Poipet

Last week we went on site visits in three provinces, in the cities of Poipet, Battambang and Siem Reap. It was four days filled to the brim with a lot of meetings, field visits, and travelling, travelling, travelling. Thankfully, many of the "highways" in Cambodia are pretty smooth and the only real scare we got was when we stopped to refill the taxi's propane (yes, propane) and the driver lit up a cigarette in the middle of a small sea of propane tanks. (We've also heard of a moto driver lighting a match for light to see how empty his gas tank was!)
Our first stop was Poipet, a city of the border of Thailand about 6 hours northeast of Phnom Penh. In the past 10 years, Poipet's population has grown 2000% and it's only attraction is the collection of casinos right at the border. Gambling and casinos are illegal in Thailand, so they just opened them up 10 feet from the border crossing into Poipet. The contrast between the glamorous mini Las Vegas and the actual town is striking. The main road through town isn't even paved. It's just mud.

Poipet's population grew way too fast and development and infrastructure just couldn't keep, as is the case in so many developing world cities. This particular bording crossing is infamous for smuggling, trading, and trafficking anything from drugs, clothes, food and even people. Also, when the Thai police round up illegal Cambodian workers in Bangkok and other cities, they drive them to this crossing in big trucks and literally drop them across the border (where many of them will cross back into Thailand the next day). Among these are many children who had been trafficked into Thailand and sold into labour or sexual exploitation. 

One of Chab Dai's partners is running a program up there to take in some of these children. The shelter can house up to 40 kids and most of them will stay in this facility until they grow up, for many different reasons. Some don't know where they came from in Cambodia, others can't go home because they are at high risk of being re-trafficked. So this organization kind of serves as a surrogate family for them. 

Another project this organization is running is a transitional living community for people with HIV/AIDS. Families with at least one HIV positive parent are referred to the project if they are extremely poor, cannot buy their ARVs, and the children are at risk of being orphaned. The project provides housing, ARVs, school fees for the children, primary health education and vocational training so the families can survive economically once they are reintegrated into the ommunity.

Additional training on HIV/AIDS is done to reduce the stigma these families face in their communities.

Although the situation in Poipet seems grim, there are some amazing initiatives here and everyone we met seemed very hopeful. We visited with other organizations there, but I'll have to write about those later. There's so much to share and I want to do them justice!