Affirmative Action

• Ex-beneficiaries and including care-leaver youth are represented on CCT’s board of directors in Cambodia. Their role is to connect in with current beneficiaries, ensuring their voices and ideas are represented at the highest level of decision making.
• Our Leadership team are local Cambodians who partner with local communities to co-design all our programs.  We believe that beneficiaries need to be the architects of the programs to create sustainable, systemic change.
• Our social workers use a non-paternalistic framework called Signs of Safety and an approach called an Appreciative Inquiry to partner with families, empowering them to think through their own problems and come up with their own plans and solutions.
• Our Village Hive model is a preventative ‘upstream’ approach that addresses root causes, avoiding falling into the trap of unconsciously sustaining or creating problems.
• We have exit strategies for each community, ensuring power and control of programs are in the hands of the community and local council with operations embedded in public facilities.
• We believe that the wisdom and knowledge of how to solve complex social problems lives within local communities.
• Cambodian Children’s Trust Australia (CCTA) is a separate organisation, based in Australia, that supports our work through fundraising and advocacy.

CCT’s Cambodian social workers are currently working with more than 600 children and their families. A rigorous focus on child safety and wellbeing is maintained using a social work approach called ‘Signs of Safety’. A technique called ‘Appreciate Inquiry’ helps families think through problems and create their own solutions.

CCT’s social workers partner with vulnerable families to build support networks around them to co-create safety and empowerment plans. The plans ensure families are equipped to meet the challenges in their lives and children have opportunities to thrive.

Building long term support networks can only be achieved through consistent support from our monthly donors.