Our time with the kids at CPCSO in Siem Reap

When we were planning our trip to Cambodia we contacted friends Lise and Jordan Schiltroth to help out with an orphanage in Siem Reap, one they had been a part of in the past. Once the connection was made, Jarrett and I were stoked to help out and meet the kids. The orphanage we helped at is called Cambodia’s Poor Children Support Organization (CPCSO) and is located in Siem Reap, a common tourist spot in Cambodia as it is the town near Angkor Wat.

Orphanages in Cambodia

Unfortunately there is a lot of poverty in Cambodia, the country has been through a lot in recent years and seems to be starting to rebuild it’s roots. With this, there are many families who are starving for food each and everyday. It does not seem fair to see what the people in Cambodia have been through. In the last 60 years they have been exposed to WWII, the Vietnam War, Khmer Rouge, and Civil War.

With this poverty comes a lot of children living in families that cannot supply food and education. Thankfully there are several orphanages in the area that help contribute to some of these children. The unfortunate part is that there are so many orphanages, especially in the Siem Reap area, that there seems to be competition over foreign money. With this said, the smaller and less popular orphanages are not getting the help they need.

Many orphanages in the area raise funds by getting the children to make crafts to sell at the markets, or getting the kids to perform traditional dances in the evening. Although these are very successful means of raising funds for the orphanages, it is also taking away from the children’s time to study, play and rest.

So much delicious food for lunch, the only time the kids took a break!

CPCSO

CPCSO is much different then many of the orphanages in Siem Reap. The director treats each of the kids as his own. He encourages all the kids to study hard, learn english, and take lots of time to rest along with play. He believes it is important for the children to spend their time studying and resting to ensure they are well prepared for a life on their own after they finish high school. I have never met someone so passionate about anything before. Sunthan, the director, has given his everything to run the orphanage and make sure the kids are living a good life – especially when it comes to food, we ate some of the best food in Cambodia when we were with the kids!

Unfortunately because CPSCO does not raise funds through performances or crafts all funds are currently dependent upon charitable donations which are hard to come by when you don’t seem to have something to offer some tourists.

CPCSO is currently working towards becoming a self sustainable orphanage. Sunthan has worked hard and purchased rice fields to feed the kids as well as to sell to fund other aspects such as school books, school uniforms, clothes, as well as meat and vegetables. Sunthan’s main goal currently is to raise enough money to purchase a tractor in order to work the fields more efficiently and become less dependent on sporadic donations.

Sunthan is filled with dreams for the kids at CPCSO and provides as much as he can at this point in time, our time spent there was truly inspiring.

Our Time At CPCSO

Unfortunately due to our visa restrictions in SE Asia, we did not get to spend as much time as we would have liked at CPCSO. We ended up spending a total of 4 days at the orphanage getting to know Sunthan and the kids. This was a very rewarding 4 days. The first day there we met all the kids and learned more about Sunthan and the organization. The more we got talking the more we were inspired to help out and do what we could during our short stay. After we got back to the hotel that night we brainstormed all the different ways we thought we could help Sunthan out.

The next morning we helped teach the kids some english – this was pretty fun and definitely made me think back to the basics, it is hard to explain things when they don’t understand that much english! After we made our way through most of the english book we went outside to help Sunthan get rid of the lemongrass garden (too dangerous because it attracted cobras, the kids found 2 the day we were there) and start planting a new, different crop. Then it was play time, this is where we really got wore out – those kids have so much energy!!

Teaching some English, Harder than it Looks!

Another way we thought we could help Sunthan out was to work on his website, and shoot a video of the kids at the orphanage to post on the website. Sunthan seemed very excited about this! Therefore, we spent some time with this kids video taping – this turned out to be a blast! The kids were completely enthralled with the cameras they loved being silly and then watching it over and over. They also loved taking pictures of one another – Jarr and I loved it too, it is probably something most of the kids have never seen or done before so we were glad to show them what was up! They are quite the performers as you will soon see

The kids loved checking themselves out on the camera!

The third day we were a bit rained in….Sunthan got his truck stuck and there was no getting out to the orphanage so we met in the Town and worked on the website together. The next day we were back to teaching english, shooting footage, and then capped off our time with a game of football! We are continuing to work on the CPCSO website while we are on the road, and hope to have an online donation system set up soon.

CPCSO is an amazing organization set up to help very unfortunate children from all around Cambodia. Please do visit their website, get to know the kids a little via the video posted soon and donate! http//www.cambodianpcso.org. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact Jarrett or I via email at theworldlycouple@gmail.com

For more pics of our time at the orphanage, click here, and stay tuned for some entertaining video in Episode 9!

Soccer in +40 Heat! Jarr almost passed out a couple times!

Jackie showing the kids some pics of Canada, so hyped on snow!