We are deeply honoured to receive the 2025 ASEAN Outstanding Social Welfare and Development Award.
CCT has been awarded the 2025 ASEAN Outstanding Social Welfare and Development Award, recognising the success of our Village Hive model in strengthening public systems and lifting communities out of poverty. Nominated by Cambodia’s Ministry of Social Affairs, this honour celebrates our vision of sustainable, community led social protection that reduces dependence on charity.
The Village Hive, once a grassroots initiative in Battambang, is now Cambodia’s blueprint for social protection. Adopted nationally by the Cambodian Government in June 2025, it marks the beginning of a country-wide transformation.
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…
The main problem with solving global poverty is how traditional charities try to help...
The Village Hive is a community-led model of social protection, pioneered in Battambang, Cambodia.
In June 2025, it was formally adopted by the Cambodian Government as the official national framework for social protection – a landmark reform shifting the country away from dependency on charity towards locally owned public systems of welfare.
The Village Hive is a community-led social protection system, pioneered in Battambang, Cambodia, to dismantle the structural root causes of poverty. It brings together local government, public services, and community networks into a coordinated hub that prioritises prevention and early intervention, creating a
strong social safety net that raises living standards, lifts whole communities out of poverty, and reduces dependence on charities.
We’ve always strived toward a goal that few organisations ever achieve: lasting systemic change and, ultimately, our own redundancy.
We’ve now taken a decisive step forward to achieving that goal. With the Cambodian Government’s adoption of the Village Hive as the national framework for social protection, the model is no longer just CCT’s – it belongs to Cambodia. Local councils and communities are now carrying it forward, scaling across the country as the framework for Cambodia’s public social protection system.
Our role is to support this transition, refine the model in Battambang District, and ensure it thrives nationwide. We are just beginning this journey, but are committed to seeing it through until our job is truly done.
Come on the journey...
