Cambodian Children's Trust's Vision
Our Vision is to create sustainable futures for vulnerable children and families in Cambodia.
We believe that all children have the right to health care, an education, good nutrition and security.
Our aim is to help stop the cycle of poverty and provide practical, long-term support to those we assist.
We work with children to help them overcome their backgrounds of abuse, poverty and neglect by providing them with the best possible care and opportunities.
We work with families and the community to support those in need to improve their life circumstances and to keep family units together.
Our programs reach out to people in need, regardless of their circumstances. We work with street children, orphans, abandoned children, people with HIV/AIDS, sex workers, victims of landmines, victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence, the physically and mentally disabled, families living in abject poverty, and anyone else who is in serious need.
We hire local Cambodian staff to work on CCT’s projects and in doing so support the local community and economy.
We are accountable for our actions and honest and transparent in everything that we do.
Our Goals
We have plans to expand our activities to create better futures for as many more vulnerable children as possible.
In order to do this we plan:
To Establish A Permanent Base
We plan to purchase land to build on, so that CCT has a permanent base that provides the children with security. Rather than one large institution, the model we favour is one in which small groups (from eight-ten children) are cared for in individual homes by a house mother and father, creating an atmosphere of a typical Cambodian family.
Expand on our Community Development Program
There are many more children in Cambodia in great need than we can accommodate - many more than we could ever accommodate. Many children’s centres in Cambodia take in children who have parents, who are simply too poor to support them. These children have had to work to help support the family. There is no question that, where it is safe, children are better off staying with their families. CCT has developed a successful outreach program for such cases, to provide children with the support they need, in order to be able to stay with their families.
We would like to be supporting many more impoverished Cambodian family to break the cycle of poverty and become financially self-sufficient.
Our vision is for CCT to become an integral part of the wider community, not separate from it, and to be actively involved in community development.
To Become Financially Self-Sustainable
We aim to create small business enterprises, to help support all our projects. The more income these enterprises provide, the more underprivileged children and families we can provide with nutrition, shelter, healthcare and additional educational opportunities which will enable them to break the cycle of poverty.
To Establish A Swimming School and CPR/First-aid Training Facility
Drowning is a leading cause of death for children worldwide – in western countries as well as in the developing world. In Cambodia, the rates of child drowning accidents are extreme. Unlike in developed countries, where survival swimming, lifesaving and water safety are considered an essential part of community education and are widely publicised, most Cambodians have never had the opportunity to learn basic survival swimming skills.
In memory of Jendar Heng, CCT has begun an ongoing survival swimming program, which, in time, we wish to make available to all children in the Battambang province.
The aim of the program is to give children in Battambang the opportunity to learn basic survival skills and water safety knowledge to help keep them safe when in or near the water that surrounds them in daily life; from ponds, lakes and pools to rivers and streams. The survival swimming programme is now a regular part of the curriculum at CCT's children's homes.
To make this opportunity available to the wider community we wish to build a swim school and club house where survival swimming classes, as well as CPR and first aid training, can be held.