CFI supports local family through micro-loan

In mid-February, three weeks after we first met them, we found out that two girls and a boy had been taken to Thailand overnight by their mother. They had just been been accepted by CFI's sponsorship program and were going to attend the CFI school once it opened when their mother took them to join her husband working in Thailand. The neighbors told us that the children left crying and kept saying that they wanted to study at CFI, they didn't want to leave.

Their father, an amputee, lost the better part of his left leg to a land mine. He finds sporadic work, but not enough to feed his family. He is a good man, loves his family, and does not waste the little wages that he does earn on drinking and gambling, like so many of his peers. In order to make a better life, he and his family packed up and headed west to Thailand.

Many Cambodians leave their country in search for work in the wealthier neighboring country Thailand, believing that they will be able to have a better future there. In reality, Cambodian immigrants, who do not speak the native tongue and who do not have any rights as non-citizens, are greatly mistreated in Thailand. They work for wages too meager to support their family.
Some see themselves forced to sell their children, to starve, to beg. Children are especially vulnerable to abuse.

After two months and many many work hours, CFI's social worker Chhorn was able to locate the family in Thailand. He convinced them to return and arranged for their transport back to their village in Ek Phnom commune, with the promise to help the father set up a small business. CFI loaned the father money to build a fence around his property and a chicken coup and to buy 30 chickens for his start-up and rice on a monthly basis for current sustenance.

In April when Jenny and Andrew met the father, he was depressed. He felt that he had no options in Cambodia, that he wasn't able to feed his children. In May, Andrew and I visited his home. The father had a noticeable change in his demeanor. He opened the gate to his bamboo fence with pride. He built it. He led us around his chicken coup, a sturdy structure that houses a couple dozen growing chicks. Again, he built it. Every day he mashes banana tree and rice hulls for chicken feed. He is breeding chickens so that he can sell their meat. A few of his chicks have died, but the remaining grow stronger and bigger everyday. Although his family is still receiving rice from CFI, he plans on earning enough money in the future to buy his own rice and to repay the loan.

All three of his school-aged children attend CFI's school. They are performing very well and will enter public school in October, after summer vacation. Microfinance is not CFI's main goal and this is a test case, but its effects are already positive. CFI's greatest concern is to keep children in school and in the country. We are able to do that by providing school uniforms, school supplies, reintegration courses in Khmer literacy, and rice. We want to keep children with their families whenever possible and help provide families with sustainable livelihoods where they are comfortable sending their kids to school every day instead of sending them to work or even selling them.