Gender Equality Cambodia Project #6296

Empower At-Risk Girls in Cambodia

by Senhoa Foundation

Project Report | Mar 29, 2016
A Second Chance

By Dara Sovann | Deputy Director

Our artisans thriving in their jewelry career

Chaya* is Vietnamese and the eldest of 3 siblings and has 4 step-siblings. Her mother was her father's second wife. Chaya grew up poor and learned Khmer up to Level 2 and Vietnamese up to Level 3. As a young child, she and one of her sisters suffered abuse at the hands of a family member.

In 2009, Chaya approached Senhoa (when we were working under the nonprofit VOICE) for placement in a vocational training program. Right after she started the program, her mother fell ill and needed immediate and costly medical treatment. Desperate for the money to pay for the surgery, Chaya spoke to her family about working in a brothel. Despite starting a promising training program with Senhoa, she knew there was no other way to come up with the funds needed for her mother's operation.

Senhoa stepped in and paid for the procedure for Chaya's mother. Chaya did not have to resort to her desperate plan to work for a brothel. She also entered Senhoa's safe house, rehabiliation and reintegration program, Lotus House, to stay away from her abuser.

Chaya worked hard during her training and was promoted to jewelry trainer in the beginning of 2011. During her time with Senhoa she learned life skills, basic education and housekeeping and participated in a work internship to get more experience. The program taught her how to live independently, and in July 2011 the program reintegrated her to live in the community.

She enjoyed her time with Senhoa but in 2012 had to return to Vietnam to sort out some family issues. While she lived there, her mother's health improved and she got a good job in the city.

Senhoa followed up with Chaya in April of 2015 to see how she was doing and asked if she was open to working as a Supervisor and Design Coordinator for us. Chaya showed exceptional skill when she was in our jewelry program and at the time we were in need of someone to fill this role. We offered to pay for her moving costs back to Siem Reap, and Chaya agreed to come back.

Chaya: I am so thankful of what Senhoa has done for me.

The day that I know Senhoa, it looks like the lucky day for my life. If I do not know Senhoa program maybe I am not who I am today. Senhoa saved my mom’s life and my future. I cannot imagine if Senhoa program does not come to me. What can I do if does not have this program?

The last 6 years I did not imagine that I will have today. I am only a simple girl and will be a simple person in future, did not have a job and life is bad, too. Because I am a Vietnamese girl and the most of Vietnamese girls in Cambodia always choose the easy way to get the money. They all get a job in the bad places. Sure that I will choose the same way to them when my family has problem with finance and my mom also sick at that time. But when I know Senhoa program everything has changed. The program supported in my mom’s treatment and gave me the job also. Senhoa taught me how to have confidence in myself. How to have a dream and how to catch it and make it come true.

Last few years I wrote a letter by pen and paper, but now I can write these letters today by typing is because I have Senhoa and who are supporting the program. These letters cannot show out all my grateful to Senhoa program but what all of you are doing is not futile.

Today for small amount of people, tomorrow will for a lot of futures and dreams.

I hope this program will open in the others country that has people like me.

*Chaya: name has been changed for privacy.

Permalink

Jan 15, 2016
An Artisan's Story

By Sylvia Tran | Country Director

Oct 9, 2015
Reflections of the Alchemy Project at Senhoa

By Sydney Scherr | Jewelry Design Professor, Senhoa Volunteer

Students from the Alchemy Project with Senhoa

Sydney Scherr is a a jeweler and jewelry design professor at Raffles College in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A few years ago she started a project (the Alchemy Project) to teach sustainable jewelry design to victims of sex trafficking. She leads groups of students to instruct and create designs through simple techniques so that they can earn a living. In 2012, Sydney and a group of her students came to Siem Reap and taught our artisans at Senhoa new techniques and donated tools that they sourced locally. She and her students loved the experience and returned to teach another workshop in September 2015. This is her relfections from the week with our artisans.

Time has transformed Senhoa, and the young women associated with the program. In 2012 the emphasis was on working with women recently rescued from the bondage of human traffickers. This premise dovetailed perfectly with the intent of the Alchemy Project: to teach skills that create an economic alternative to what has been the hard reality of the young lives impacted at the hands of traffickers.

Returning to Senhoa in 2015 reignited the Alchemy Project. This was a joy and a gift. For Senhoa the new direction is one of looking at the future and not focusing on the past. The young women are thriving and clearly moving beyond their history. These women continue to be my heroes as they embody hope: it resonates from their warmth and their gracious laughter and wide open hearts.

Without a doubt the young women we went to Cambodia to teach taught each of my students and myself more of what it means to be grateful in our lives than we were able to teach them about jewellery. The women of Senhoa taught us about living with little and feeling abundance. My students and I found the Senhoa students eager to learn. And eager to laugh. The warmth that was expressed between all of us was genuine and full of acceptance. Through this we found we had common ground: there are few who come through life without a story that touches someone’s heart and we felt the thread that joined us in spirit.

Senhoa has made a remarkable difference in the lives that it touches. The women are paid employees, making beautiful beaded jewellery. They are appreciated and cared for. They are valued-the very sense of self-worth I hope the Alchemy Project can also bring to their experience, and to others who survive the unfathomable. It is the intent of the Alchemy Project to advance their jewellery making knowledge so that if they chose to venture out on their own, in their own business, they will be better able to realize that dream, with knowledge, tools and metal provided to them as a humble beginning.

The women of Senhoa, over the years, have taught me many lessons. That a bright future is rich and alive in the pulse of women and that being valued, and valuing ourselves, matters. That we can choose not to be victims of our history. Their young lives matter, and on a personal note: their lives have mattered to me unfailingly.

I learned where hope lives.

Hope lives in the eyes of the young women of Senhoa and The Alchemy Project.

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... 12 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.