wfn.org | United Methodist programs assist Cambodian children

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

March 4, 2004	News media contact: Linda Bloom7(646)369-37597New York
newsdesk@umcom.org 7  ALL-AS-YE-I{089}

NOTE: A sidebar, UMNS story #090, photographs and a video report are
available at http://umns.umc.org.

By United Methodist News Service*

Some Cambodian children must literally pick their way through trash in order
to survive.

Working through a local organization, United Methodists are reaching out to
the children who comb the Phnom Penh City garbage dump. The children and
their parents eke out a stingy living there, earning 50 cents to a dollar a
day.

Clara Mridula Biswas is a Christian missionary from Bangladesh, assigned by
the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries as a community worker in
Cambodia. She started the "Light at the Dump Sites" program last summer. The
ministry offers scholarship and nutritional support for 20 students, along
with a church school program for additional children on Sunday afternoons in
a classroom provided by the Vulnerable Children Assistance Organization.

"Residents of the area are from the far Cambodian provinces of Battambang,
Banteay Meanchey, Svay Rieng, Kampot and Prey Veng who flock to the city for
job possibilities," she wrote in her project report. "Others are products of
the city - neglected, abused and in abject poverty. All desire a better
economic present and a hopeful future, but trying circumstances bring all to
what seems a forsaken place."

With support from the Light of Christ United Methodist Church in North
Carolina, the children at the garbage dump had a Christmas celebration in
2003 for the first time, according to Esther Gitobu, another United Methodist
missionary assigned to Cambodia with her husband, Nicholas Kithinji.

"Our goal is to instill confidence and hope in children and their families of
poverty, let them understand that in the eyes of God, they are people of
worth," she said. "We also engage, support and nurture children's mothers,
young women and their families at the dump site in forming sustainable
solutions to abject poverty through economic literacy, vocational education,
parenting skills and health care awareness and practice."

United Methodist missionaries working in Cambodia also:

7	Offer two English classes and a computer class at the Kien Kleang
Orphanage Center. A Christmas celebration there joined together children from
the orphanage and the community.
	
7	Assist an orphanage center, known as the Cambodian Light Children
Association, with school materials, tuition and classes in Khmer and English.
The center serves the communities of Tonle Bassac and Bording.
	
7	Provide support for 150 students, as well as teachers, in Bassac
School.
	
7	Plan Christmas programs, such as the Dec. 7 celebration for about 400
people for Bording and Bassac, many of them children. The celebration was
later broadcast a number of times the following week by a local television
channel.
	
7	Visit people with AIDS in their homes, helping them make connections
with health organizations and the local hospital.
	
7	Help pregnant women with prenatal visits and delivery costs. 

Bassac School was created after a fire destroyed many of the flimsy wooden
and cardboard homes in the area. Biswas, who already was building
relationships with residents and leaders there, agreed to help coordinate the
project. Members of the community donated items to build the school; a man
with a small wood business used scraps to make desks; and four residents
worked as volunteer teachers for seven months.

"This whole process took eight months, but the community did the work
themselves," Biswas said. "The school serves about 150 preschool children
now. When they finish, they will go to the nearby public school. We give a
small salary supplement to the teacher and books and school materials to the
children. Then we help them to register in the public school."

Some Cambodians are becoming Methodists as well. That initiative began in
1988, when Cambodian-American church members returned to their native country
to visit families and friends and share their faith. 

Members of five Methodist-related bodies - United Methodists in the United
States, United Methodists from Switzerland/France, the Korean Methodist
Church, the Methodist Church in Singapore and the World Federation of Chinese
Methodist Churches - have combined their missionary and church-planting
efforts into the Methodist Mission in Cambodia. 

The mission, which includes more than 185 mission churches and 151 lay
pastors, had its first annual meeting Jan. 29 in Phnom Penh. All of the
delegates, including missionaries, were Asian, except for two
European-American and two African missionaries.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org