Cambodia’s Voluntourism Issues in Spotlight Again UPDATED

March’s investigation into Love in Action orphanage has led to a new look at voluntourism-a topic we have covered seven times in the past.

One of our posts linked to a great explanation of the issues: Think Child Safe.org. This is such a large issue in Cambodia that they have posters to warn foreigners about the issue.

“Dozens of orphanages in Cambodia, including some run by Australians, have  been accused of  exploiting children to attract donations.

The government in Phnom Penh is cracking down on the booming   multimillion-dollar orphanage industry after investigators discovered shocking  abuses of children  and a list has been compiled of centres targeted for raids  and closure.

Children in one orphanage told investigators how they were forced to crawl  while they were beaten with sticks and  had to eat rice from the ground as  punishment for failing to recite Bible psalms, according to SISHA, an  anti-trafficking and exploitation organisation working with government agencies  in Phnom Penh.

Another orphanage offered children for local adoption to avoid laws  prohibiting foreign adoptions in the country, said SISHA’s operations director  Eric Meldrum, a  British former detective. ”They told me to go over there and  choose which one I want,” Mr Meldrum said.

Investigators say Australia has a greater involvement in Cambodia’s  orphanages than any other nation through Australians running them directly,  volunteering  or donating.

About 72 per cent of the 10,000 children living in Cambodia’s estimated 600  orphanages have a parent, although most are portrayed as orphans to capitalise  on the goodwill of foreign tourists and volunteers, including thousands of  Australians, research shows.

Up to 300 of  these centres are operating illegally and flouting a push by  government and United Nations agencies for children to be reunited with their  parents.

The managers of several respected Australian-run orphanages are alarmed by  the situation and note that the number of orphanages has increased 65 per cent  in the past five years while the number of orphans has reduced dramatically as  Cambodia recovered from genocide, invasion and an AIDS epidemic.

The largest Australian-run centres include Sunrise Children’s Villages,  Hagar, Hope for Cambodian Children and Kampuchea House. Fairfax Media is not  suggesting any of these homes is being investigated.

One of the first orphanages investigated was the Love In Action centre, an  Australian-run orphanage in Phnom Penh, where there were allegations of children  being beaten and neglected. The centre’s 71-year-old Victorian founder, Ruth  Golder, is under investigation after 21 children were taken away from her centre  in a raid on March 22. She strongly denies any abuse took place.

The orphanage, which has links to the Christian Outreach Centre in Australia,  had operated illegally for years from donations from Australians.

There is growing criticism in Cambodia and other developing countries about  so-called ”orphan tourism” and ”volunteer tourism”, where thinly disguised  businesses exploit both tourists and volunteers.

Visitors who have undergone no background checks can walk into dozens of  Cambodia’s orphanages and be left alone with children who are being described by  child welfare workers as Cambodia’s stolen generation. Donors also take children  away for outings – sometimes overnight –  leaving them open to sexual abuse,  investigators say.

In the Children’s Umbrella Centre Organisation orphanage on the outskirts of  Phnom Penh, children were lined up last year and strangers who had donated to  the centre were invited to pick any before driving away with four, investigators  say.

The centre, which had an open sewer in a compound where children slept, has  been closed.

While many orphanages are well run, enforce child protection policies and  have strict rules for visitors, almost all are largely unregulated in a country  where state institutions are weak and no qualifications are required to set up  an orphanage or children’s centre.

On the streets of Siem Reap in north-western Cambodia, children playing  traditional instruments are led by men with signs declaring ”support our  orphans”. Anyone who donates is invited to visit nearby orphanages.

”We believe this is dangerous because the children are not orphans and  should not be there in the first place,” said Sebastien Marot, executive  director of Friends-International, a non-government organisation conducting a  campaign to warn tourists and volunteers that children are not tourist  attractions.

Mr Meldrum said unscrupulous orphanage operators had adopted a business model  where the centres got more money from international donors if they had more  children.

He said orphanage recruiters would approach poor,  often rural, families  promising the centre could offer their children education, food, clothing and a  chance for a better life.

”There are many reports of cash transactions for the child, though it is  usually referred to as a donation to the family,” he said.

Several international studies have found that children should be living in  their communities with family members, relatives or foster families except in  extreme circumstances.

A study by Save the Children found that institutional care should only be  used for children as a ”last resort and only then if it is of a high standard  and in the best interests of the individual child”.

Studies also show that in most orphanages children are taught a foreign  language, religion and Western culture that leaves them struggling to cope in  Cambodia’s Buddhist community when they are eventually released, often when they  turn 18.

Mr Marot  said Cambodia was particularly vulnerable ”because it is suffering  from the victim syndrome where everyone thinks the country is still coming out  of war. Everyone comes here with this attitude towards Cambodia as this  victimised country where all the children are in miserable and horrible  situations, which is not the case any more.”

But Geraldine Cox, who runs two Sunrise Children’s Villages in Cambodia, said  while the Friends’ campaign had merit it ”does not take into account the many  orphanage centres which are well run and rely on visits by tourists to  survive”.

She said visitors should be discouraged from visiting centres where receipts  for donations are not given, photo identifications are not requested and where a  visitor cannot see annual financial reports.

American missionary Cathleen Jones came to Cambodia 20 years ago to run an  orphanage with 120 children but soon ”started realising these kids had parents  and families and they wanted to be with them”.

Now her Children In Families organisation works to find Cambodian homes for  children through kinship or permanent and long-term foster care for children who  cannot be reunited with their parents.

”If there is no imminent danger to the child he or she should not be  removed, even if the family is dysfunctional,” Ms Jones said, adding that many  orphanages refused to release children once they were in their care even if a  family environment was available.

”They are kept for years,” she said.

Mr Marot said the people who ran some orphanages ”keep the kids looking poor  … badly dressed in order to attract sympathy from you in order to get your  money.”

”It’s a lucrative business. The children are the assets,” he said.

Volunteer placement organisations promote volunteer tourism as a way for  travellers to ”make a difference” and have experiences that are ”life  changing and rewarding”.

Volunteers pay several thousand dollars for a two-week visit, while some stay  many months.

But Mr Marot said visitors were doing things with children at the centres  that were banned in their own countries.

”Imagine if a busload of Chinese turned up at a school in Australia, played  with the children, spoke to them in Chinese, pushed them to eat rice and fish  and took photographs with them and splashed them all over Facebook?” Mr Marot  said.

”The parents would go berserk.”

Cambodian government agencies, including the Ministry of Social Affairs, and  SISHA late last year set up a committee to identify, investigate and close  harmful unregistered orphanages, while adopting guidelines for standards of  residential care in registered centres that are comparable with those in Western  countries.

They have compiled a list of centres they plan to raid and close.

Jenny McAuley, chairwoman of Hope for Cambodian Children Foundation, which runs an orphanage in Battambang province for AIDS-affected children, welcomed the government’s crackdown on unregistered orphanages and the push to return children to their parents, saying it ”rightly articulates that the best place for children to grow up is in their families and local communities”.

Ms McAuley, who has worked in children protection for 30 years, said it was  ”quite arrogant for people from a developed country to go to a developing  country and set up a service without reference to the government about what they  are doing”. [Perfectly stated!]

”I think government agencies are quite right to be annoyed about it … It’s a  form of colonisation,” she said.

May, 21, who sells books to tourists on Phnom Penh’s riverfront, spent four  years in a centre for abused children in the city.

She said it was good – she learnt to speak a little English – but conditions  were strict and she was allowed to visit to her parents only about twice a  year.

”They told my parents I would be away for a year, but I stayed four years,  until I was 19,” she said.

”I was very sad for all that time, because I missed my family.””

 

Stealing a generation: Cambodia’s unfolding tragedy

[Brisbane Times 4/7/13 by Lindsay Murdoch]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update: “Seyma had a rebellious streak, and it came out strongest in the classroom. The 11-year-old Cambodian had some real authority as an assistant teacher, which is to say translator. He liked to leverage his power. Without him, the foreign volunteers that taught the English class found the communication gap uncrossable and the distracted pupils uncontrollable.

 

The classes happen under a corrugated iron shed about two miles north of Phnom Penh. It’s a simple setup: two classrooms that can seat 40 in neat little rows of small wooden desks with attached benches on a floor of orange dirt. A whiteboard is hung from a supporting beam in the front of the class. On one “Fun Friday,” an Australian volunteer named Claire also stood in front, trying to lead the class into a game. She was failing, stuck in a full-scale battle with Seyma.

 

Claire was trying to set up a word game with her students. She wanted to divide the class into teams of four. Seyma wanted to divide the students into three groups. The conflict was escalating.

“Seyma, would you help me divide them into groups of four, please?”

“No. Better to divide the class in three groups.”

“No, no, Seyma, please, just tell them to make teams of four.”

“But three groups is better!” He turned to the class and spoke in Khmer: “Divide into three groups!”

Claire was exasperated, but calm and persistent. She did not scold Seyma. She simply said “Stop, please,” and went around the class counting out the teams. It gave her the upper hand; Seyma finally acquiesced and asked the class to make teams of four.

Seyma spent the rest of the class distracting students who were trying to play the word game, putting a panama hat and cheap sunglasses on them, and giggling at the fun of it all. The following week, when the authors of this article taught the class, he sat in the back of the room, talking to his mother on the phone. After he got bored, he started riding a tricycle around the classroom. He stopped only once, to push a student away from the whiteboard who was getting the answer wrong, but quickly remounted. The antics ended when he crashed into the whiteboard. We volunteers were helpless.

Something needed to be done to discipline him, but none of the volunteers had been there long enough to fill that role. They simply did not have a deep enough connection with Seyma.

Seyma lives at SCAO, an English school and children’s home, with an acronym that papers over the unfortunate name of Save the Poor Children of Asia Organization. We had come to be volunteer teachers and to live with Seyma and the 16 other children that are constantly dashing around the house, devouring noodles, and demanding attention for play. It is a dusty and modest establishment. Everyone lives together in a house built on stilts above a tile patio. A field that used to be a swamp across the road is filled every night with trash — it is the cheapest way of making new ground for more stilted houses. Today, 500 children come each day to practice English, but it started as an orphanage, and the 17 children that live in the house remain at the core of its mission.

The problem is that the children are not actually orphans. With the exception of one, all have a living parent. Seyma’s mother is alive and well in the Kratie province, in a town called Snuol. She works from sun-up to sundown as a seamstress. But his father passed away when he was six, and his mother is poor and can’t afford school fees or medicine. She sent him to SCAO so that he might have those luxuries and live in a city of opportunity.

Seyma found the opportunity that she wanted for him. He learned fluent English, proved to be a virtuoso at computers, and had good access to healthcare. But he still lived away from his mother, who might have stopped his classroom antics and aggression.

Instead, Seyma’s discipline fell to Carl. The 24-year-old Australian was among the longest-staying volunteers, having been at SCAO for five months. In the process, he had become a father figure to the rebellious 11-year-old. He was the only one able to sit Seyma down when the complaints of misbehavior came up the chain. The boy’s kneejerk reaction was to deny everything. But Carl forced the issue and told Seyma how disappointed he was.

“We gave you the position because you’re grown up enough, because we want you to practice so that you can become a full teacher in four or five years. But you can’t play around in class. For that one hour a day, you have to act like a 20-year-old. Just for one hour.” Seyma pouted for a while, but the next day, he was respectful and helpful in class.

Seyma’s situation at SCAO is common in Cambodia: 71 percent of the children in the country’s orphanages are not orphans. The number of orphans is actually on the decline, but the number of orphanages has exploded–increasing by 75 percent — even though the government recommends residential care as a last resort option for children. The solution to the riddle is the tourism boom. The increase in orphanages started in 2005, when tourists started pouring into the country, their numbers growing by more than 30 percent a year. Cambodia’s orphanages have become a tourist attraction. The industry is floating on foreign cash, and desperate parents all over provinces like Seyma’s are sending their children to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap to support their children with the donations of tourists.

The glut has inspired some atrocious scams. Two orphanages in Phnom Penh — Love in Action and CUCO — have just been shut down because they deliberately kept children in shoddy conditions to inspire more donations. But SCAO is not a scam. It is well-intentioned and decently run. It no longer calls itself an orphanage, but a care center.

Yet it shares a core problem with hundreds of orphanages around Cambodia. Its children are being raised away from the love and attention of their parents. There is no one to focus on a child’s long-term development. Short-term volunteers generally don’t stay long enough to be useful, and long-staying volunteers tend to leave just as they are settling in. Carl was about as good as it gets with foreign volunteers. He was motivated and cared deeply for the children. In his five months at the center, he developed a new computer class and curriculum. He had invested himself in Seyma’s education and behavior. But just as those efforts were gathering steam, he was leaving. We were there for his last week on the job.

Carl was closer to Seyma than any other volunteer. He talked to him daily about everything from girls to homework to cautioning him about the violence in action movies. Yet Carl couldn’t provide everything Seyma needed. The boy turned to his mother every day to share his thoughts, talking to her on the phone for almost an hour. They talked about things he was learning in class, about his younger brother, and shared their excitements and fears. Seyma was clearly missing some kind of connection to someone he knew would be there for him year after year.

There is formal evidence for the concern. Children in residential centers are vulnerable to psychological and developmental disorders. Studies have found that children raised in institutions can develop Reactive Attachment Disorder. With the confusion of forming and breaking so many relationships with volunteers, the kids can become indiscriminate in affection. We saw it at SCAO in children like Seyma: We were only there an hour before he started hugging us and holding our hands. On our first night, he climbed into bed with us and tried to engage in a nipple-twisting competition. The unnatural readiness to form bonds with strangers is one of the reasons why children’s homes are commonly viewed as a measure of last resort in the United States, when there are no relatives or friends or foster homes that will accept a child.

Carl recognized how close he and Seyma had become, and worried about how he would take his leaving. He sees a lot of himself in Seyma. “Seyma is a punk–the smartest in the class and the most rebellious.” Carl said. “I don’t want him to make the same mistakes that I did.”

A high school dropout and a runaway, Carl fled his parent’s house at 17 and started living on the streets. He knew hardship and hunger. He got involved with teenaged gangs, briefly, and drugs, a little longer. He did not start speaking to his family again until he was 19, and didn’t have a full relationship with them until he was 21. In the meantime, he worked every job he could think of in Queensland — sales, retail, insurance, bartending, roofing — anything that would pay a living wage. When he reunited with his family, his life was straightened and changed. He says he could not have gone to Cambodia without their support.

“I’ve been looking for a job that made me passionate for my entire life, but I never found it until I came to SCAO,” he told us.

Carl had come to Cambodia as much for adventure and the experience of living abroad as to do good. It was something young Seyma couldn’t understand.

“But Carl — you said we could watch a movie!” the boy protested. Carl had forgotten about his promise.

He was torn. As his time at the center ebbed, Carl found himself caught between two worlds: wanting to spend more time at SCAO and with Seyma and anticipating his return home to his family. He hopes the kids will remember him. “It’s a catch 22,” he explained. “I want even better volunteers to come so the children get the love and care they deserve, but then I know I won’t be remembered as the best. I don’t want to become just another link in the chain.”

When the last day came, the children gathered around him to sign their names on his SCAO T-shirt. All the kids wanted to be with him as long as possible. They scampered around, hugged him, and hung off his shoulders as he packed.

Seyma didn’t join in. He couldn’t even bring himself to look at Carl. He was trying to distract himself, lying on top of a table off in a corner, pretending to read a Star Wars picture book. He was doing better than last time, when he’d connected deeply with a long-term volunteer named John. When John left, Seyma didn’t speak to him during his last week.

“Seyma, come here and give me a hug.”

The boy that never seemed to leave Carl’s side reluctantly forced himself to put his arms around him meekly for a second, then let go and shuffled away. Carl looked after him with concern but was already being called to the road. The driver wanted to leave before it started raining.

When Carl mounted the motorcycle, all of the kids ran out into the street to watch him drive off. Seyma stayed behind in the center, defiant until the last moment. He ran onto the street just in time to see Carl disappear around the corner.

As Carl turned and waved goodbye, the slightest smile flickered on Seyma’s face.

The story at SCAO highlights the grey areas surrounding institutionalization of child care in Cambodia. In Carl’s five months working at the center, the question remains which family — biological or SCAO — would have done the better job.

For the centers that are not scams, the reality is that kids are getting more opportunity. They have access to healthcare, and they get a worldly education from foreign visitors. Of the two children that have graduated from SCAO, one has gone on to college and the other is an entrepreneur who runs a chicken farm. In the villages, by contrast, there is no work and little education. Many would simply become farmers or temp laborers like their parents.

Moreover, SCAO has given its kids the option to return home and all have declined, saying they enjoy living in the center. The kids at SCAO seem generally happy, and the only child that returned home opted to come back 10 months later, saying he missed the center.

It is hard to say if those opportunities can outweigh Seyma’s lack of discipline and potential for attachment disorders. His mother seems to believe that he’s better off at the center. Seyma’s mother recently called her son to announce that his 8-year-old brother will be joining him at the center later this year.

What is clear is that there are increasing numbers of tourists visiting Cambodia’s residential centers, and that they have a significant impact on the kids. In cases where the volunteer is dedicated and long-staying, it can do tremendous amounts of good. Carl certainly changed the lives of those he touched for the better. For volunteers that stayed for less time, their only lasting contribution was money. But the foreign dollars also support an industry that is largely unregulated, and for better or worse, takes children away from their homes. When temporary volunteers are supposed to do the parenting, this can be a dangerous proposition.

Two days after Carl left, we visited the center and found Seyma watching a Khmer horror film with some new volunteers. We asked him how he felt about Carl leaving.

“I hope I get to see him next year,” Seyma responded. “I want to find him a Khmer girl to marry so that he stays here forever.””

Cambodia’s Orphan-Industrial Complex

[The Atlantic 6/3/13 by Chris Walker and Morgan Hartley]