# 100 A message for Scott Neeson: "RETURN CCF'S 700 'ORPHANS' TO THEIR FAMILIES!"

The following is an extract from a Friends International campaign to help close down the orphanage business worldwide. Cambodia is awash with ‘orphans’ who have families!

See:

http://www.thinkchildsafe.org/thinkbeforedonating/

THE REAL PICTURE

“The mother had been searching for him for years. She thought he was dead. When we arrived in town his mother was working in the fields (on the other side of the river). When she saw him from the boat as she came home, she jumped out of the boat to swim to her kid. She cried, and fainted. When she finally woke up again, she and her son cried and hugged. That was six years ago. Now he lives at home, he has graduated from high-school, and works in a metal shop.” – Social worker comments on emotional bonds between parent and child (who had been placed in residential care)*

An emotional reunion between parent and child is shown in the example above. However, reintegration is not easy. The longer a child is institutionalized the harder it is for them to settle back into family life and normal society.

Scott Neeson, do you have even one orphan amongst the 700 kids that you have living in Cambodian Children’s Fund?

“At the shelter I only had to eat, sleep and study. Now I shop and cook, and take care of my sisters and brothers. It’s more work but I prefer living with my family. At first I was afraid of the market, but now I am not afraid anymore.” – Reintegrated child*

How many of CCF’s 700 kids in residential care have at least one parent?

It is essential that early mechanisms to support reintegrated children and their families are in place to smooth the transition and ensure the family can stay together. Reintegration is a holistic, multi-layered process and it is not always helpful to isolate one factor alone, since successful reintegration relies on several factors working together. These factors can include school support and income generation in the family. There are often multiple challenges to face, however a refocusing of donor priorities from care institutions onto support for organizations working in the field with families will see these challenges being effectively addressed. In practical terms, the cost of supporting residential care is much higher than supporting a family to care for their child. Donor impact dollar for dollar can be much greater if focused on family support solutions, and can also be more positive as it reflects national and international legislation and priorities which promote family-centered non-residential care alternatives.

How many of the 700 kids sleeping 3 and 4 to a bed in CCF dormitories that have no living biological parents also have no uncles, aunts, grandmas, grandpas or cousins who could take care of them?

If you donate to support institutionalized care your good intentions may actually be causing harm to children, keeping them from their family and hampering their development. Most children in institutions do not need to be there. Many institutions are woefully inadequate in providing a duty of care or protection to children. In fact many are run as profit making businesses, pure and simple. The commodity they trade in? Children. The money they source to keep business booming? Yours.

The Cambodian Children’s Fund claims, in its 2013 tax return, to be spending roughly $4,000 per year to house and educate one child! Imagine if even half this amount were to be given to the child’s extended family, to the village, to the community? This would make it possible for pretty well each and every child in CCF residential care to be living with his or her family.

Imagine if the other $2,000 were to be given to the village/community to employ an extra teacher for the local school? Or to enable the village/community to start up its own micro-financing scheme to help prevent extremely poor families from selling their homes and land when they run up debts they can’t repay?

As you know, most of the families that wind up working in the Phnom Penh rubbish dump are there because they have lost land and homes to money lenders – from whom they borrowed money (at exorbitant interest rates) they could not repay. Very often this money was loaned to pay medical expenses when a member of the family became very ill.

Imagine if, instead of spending $4,000 a year on one child, CCF were to invest $4,000 a year in the village or community from which they child came – on microfinance, health and education. That’s 700 villages each year. That would be quite some achievement!

As you know, as has been known for a long time, the creation of 700 orphans is not the way to go. You need a new model, Scott.  

The creative and really useful ways that CCF could use the money it raises to strengthen families and communities are endless.