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Teenagers help Cambodian orphans |
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Wednesday, 14 March 2007 |
Five enterprising and
compassionate French
teenagers are about to set
off on a charity mission to
help the orphans in Cambodia.
The group, all members of the
Lille Baptist Church, is led by
Englishman and Lille resident
Andrew Openshaw.
The group of five
teenagers, aged 14 and 15,
have been working on the
project for two years. They
have had to arrange various
activities to fund both their
trip and the work of the
charity volunteers in Phnom
Penh. Recently, friends and
supporters attended a horse
racing evening to help raise
more money. The project is
being run under the auspices
of Le Centre de la
Reconciliation and the WEC, a
multi-national, nondenominational
Christian
charity with projects and
workers around the world.
The church in Lille became
involved in the project through
Tim Paton, an English resident
in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais who
has been based with the
charity in Phnom Penh for the
past six years.
As Cambodia still
struggles to recover from the
damage caused by the Khmer
Rouges in the 1970s, there are
many children either orphaned
or put out to beg by their
parents. These children are
forced to live in rubbish
dumps or along the river banks
in the city and fend for
themselves by begging from
tourists. All the charity
organisations in the country
work together to help and
support these children.
The WEC, in particular,
has focused on helping the
orphanages there and has also
opened a day centre, called
The Bridge of Hope, where
children, for whom residential
solutions are not relevant or
appropriate, can go and start
the process of getting back
into normal life. This can
mean education, but even
more simply, learning basic
social skills such as personal
hygiene and respect for
themselves and others. In a
country where life is cheap,
where child prostitution, drugs
and violence have filled the
moral vacuum that was Pol
Pot’s legacy, even the most
basic, and to the western
mind, most obvious lessons
are having to be re-taught and
re-learnt. This work is long,
painful and slow and often
goes unnoticed under the radar
of the western media.
Andrew, youth leader
Philippa Wehrle and the
teenagers will spend their twoweek
half-term break working
alongside the charity workers
in Phnom Penh. They hope to
help in whatever small way
they can.
Andrew says: “Not only
do we hope to help the
orphans and give some respite
and support to Tim and his
helpers, but also to impact on
the lives and attitudes of the
teenagers we are taking.”
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