170k
Khemara provides financial assistance to the village committee to upgrade old houses and community centers. These buildings become the main centers for women and children. Each of the now four centers provide primary health care, post and pre-natal care and childcare. Over 500 children and 100 families have actively participated in the program in the past four years.
Lining up for a clean hand check before going
in to eat breakfast
A little girl hides from the camera in the swing.
Khemara staff provides training in early childhood development to village women to enable to care for the physical and social development of the children. A Khemara United Nations volunteer has trained the village birth attendants in pre and post natal care and family planning. Each center is managed by a group of mothers from the village.
The women's centers are essential for the development of children as the Cambodian state does not provide any educational opportunities for them. For the children of destitute families, the women's centers provide children with shelter, food and care while their mothers work. The women's centers will continue to be strengthened to reach more women. Women in the village see the centers as theirs as all community meetings and literacy classes take place there.
In 1979-80 there were 250,000 orphans and abandoned children. Before 1975 UNICEF figures show an exceptionally low number of children in orphanages with as few as 10-20 at any one time in the Nutrition Center. Today the Nutrition Center handles around 5 infants a month. What happens to children in the provinces is less well documented.
For Cambodian parents to adopt it usually only takes one to two weeks. For international adoption the process is much more involved. Adoption in Cambodia currently requires a constitutional exception. Since there are no clear rules and established legal process the adoptive parents must be prepared to take at least 2 months for an adoption. They must learn the process and allow for holidays and changes in the legal situation as well as bureaucratic obstruction. The ultimate signature is a constitutional exception signed by the Council of Ministers and finally by the two prime ministers.
The latest news (February, 1996) is that the Ministry of Social Action has been stopped adoption completely while investigation goes into allegations of sales of children and corruption around adoption from the Nutrition Center, Phnom Penh.
Last updated on March 16, 1996.
© 1996 by Katharine Wardle