Take meaningful action this Christmas by empowering 21 young adults on their journey from foster care to independence
Cambodia is dependent on a privatised system of social support controlled by foreign charities.
We’re on a mission to change that.
Cambodian Children’s Trust (CCT) believe that the only way to break the cycle of poverty is to break the cycle of charity.
Our Journey began in 2007 when Tara Winkler and Pon Jedtha established CCT to help 14 children escape from a corrupt and abusive orphanage in Battambang. Initially, CCT was set up as an orphanage to provide children with a safe new home. Then they discovered that the children they had rescued from the orphanage weren’t actually orphans at all…
Find out more about CCT’s origin story
The main problem with solving global poverty is how traditional charities try to help.
they make communities vulnerable by creating and controlling a privatised system of social support. They then swoop in to help by offering end-stage crisis interventions.
This kind of downstream ‘help’ keeps communities vulnerable and dependent on charities more, when the goal should always be less.
The best way to solve poverty is to invest charity donations into building high-quality public services that raises the standard of living and safeguards against shock, crisis and trauma.
That’s why Cambodian Children’s Trust is building a public social protection system, run and controlled by local communities. It will dismantle the structural root causes of poverty, and empower communities to rise to the challenge of transforming their own world.
we’re reimaging charity. Because the only way to break the cycle of poverty is to break the cycle of charity.
The Village Hive Project is built on a foundation of collaborative community engagements with the goal of eliminating dependence on charity and restoring local sovereignty.
The Village Hive Project is building a public social protection system in Cambodia, run by local communities in Cambodia. Through an upstream approach, prioritising the strengthening of universal public services and building early intervention programs, it works to dismantle the root causes of poverty and raise the standard of living for entire communities.
Over the last 15 years, countless families have reached self-reliance and exited our programs.
Our social enterprise restaurant Jaan Bai is run by local Khmer youth, our computing program has been fully integrated into the national curriculum and is delivered by the public education system, and - importantly - our Village Hive has become the official public social protection system for one Cambodian commune and six villages.
Actionable exit strategies are built into all we do. Our success is defined by our work living on in the hands of the community to create sustainable, systemic change.
Some life changing stories...
