project: cambodia

Task: Provide food support to at-risk and exploited girl students
Partner: Lotus Outreach International
Project schedule: October 2009 — June 2010

project description:

BGR awarded a grant to Lotus Outreach International to provide critical monthly rice support to fifty families of at-risk and exploited girl students enrolled in the Girls’ Access to Education (GATE) scholarship project in Siem Reap and Banteay Meanchey.  Lotus Outreach supports projects that address the physical, educational and environmental needs of children.  Only 11 percent of Cambodian girls attend secondary schooling.  For families living below the sustenance level, sending children to school is a luxury they cannot afford.  Because of widespread poverty, many children are taken out of school by their families and put to work.  Because girls withdrawn from school at an early age lack employable skills, often the only means of income open to them is the sex trade.  GATE scholarships support the school-related costs for more than 630 girls, permitting them to remain in school, complete their primary or secondary education, and perhaps go on to pursue higher education.

BGR funds enable Lotus Outreach to provide 25-40 kilograms of rice each month during the school year to the families of 50 girls who rank among the poorest 10 percent of scholarship recipients in Siem Reap and Baneay Meanchey over a period of 9 months.

project impact

• Provides 15,300 kilos of rice, or over 75,000 meals, to families of at-risk girl students over a 9-month period, from October 2009 through June 2010.
• Enables families to allow girls to attend school rather than keeping them home to support the family.
• Reduces likelihood that girls find themselves trafficked into organized begging rings, bonded labor, or Southeast Asia’s notorious commercial sex trade.

our partner

Lotus Outreach International was founded in 1993 by Khyentse Norbu, a renowned teacher known in the Buddhist world as Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, to provide educational sponsorships for Tibetan refugee families in India. Today, the organization works in both India and Cambodia to address the physical, educational and environmental needs of children in communities that lie outside the reach of their own government’s educational initiatives.

hunger challenges

Overview: Cambodia’s excruciatingly violent recent history was marked by a devastating civil war. Over one-third of the country’s population died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Although peace was restored in the early 1990s, Cambodia remains among the poorest countries in the world, with a per capital income of only $571. Thirty-four percent of Cambodians live on less than one dollar per day.

Issues: Cambodia has some of the highest malnutrition rates in Asia, with 44% of children under five years of age stunted and 15% wasted. Deficiencies in essential micronutrients such as iodine and iron are widespread.

• Forty-two percent of the population lives below the international poverty line.
• 26 percent lives below the food poverty line.
• Approximately 36 percent of children under 5 are malnourished.

In recent years, climate change has begun to affect the country. Over eighty percent of Cambodia’s population of 15 million lives within flood distance of Mekong river and are facing the more frequent and less predictable floods resulting from patterns of climate change. The current agricultural system lacks diversification and effective irrigation and so is vulnerable to these natural disasters. The 70 to 80 percent of Cambodians employed in subsistence agriculture are exquisitely susceptible to food insecurity as a result. Due to increases in the prices of food and fuel since 2008, the poorest Cambodians have been forced to cope by taking on new debt, cutting back on food consumption, or resorting to less nutritious foods.

SOURCES

Lotus Outreach International (www.lotusoutreach.org)

World Food Programme ((www.wfp.org/countries/cambodia and www.foodsecurityatlas.org/khm/country)

Reuters AlertNet (www.alertnet.org/db/cp/cambodia.htm)

Cambodia Food Nutrition and Security (www.foodsecurity.gov.kh)

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (www.ifrc.org/Docs/pubs/disasters/wdr2009/WDR2009-full.pdf)