Provide Social Services for Exploited Cambodians

Justice and Client Care Social Work Project 3 Month Report

Activities Summary:

• The Justice and Client Care Social Work Project provided advanced counselling to 5 survivors of exploitation and provided basic counselling to 15 survivors once per month, with the purpose of restoring their resilience and hope.
• The project also provided the 20 families of these survivors with family assessments and support services, including education, conflict mediation and family counselling.
• To improve the quality of our services and assistance to survivors of exploitation, we have designed and implemented and a follow up activity schedule and follow up assessment forms for clients and their families.
• We conducted a two-day Direct Social Service conference, with 189 participants attending the first day and 160 participants attending the second day from 56 different organisations. The conference allowed participants to network, learn about peer programs and improve their knowledge of direct social service provision.

Story of Hope:

Thirteen year old Sreyleap* lives in a rural village 200 kilometers away from Phnom Penh, with her poor family who are in a lot of debt.

She was raped by young man living in a neighbouring village, causing her immense physical and psychological suffering. She felt great shame about the brutal attack, feeling like she was to blame because of the Buddhist belief that this kind of damaging incident is a result of your bad karma from a past life. Her family also placed blame on her for the incident, and banned her from leaving their house, and before long her whole village learned about the assault, causing her even more shame.

Sreyleap became silent, irritable, and refused to eat, slowly starving herself. She never left her house. Her family could not afford to send her to Phnom Penh to receive counselling or to the hospital to receive treatment for her injuries.

Sreyleap and her family received support, education, counselling and encouragement from the Justice and Client Care Social Work Project, who have visited her and her family in their village every month for the last four months. Our staff have noticed that the family have become more relaxed and happy over this period of time, and talk about the future with a sense of hope. Sreyleap’s family understand that she is not to blame for her rape, and now support her in her journey to recovery. Sreyleap told our staff that ‘I feel so relieved now, when I think about the past I do not feel as hurt as before – I am standing to face this problem and I am taking more care of myself now.’

*Name changed.

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