In November 2010 we saw one of the larger teams head out to Cambodia, to Svay Rieng province near the Vietnam border. Cambodia is a country with an incredibly brutal past which is emerging from a communist regime and whose economy is heavily supported by the international community.The population of the country is rapidly expanding with more than 60% of the population being under the age of 30. Whilst there is some economic prosperity in the capital of Phnom Penh in the rural provinces infrastructure, health and education opportunities are limited and patchy.
This team worked alongside a local charity, Kone Kmeng, that focussed on supporting children at risk by working with their community leaders to improve life conditions which in turn would allow the children’s lives to be less hard and to allow them opportunities to be children, to go to school and to play and to laugh. As we took medical teams and children’s workers into these border villages we were amazed to see God give us the privilege of being able to carry a joy and a lightness of life into communities that outsiders rarely went. We were able to take over £8500 of money, medicines and children’s resources with us which allowed us to resource the clinics and Kone Kmeng to provide school supplies for a 100 children and drill more than 120 wells in local communities in Svay Rieng province which directly improved the lives of more than 200 families which is truly amazing.
One of the team members, a midwife, was able to carry out an examination of a heavily pregnant villager who because she had learning difficulties she and her husband had been sidelined in their village. We discovered that the baby was breach and that she would need to go to the hospital to have her baby, we were able to share this information and provide some practical support to this family through the village pastor and we later heard this simple act helped restore them back into village life.
