I am raising $3000 to help empower the women of an impoverished Cambodian village to develop a business.

I have travelled to Cambodia to help Treak village in several ways. My first task was centred on the community centre, which provides the village children with an education. (Cambodian children are only entitled to half a day's schooling - the community centre makes up the difference.) I have been designing and painting murals on the walls to make it a more joyful and uplifting environment for the children. It has been wonderful to watch their faces light up as they arrive each day to find new murals depicting exciting animals and images from different countries.

In addition to my work at the community centre, I have also been working with the local women to set up a business that will generate funds to keep the centre running. The women can all sew beautifully and wanted to establish a business that harnessed this skill. But they have no knowledge or experience of what clothing designs would be appealing outside of Cambodia. So I have worked with them to create designs and select fabrics that will appeal to the international tourists and buyers. I am also helping the women to establish a teaching kitchen for visiting Cambodians and tourists. The kitchen will provide demonstrations and instruction on how to prepare traditional Cambodian food.

Treak Community Centre is reliant entirely on charitable donations. It provides free education to over 350 children every day. Their parents and families faced the challenges of going to school during and after the Khmer Rouge period. Their teachers share the generally held belief within Cambodian society that education has been, and continues to be, an important factor in Cambodia’s peace and stability, following the horrors of the recent past.

Treak Community Centre creates opportunity, not dependency. All of the staff members are Cambodian and most of them live in the village. Being Cambodian means that they have a deep understanding of local issues. Their programs help people to learn new skills and increase the villagers’ confidence and self-worth, thereby helping them to take control of their own futures.

Please help the women build a business that will provide funds to educate their children. Any donation, no matter how small, will be given to Treak Community Centre – a program run by ConCERT ‘Connecting Communities, Environment & Responsible Tourism, a Cambodian NGO (number 2032), based in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Their vision is a Cambodia free of poverty, their mission is to turn good intentions into the best possible help for disadvantaged people in Cambodia.