Missions Monday: Joining Hands in Cambodia

If you have been around Tenth for a while, you might be familiar with our heart for the country of Cambodia. Over the past 9 years, we have been working with our partners, missionaries and friends in combatting human trafficking, supporting vulnerable women and children, developing leaders and doing business as mission.

GMS: Cambodia is becoming an increasingly important player on the world stage as it is part of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) together with China, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.  In order to compete with neighbouring countries and protect children from crossing the increasingly more porous borders, Cambodia needs more strong leaders that protect children and that can run profitable enterprises with integrity. 

CHAB DAI:  Chab Dai (means holding hands in Khmer) is one of our partners that serve all our global priorities with excellence.  It is a strong coalition of more than 50 Christian organizations banding together to stop sexual abuse and human trafficking.

DOORSTEPS: One of the Chab Dai projects that we fund is called Charter Doorsteps.  It is all about ensuring grassroots leaders not only have the financial resources to kick start their dreams about stopping sexual abuse and trafficking, but more importantly they get trained in organizational and leadership skills necessary to do the work they are called to do. The great news is that the main beneficiaries of Doorsteps are children, as they reap the impact of better trained care givers, leaders and entrepreneurs.

YENG:  Leading Chab Dai in Cambodia is Yeng.  As he was taking me to visit families in Svay Pak years ago, (Svay Pak is notorious for the sexual exploitation of children), he shared his story. Years ago, he was a pastor and did not know how to handle men coming from other Asian countries, posed as missionaries, preying on the children of his church.  After seeing the great need for child protection in Cambodia, he joined the Chab Dai team so that he could empower more leaders.  Years later, he is now overseeing the leadership development and capacity building of hundreds of communities and leaders that have a reach of 10's of thousands of children.  This shows the ethos of Chab Dai; rising up leaders to protect vulnerable women and children from sexual exploitation.  

Founder and International Director for Chab Dai, Helen Sworn has shared at Tenth on a couple of occasions in the past, and you can click here to hear Helen share her testimony recently on 100 Huntley Street.  

WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO: So if you give to the missions fund at Tenth, Chab Dai Doorsteps is one of the places your support goes.  Click here to donate to our missions fund. 

TOGETHER, we can work with great friends and partners like Chab Dai to make a brighter future for Cambodia and the region.

Patrick Elaschuk

Pastor of International Missions

PS  The other 2 Chab Dai programs we help fund are Butterfly Longitudinal Research (research around hearing from survivors to better understand the issues and gaps of rehabilitation and reintegration into society) and Ethnic Community Prevention (training and empowering leaders in ethnic and Vietnamese communities which are most vulnerable).

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For a bit more information about Chab Dai Doorsteps, read below

CHARTER DOORSTEPS provides mentoring for grassroots and organizational leaders to assist them in leading the way forward in raising standards of care, accountability and sustainability, through self-assessment, organizational development and individual capacity building.

In early 2014, Doorsteps and Charter (previously two separate projects) combined into a single project that aims to equip organizations in developing best practices, leading the way forward in raising standards of care, and to build their capacity to address exploitation and human trafficking in their local communities. 

The Doorsteps component of the project provides training and mentoring activities and open to all Chab Dai members. Trainings include Project Cycle Management, Financial and Human Resources Training and workshops on Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Doorsteps also provides small seed grants to trainees so they can practice grant proposal writing, project implementation and report writing on a small scale.

The Chab Dai Charter component of the project engages coalition members that have specifically chosen to participate in a process of self-assessment around four core values: Protection, Participation, Transparency and Collaboration. Following the self-assessment, Charter members, are assisted in designing and implementing an Improvement Action Plan in their organizations, with the goal of improving their structures and policies to achieve higher standards in organizational development, staff care and training, policy and practice.

Charter Doorsteps is particularly relevant for smaller member organizations who understand the local context and have a desire and a vision to see change in their own communities but who have had very little in the way of formal education and training to equip them for managing projects. This way, organizations are enabled to reach internationally-recognized standards in the areas of staff care, financial accountability, governance, project planning and design and child well-being.