Passports with Purpose: Helping the Children of Cambodia

-

Today is a beautiful guest post from Pam Mandel.  We have known that the Travel Blogging Community has big hearts and Passports with Purpose let’s all of us see just how big they can grow.  A wonderful group of people have gotten together to help raise funds for American Assistance for Cambodia.  It builds schools in rural Cambodia.

We have been wrestling with the same feelings that Pam has written about here.  Right now we are in India and our heart breaks every day when we see people selling post cards and jewellery and even begging for money.   We have been asking ourselves, What can we do to help?   We asked ourselves the same question when we were in Cambodia a few years ago.  Like Pam we have felt helpless and overwhelmed with emotion.

What she writes about below is how she harnessed her feelings and went out there to do something about it.

Passports With Purpose: By Pam Mendal

Have you been to Cambodia?

It probably doesn’t matter if you have or not — it’s likely that if you’ve traveled far or to lesser developed places in the world you’ve come face to face with a sweet eyed child selling you postcards, asking for money, or just roaming about looking underfed.

It’s a blow to my chest every time. I know in my head that I am supposed to say no, that giving to street kids often means your money ends up in the hands of thuggish adults, that it rarely helps. I know that I am supposed to give to causes that help, that I should find a way to support local businesses, that the way my travel dollars are spent makes a difference. I have this conversation with myself and then, sometimes I get back home, make a big donation, and feel better. But also, if I’m honest, sometimes I get back home and I forget, the memory of a kid who should be in school but is, instead, standing in the dust trying to sell me bottled water out of a dirty cooler replaced by the wonder of antiquities seen or stories of the funny and strange stuff that travels are made of.

Except that when I left Cambodia, I could not forget. The carved dancers at Angkor Wat or the sheer wonder of seeing elephants — ELEPHANTS — as pack animals still sits right at the front of my mind, but the kids, they wouldn’t let go of my memory. No, I did not want to buy knock off copies of Lonely Planet’s guide to Southeast Asia. No, I did not want a dozen postcards of the temples. No, I did not want bottled water, Coca Cola, or beaded bracelets. I did not want any of those things. What I wanted was to wrap each child in a clean shirt and some sturdy shoes. I wanted to give them little backpacks and notebooks and to send them to school. I thought, can I get those kids in my luggage? Can I sneak them home in the overhead compartment on the flight? Can I put rows of bunkbeds in the den, trading in my evenings for homework and baths? What can I do to get them off the paths of the temples and into classrooms where they belong?

I’m not the first person to be struck like this, and sadly, I won’t be the last, I’m sure. Luckily, it turns out smarter, better organized minds than mine have had the same reaction — and they set about doing something about it. American Assistance for Cambodia was founded in 1993 and builds schools in rural Cambodia.

AAfC’s largest project, the Rural Schools Project, has helped build over 400 enriched primary and lower secondary schools in rural Cambodia since 1999. In this program, donors sponsor the construction of a school in a village that currently lacks one. Donors pay US$13,000 for a school, with matching funds provided by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, through partnership with Cambodia’s Social Fund and Ministry of Education. After the school is constructed, donors are strongly encouraged to enrich the lives of students by funding improvments for their school. School improvements include English and computer teachers, computers powered through solar panels, Internet access through a satellite dish or GPRS system, a well or water filter, a school nurse, a vegetable garden, and a bookcase of books.

Here’s where we overlap with the travelblogging community. Last year, four Seattle travelbloggers (Pam Mandel, Debbie Dubrow, Beth Whitman, and Michelle Duffy) founded Passports with Purpose and raised 7400 USD for Heifer International. We didn’t know what we were doing, we just knew that we could the power of travel to create positive change in the world. When we discovered AAfC, we all knew, instantly, that we wanted to do this. We wanted to build a school and we knew that our community would not only support us, but they would participate and make sure our efforts were successful.

Generous Sponsors

This year, we got a running start through the generosity of a handful of sponsors — Virtuoso, Raveable, HomeAway, Traveller’sPoint, and Got Passport. The rest is up to us. We’ve got the power of over 50 participating bloggers and our collective network. All we need now is for people to open up and give — a mere 10 dollar donation makes a huge difference — and to spread the word. We need to raise 13000 USD and we are already halfway there.

It’s hard for me to express my enthusiasm for this project. You have to imagine me sitting on an idling bus, my heart cracked open, watching the kids lined up along the edge of the road, all of them holding souvenirs instead of schoolwork. You have to sit next to me on that park bench in Phnom Pehn while I cry, overwhelmed by history. You have to have been there yourself, torn apart by frustration at seeing these kids working when they should be learning. And then you have to have the unbelievable sense of certainty that your community is right there with you, that they feel the same way, that they are going to work with you to make change. It’s how I feel about the founders group and how I feel about our travelblogging community at large. We are together in wanting to make change.

For me, this is something of a selfish act. I have been — what is it? Haunted is too strong a word. Obsessed, perhaps, is closer to the truth. I have wanted so badly to do something, anything, to mend the heartbreak that Cambodia left me with. Passports with Purpose is going to help me answer that question of doing something, anything, to help. It’s inelegant, I know, it’s philanthropy with healing my own heart in mind. I hope you’ll indulge me — and the others who are more high minded and bigger hearted than myself — in helping out.

To learn more about Passports with Purpose, including how to make a donation to AAfC, visit Passports with Purpose.

Pam Mandel blogs about travel and other adventures at Nerd’s Eye View. She’s one of the founders of Passports with Purpose.

Follow Pam on twitter @nerdseyeview

-

-

This is an ongoing series here at theplanetd where people share their stories on how they give back to the world inspired by their travels.  If you have a story that you would like to share please drop us an email at theplanetd@gmail.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed for latest posts via email or on your homepage!