Empower HIV+ Women in Cambodia to Start a Business

Thanks to your generous donations through GlobalGiving, Salvation Centre Cambodia in Battambang has been able to make additional interest-free loans to impoverished women, many living with HIV/AIDS. We have also applied the donations to our vocational sewing program, purchasing fabric and sewing materials, as well as providing lunch for its participants. This training program offered by SCC gives young women from poor families, often living with HIV/AIDS the chance to develop new skills for themselves such that after graduating they will be able to generate their own income and provide a better future for their families.

Pou Somphors is one of these young women. Somphors’ mother died when she was just a teenager and she was left as the figurehead of the family, caring for her much younger sister and older grandmother. Somphors learned about the sewing training program through a family member that attended an HIV/AIDS self help group, another one of the many programs offered by SCC to support people living with HIV/AIDS. With an opportunity to gain skills and independently generate income, Somphors jumped at the chance. Somphors lives 16km from the training center and, although this initially posed a problem, generation donations enabled SCC to buy a bicycle for Somphors so that she could ride to and from class.

Now, at the age of 21, Somphors has been in the training full-time for one year. Her dream, she says, is to become sufficient in all styles of sewing and satisfy all types of customers while she is running her own business.

“Thank you so much for supporting everything offered to us in the class, and especially for the bicycle”, said Somphors. “It would not be possible for me or other girls from poor families to go to sewing classes were it not for the donations that paid for our bicycles. I would also like to thank SCC for the food we are given in the afternoon, easing the burden on my family’s living costs.”

The SCC-Battambang vocational sewing program gives young women from poor families both pride in their own work as well as hope for a more prosperous future.

Thank you for being part of the SCC family and supporting our work to combat the economic hardships that HIV imposes on women and their families in rural Cambodia.