Cambodia Connection Introduction
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We want to move beyond the "loose change" mentality that so many people have about giving to others. Giving our leftovers isn't good enough - we're getting real about our commitment to the wider world. We intend to provide ongoing support to a community that has so little of what we all take for granted - schools, transport, medical help, and a secure food supply.
To this end, St Andrew's celebrated its Harvest Festival in October 2002 by launching a 3-year partnership with Kompong Tralach, a rural community in central Cambodia. We collected £8,300 as our initial contribution to vital development work in education, health services and agriculture.
Since then we have continued to raise money and awareness, and on two occasions two people from the congregation have travelled to Cambodia to visit our partners and see the great things that are being achieved with our contribution and their hard work. Scott Anderson and Joan Hainsworth visited in May 2004, and in November 2005 Martin Fair and Jim McLeod made the trip. In between these two trips we were also delighted to host a visit from Brom Sambo, one of the Cambodian project workers.
By the start of 2006 we had sent a total of £40,000 to our Cambodia Partnership over a period of 4 years, and 20 children are being sponsored by groups, families and individuals within the congregation. Beginning with our Harvest celebration in October 2006, we have been invited by World Vision to focus our efforts on a project providing community care for orphans and vulnerable children in Kompong Tralach - we are calling it Keep Them Safe.
International headlines about Cambodia in the 1970s made chilling reading, as the Khmer Rouge and their "killing fields" decimated the population and destroyed most of the country's infrastructure. Cambodia is still trying to recover from the legacy of that brutal regime; even now, landmines are still killing more than 300 people every year.
Our "Cambodia Connection" is happening through the international development organisation World Vision. With them, we want to respond to the gross injustices between rich and poor across the world - for example, somewhere in the world poverty kills a child every 3 seconds.
St Andrew's has a Cambodia Connection project team, headed up by elder Scott Anderson. This team co-ordinates the fundraising and communications between us and our Cambodian partners. Members of the team have visited Cambodia on two occasions, and have returned each time full of enthusiasm for the partnership.
Find out more about Cambodia itself and about our activities on these pages:
Cambodia
weblinks
Cambodia in the news
Cambodia's children
Photo gallery
Prayer requests
Raising awareness and money
We also have two Powerpoint presentations relating to our Cambodia Connection:
Presentation by Cambodian
Project staff
Slide show of 2006 visit to Cambodia by Martin
Fair and Jim McLeod