On January 6, 2020, a fire broke out in the community surrounding Empowering Youth in Cambodia’s (EYC) Youth School. Fortunately, Youth School was spared; however, 150 homes were lost, leaving 175 families (approximately 850 people) homeless. Among those affected were 29 EYC families who had a total of 39 children attending Youth School.

This community was already marginalized, and there were no social safety nets in place. While the Red Cross provided some basic assistance, and a women’s NGO was involved in offering support to sex workers impacted, EYC was the primary support system for the community during this tragedy.

EYC’s Immediate Response & Approach

The fire occurred in the middle of the night. As soon as the EYC team became aware, they evacuated the school (some
students/staff live at the school) and moved computers out of the classroom. That morning, EYC began providing emergency relief support, including rice and drinking water, to anyone in the community who was impacted. EYC also allowed families that had nowhere to go to shelter in the school for multiple nights.

EYC is a development organization that doesn’t typically provide emergency humanitarian response. However, with the support of our donor community, we were able to quickly mobilize and determine how to best support the families of EYC students, along with the most vulnerable members of the community who had no other family support (mainly elderly and pregnant). As students are often forced to drop out of school to help support their families during such a tragedy, our main objective was to keep EYC students in school during this challenge. In addition, such a shock takes time to recover from, and enabling kids to pursue their studies is a stabilizing factor for them. Our team focused on getting the impacted students back into school and into some sense of normalcy.

Another objective was to ensure that EYC’s good intentions did no harm or create unintended negative consequences. With that in mind, we worked to ensure that we provided support to all community members in a transparent way and that the funding was used for the intended purposes.

Our team immediately began surveying impacted EYC families and those most vulnerable. The purpose of this needs-assessment was to understand the most critical needs and where we could have the most impact. The EYC team then set up a control system to manage incoming donations. They also conducted multiple followup visits to ensure that the funds were deployed appropriately.

In addition, EYC facilitated in-kind donations from other EYC schools, donors, and local businesses, examples of
which are highlighted below.

• EYC Team Leaders organized fundraisers and clothing/food drives in the other EYC communities. Many
  of our students, who have little to spare, made donations, and contributed to the drives. The supplies
  collected were then distributed throughout the entire Youth School community.
• EYC worked as a liaison with the Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group’s subsidiaries CPF,
  and Makro provided in-kind donations to the all families affected by the fire. The CP Group is Thailand's
  largest private company and one of world's largest conglomerates. It consists of three core businesses
  that operate in agribusiness and food, retail and distribution, and the telecommunications industries with
  investments in over 30 countries, employing over 300,000 people. These organizations provided the
  following to each of the families who lost their homes in the fire: 5kg of rice, 30 packs of noodles, 6 cans
  of canned fish, 24 bottles (500ml) of drinking water, seasoning sauce, shampoo, a blanket, toothpaste,
  bath soap, and a basket. They also distributed fried chicken and hot dogs during the event where the
  supplies were distributed.

Deployment of Donations to Impacted Families:

EYC initially determined that one month of support to the most vulnerable families (predominately EYC families) would be the most impactful way of helping them through this challenging time. The support provided included: rent, food, school needs (uniforms, study materials, school fees), kitchen supplies, bedroom items and toiletries (fans, blankets, hygiene supplies, etc.) EYC also provided some families with baby products, bikes, and small amounts of monetary support to restart businesses lost to the fire.

This support was provided to 31 families:

• Ten families had two children who were EYC students
• 19 had one child in an EYC school
• Two families had no EYC children but received support due to extreme need.

The support impacted a total of 39 EYC students, however, a larger population was affected due to siblings,
parents, and extended families. The aid impacted 146 people in total.

Melbourne Rotary sent A$2,000 as our contribution, providing significant assistance to those impacted.

The report noted that “the formalisation of EYC’s Social Work program over the past few years proved to be instrumental to the success of this effort.” It proves that our project of last year setting up social workers at the four schools was a benefit at this time.  

For the entire report from EYC,

CLICK HERE

Share this with your friends