CAMBODIA Kids Dump Trash Collecting For School, Thanks To French Catholic Couple

Posted: 31st May 2005

A boy sifts through garbage at Cambodia's notorious dumpsite

PHNOM PENH (UCAN): Foot injuries are common as young scavengers trek over mountains of trash studded with broken glass, used hypodermic needles and rusting metal in Cambodia's biggest garbage dump.

They hunt for salable discards at Stung Mean Chey, a fetid, smoking wasteland on the outskirts of Phnom Penh that is Cambodia's equivalent of the Philippines' notorious Smokey Mountain. It is a final stop not only for trash collected from around the capital but also for poor people who scavenge there as the only way they know to survive. For child scavengers, who sacrifice any chance of a better future for immediate survival, it is a dead end.
Stung Mean Chey also is a regular stop for Toun Daravuth, a doctor who comes every other day to clean and bandage youngsters' injuries and to offer an alternative.

"The people don't know about the danger of the needles, smoke and the chemicals in the dirt," Daravuth told UCA News. "Moreover, they don't know the dangers of discarded cloth from garment factories," which can include caustic chemicals. Some youngsters, eager for the best pickings, even have been run over and killed in the scramble to get close to the trucks dumping garbage.

Physical hazards are the immediate danger, but the long-term problem is one of no opportunity, a parallel wasteland in which dreams and hopes get crushed and each day is one more gamble against hostile odds. That is where Daravuth and a project called "For the Smile of a Child" come in. While treating cut feet, coughs, dizziness and diarrhea, the doctor also tells the children and their parents of another world, one of regular meals and clean school uniforms.

Neither a dream nor a faraway hope, this world is real, and only two kilometers up the road. There more than 1,700 poor children from Stung Mean Chey and neighboring areas attend classes up to grade 12. The school also provides meals and health care. It is a clean, safe place that even rings with children's laughter.

Daravuth is the Cambodian face of Pour Un Sourire d'Enfant (for the smile of a child, in French), a non-governmental organization that offers a route out of poverty through education. Christian des Pallieres, 71, and his wife Marie-France, 63, started the organization after a visit to Cambodia in 1993. It was not what the Catholic couple had in mind when they retired early in France.

"When we met the hundreds of children and their families working and eating in the middle of the rubbish dump of Stung Mean Chey, we could not sleep in peace anymore," Christian told UCA News. "If we could encourage one of those children to share a smile with us, it would already be something good, we said to each other."

Urged on by their faith, the French couple came back to Cambodia two years after their eye-opening visit, and For the Smile of a Child was born.

One of the keys to its success is that it provides food and money to families for keeping their children in school. It also pays to send children for further vocational training.

Francois Marion, who works with the NGO, says they currently offer various professional training options, such as programs for secretarial skills, administration, marketing, management, hotel catering and hairdressing. "We are trying to develop these professional training programs, considering the needs of the country and our own capabilities," the French social worker said. He added that every program "has a component focusing on computer science and foreign languages, which are essential to any profession in Cambodia."
The des Pallieres couple have a motto: "to defend the most elementary rights of children in the world." Those rights were trampled in Cambodia three decades ago. Education was one of the casualties of the radical communist regime Pol Pot led from 1975 to 1979, when schools were destroyed and teachers were forced to work the fields. Many did not survive. Cambodia is still trying to recover from the era of the Khmer Rouge "killing fields," when up to 2 million people were killed or died of deprivation and disease. Education options for the poor still are limited.

Sam Nang, 19, used to work with his mother on the rubbish dump, and one day she told him she wanted him to study at a good school she had heard of. "This center not only provides good training but also gives us meals, accommodation and uniforms," he told UCA News at the school.

Kong Khoeun, a father of five children, said his children have been going to the school, learning to read and write, and they receive meals. "Not only education (for my children), but we also receive some rice every two weeks," said Kong, 40, who has been working at the dump since 1987.

Speaking near the dump, Pin Ra, 11, recalled collecting rubbish until two years ago. He said he no longer scavenges and his life has improved.

His family lives in a small shack next to the dump. It sits with about twenty other similar homes. Pin Soth, 47, is Pin Ra's father. "I don't allow my three children to scavenge," he told UCA News. "I hope that the education at school will help them to find a good job and earn more than me. Being uneducated, my life is very hard."

Now the government's plan to close Stung Mean Chey dump by 2007 has Marion voicing anxiety. He wonders what will happen to the hundreds of families who still make their livelihood from the garbage dump.

Christian and Marie-France told UCA News it was difficult for them to understand how the world could so easily forget the trauma Cambodians suffered. "We can easily see the scars of this tragedy in the minds and hearts of the children of our school," Marie-France said. In contrast, they said, people responded so quickly to help survivors of the tsunami tragedy when tidal waves hit the coasts of Southeastern and South Asia last December.

The fallout from Cambodia's tragedy has lingered for decades. Even with the success For the Smile of a Child has had, Daravuth acknowledges that some children still scavenge back at the dump after school hours.

Article Source: UCAN NEWS and C.S.C. Catholic Social Communications - Catholic Church Cambodia