Volunteering in Cambodia - Speech and Language Therapy

In short:

From September to December I'll be in Cambodia volunteering with cleft lip and palate as well as audiology NGOs and charities, providing speech and language therapy support. The trip is ran by the uni but self funded, so any donations towards the cost of my rent out there would be hugely appreciated!

In long:

After two long and tiring years of studying speech and language therapy at City, University of London, I've now finished and been given the opportunity to take part in their 14th graduate volunteering mission in Cambodia! The project's been running for nearly 20 years and supports a range of different charities, schools and hospitals in Cambodia where there isn't provision for speech and language therapy.

For three months myself and seven other graduates from City will be volunteering as part of four different teams. I'm really excited to be with the cleft lip and palate/audiology team. Cleft lip and palate is an area of speech and language therapy I'm particularly passionate about and was the team I really wanted to be in! I've learnt about it on my course but will also be going on an additional weeks training in the UK before going out. In Cambodia I'll be working with SMILE Cambodia and Children's Surgical Centre. Speech and language therapists support children before and after cleft repair with eating and drinking as well as speech sound difficulties. The later repairs are done the more it will impact the child's speech and language acquisition, meaning an importance is put on identifying clefts early and beginning surgical and therapeutic input. Even after cleft repairs there is lots of therapeutic support needed for children to relearn productions of speech sounds which they were previously unable to produce.

I'll also be supporting audiologists and children and adults with hearing impairments with the All Ears Audiology NGO. This area of work can be very broad, but to give an idea it could be supporting individuals whilst they're introduced to hearing aids or cochlear implants. They will need support discriminating and producing a whole new range of speech sounds which they were previously unable to distinguish or produce.

Where I'll be volunteering:

Why do I need money?!

For rent in Cambodia! All costs of the trip are paid for by volunteers, except for a possible £1000 grant from the university which isn't yet confirmed (fingers crossed). I've already purchased flights, but the last big cost is rent and I'll be using my personal savings for my living costs. I've been told rent in 2019 was around £300 a month, so somewhere around this price is what I'm budgeting for. Any excess that isn't needed for rent I'll donate to SMILE Cambodia.

In exchange I'll do my best to keep everyone up to date with posts about what we get up to and the different people we help.

From previous years

Cleft lip and palate team's blog posts for CLAPA in previous years: https://www.clapa.com/sitetag/overseas/

City Cambodia Project Twitter https://x.com/citycambodia?lang=en