure for us of changing community nutrition status.

At the very first school, we were collared by the principal early in the visit and asked if we could help to provide toilets for the school. These schools have three or four hundred pupils, without adequate toilets. In some cases, no toilets at all. And without adequate clean drinking water. In some cases, no drinking water at all. It was a real pleasure to hear the principals of this, and later other, schools, recognising these issues and wanting us to help address them. Thanks to our donors, toilets are being built in the first school as I write. Cool! Getting good sanitation facilities and drinking water to all the schools is a very high priority for our fund-raising at the moment.

Increasing the value of Cambodian girls
We visited some of the girls our donors sponsor. One of our Khmer representatives works with the schools to select girls whose families are unlikely to be able to keep them at school without support. Sponsoring a girl involves about $35 a month, and provides school needs and fees for the girl herself, and rice, oil, mosquito nets etcetera for her family. Thirty-five dollars is also about the amount she would earn if she went to work in a garment factory, or as a domestic in Phnom Penh. So the sponsorship means the girls are paying their way in the family. Families with very few resources are also vulnerable to the traffickers who send agents to poor rural communities like these to find girls for the sex trade. By attaching funding to the girl herself rather than the family, we not only facilitate education for her, but we also increase her value to her family, so she is less likely be sold. There’s copious evidence that shows that educating girls has a far greater beneficial community effect that educating boys. Most of us have already heard the traditional African proverb: “If you educate a man, you educate a person. If you educate a woman, you educate a community”.

Visiting the girls was another one of Cambodia’s challenges to our rich, smug thinking. Over the potholes to the end of the road. At the end of the road, pile out, then walk along the tracks between the rice fields, past carefully shored up ponds of stagnant water (the drinking water storage ponds – good grief!), past pitifully small stacks of rice, a year’s supply we were told, to little ‘houses’. Mostly, they are one room, on stilts for when the rainy season comes, thatched with palm fronds. Inside is generally sleeping space – often a sort of raised dais of bamboo slats – storage of clothes (not many) and food (even less, they are mostly living on a day-to-day basis with what they can earn in the rice fields). Outside, near the house, is the ‘kitchen’ – a little fireplace or charcoal burner on the ground, and a pot or two. Semi-wild dogs are always fossicking around, apparently kept for guard duty, and sometimes pigs or chickens. The first home we visited had me gulping back the tears; look up, look up. There are still many girls and their families needing sponsorship; if you can help, it is a few dollars for us, but, literally, a lifesaver for them.

Supporting the law
Back in Phnom Penh, we visited several NGOs and lawyers we have got to know over the last few years. LexisNexis had donated some law dictionaries, which we took over with us. They were received with great excitement. It was a little embarrassing when one of the lawyers mentioned he had been lost when a certain phrase had been used repeatedly about the Cambodian legal system. As a result, the first entry he looked up was “Kangaroo Court”. Fortunately, the definition made him laugh. After all, they know only too well the sorry state of their legal system!

Part of the reason for visiting these lawyers was to find out what issues they are currently struggling with and how we can help. That has always been our approach – to ask them about their current projects and needs, rather than coming in with preconceived ideas. It has proved an effective way to give them focused assistance, and to avoid wasting precious time and resources.

This time, they asked for more law texts, and we are delighted that LexisNexis is willing to donate more texts.

Community mapping
The main projects they are working on at the moment are community mapping – where workers use a combination of sophisticated (GPS) and simple (flip chart and felt pen) technology to accurately map homes and villages. The maps are then lodged with the authorities, creating a formal ownership document, which makes it much harder for people to be summarily evicted from their homes. Associated with the community mapping is the huge task of helping the thousands of people in Phnom Penh who are at risk of losing their homes to the bulldozer and big development. One example of this is Village 6, on the lake front in Phnom Penh. We visited the village. It has an all-pervading sense of hopelessness. Amongst the daily lives of village people, there are huge gaps where many homes have already been bulldozed. The lake is to be filled in to make a shopping centre called ‘New City’.

After a demanding, exhausting, upsetting, and encouraging two weeks, we headed home, laden with information, requests, and ideas for further developing the work of the CCT. Settling back into life here isn’t easy, but it’s worth it to know that we are, indeed, making a difference in Cambodia.

CAN YOU HELP THE PEOPLE OF CAMBODIA?
For $35 a month, little more than a dollar a day, you can sponsor a school girl. Sponsorship pays for her schooling expenses like stationery, uniform etcetera, so her education is not a drain on the family economy. It also makes a contribution to the family’s needs.

• A bicycle for a child to get to school costs $100;
• A school uniform is as little as $10;
• A classroom pack of materials (scissors, paper, pens, glue etcetera) costs $150;
• A book case for a library costs $400;
• Library books for a school library costs $500;
• A pack of teaching materials (maps, rulers, etcetera) costs $40.

We provide young teachers with a teacher pack when they graduate from Takeo Training College.

One hundred per cent of our donations go to the people of Cambodia. We pay our own administration and expenses, travel, and accommodation. Every dollar you donate can make a significant difference to someone living in poverty and misery. On behalf of the people who your donations help, thank you.

NZLawyer extra, edition 22, 1 April 2011