Cambodian Childrens Fund

CCF was established in 2004 to aid children living and working on the notorious Steung Meanchey garbage dump in Phnom Penh, one of the largest garbage dumps in southeast Asia. It was home to more than 1,500 of children and families scavenging for recyclables, while under constant threat of violence, sexual abuse, trafficking, and disease.

Today, CCF dedicates itself to helping thousands of vulnerable children escape a world of forced labor, child trafficking, and desperate poverty into a safe and independent life.  Children living in slums around the former garbage dump do not have access to food, potable water, healthcare or education. Taken together these barriers to social inclusion mean the most impoverished of Cambodians are systematically omitted from a large majority of interventions.

Our approach is based on a fundamental belief that education will provide children pathways out of poverty and that by developing the leadership potential of our students, leaders will emerge that will create generational change and a better future for Cambodia.

We believe that with the right education and support, one child has the potential to lift an entire family out of poverty and that a generation of educated children has the power to change a whole society. Through intensive, long-term investments in children, CCF is helping students build the skills, confidence, and integrity they need to become the progressive spokespeople and leaders of change in their communities.

At CCF the child is the nucleus of all that it does but the change sought is broader: each child must have a mindset and willingness to bring to their own community. Such an undertaking requires a number of interdependent community services, from clean water and nutrition through to learning local values and traditions, and a burning desire to become independent. Our approach to poverty reduction and community development is based on three key principles:                             

1. Access to quality education for those who have fallen outside the public school generational cycle of poverty;                    

2. Removing the barriers to education that loss of earnings of child labor, addressing urgent food, clean water, healthcare needs issues such as domestic violence, sexual that the ‘access to quality education’ is most effective;                   

3. If children are to prosper, their families must be supported, so CCF spends a great deal of time and energy in creating a community environment around the children which is safe, caring and supportive, reinstalling pride, integrity, and respect into community members.                

CCF offers simple but innovative solutions to deal with the complex issues and deeply rooted challenges of poverty. It is consistently generating a path to higher education and employment for the poorest and most vulnerable of Cambodians by creating an environment where food security, housing, and health care remove the most entrenched barriers to education. Merely creating classrooms was never going to be enough: children would soon be dragged back to work in order to support their struggling families. 

In our approach to community development, CCF operates 64 inter-connected projects across six core program areas – Education, Leadership, Community Outreach, Healthcare, Childcare, and Career & Life Skills. While not all programs are education-focused, each plays an essential part in ensuring children (once labeled “unreachable,” by the public school system) and their families are prepared for and have access to, the supports needed to support participation in high quality education.