MARC GOLD and the Children of Phenom Penh This is the story of an unlikely friendship between two men on distant continents as they collaborate to lift up desperate children from extreme poverty.
The Steung Meanchey Landfiil in Cambodia, near Phenom Penh is a dreadful place for a child to grow up. It smells foul, much of it is on fire and its filthy. Yet, over 500 children live and work on top of the garbage, foraging for small bits they can sell. The poverty is among the worst on earth.
The dump runs a half mile square and inlike those in developed nations, is an open mountain of garbage. Dump trucks and bulldozers work constantly, adding to the heaps. Destitute families live and work in the landfill, chasing the dump trucks to get the first pick of new refuse.
They gather anything they can sell, bits of metal and plastic, food or clothing, old tools. A days earning does not often pay for a meal each day.
The landfill is steaming hot and rank, and in many places, on fire – methane gases burning openly with great billowing smoke. Over a thousand people live and work in the landfill, more than half of them children.
Even the tiniest kids work day in and day out, scouring the trash for bits of metal or glass to sell. Many work all night as well, using headlamps to get more hours of work in hopes of a few more pennies for food.
Marc Gold, as you may know from our coverage of his work in other countries, is a man who left his teaching job in San Francisco to scour the earth for people in the very deepest of poverty. Armed with donations given him by friends in America, he helps fund businesses that set those in poverty on their feet, able to provide for their families. He buys sewing machines, ovens for baking, and tools, and at other times simply medicines, or a wheelchair that gives a person the ability to work.
The families sleep ontop of the trash under makeshift shelters made of scraps of cloth and plastic. A lucky few live in shacks along the sidelines of the landfill. It is a life of hard work, with bulldozers pushing the trash into heaps and often injuring the foragers, sometimes killing small children who don't get out of the way in time.
Hundreds upon hundreds of children spend their entire lives in the landfill. They are born into families who live on top of the garbage, and often continue to live there until they die. They don't go to school, learn to read or ever experience the world outside. Their chances of learning a skill and getting a job in nearby Phenom Penh are close to zero.
Mech Sokha is himself an orphan, the sole survivor in his family of the Khmer Rouge (Cambodia) genocide in the 1970's. It was his dream to build an orphanage for the children of Steung Mean Chey, nearby in Phenom Penh. Through perseverance and good fortune, he found a benefactor who funded the building of the Childrens Center for Happiness, where he cares for 130 children at this writing.
When Marc and Mech Sokha met, a great friendship was born. They shared a quest to rescue as many children as possible from Steung Mean Chey, and bring them to the orphanage. With shared compassion, this became their mission.
In 2006, Marc was able to fund 11 children to leave the landfill and move into the Children's Center. The school is not far from Steung Meanchey, and their families come to visit them often. Mech Sokha provides room and board, hot showers, schooling and lots of love. These children have the opportunity to go on to full lives and as you will see in our updates, to give to others.
Currently, The Children's Center for Happiness has 3 locations and cares for the children until adulthood. These are some of the kids who were selected by Marc for CCH in 2006. On the right, in the "after" photo, are Kong Kuthea, Phan Srey On, and San Kosal.
And here they are all cleaned up and settled in!
Each year Marc travels helping the poor in a dozen countries, for about 6 months of the year. He then returns to the United States to fundraise for the other 6 months. Last year he provided a home for these 11 children at CCH and is planning to return to Phenom Penh in November 2007. The Children's Center for Happiness is currently full but each child requires sponsorship to continue living there, and there are hundreds of needy children still living in Steung Meanchey. Marc is also working with a few other, much poorer children's homes close to the landfill, who have room for more children if we raise the funds to sponsor them.
RAVUTH'S STORY
A Note from Marc:
This is a letter from a young girl that Ravuth is helping:
This one Ravuth sent to Marc asking for permission to give the child $20:
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