Americans for UNFPA Leadership Trip to Cambodia

Cambodia is the magical land where I met this little girl. She lived in the countryside. She was watching tourists in the parking lot where I was standing.

Poor children like this are full of hope and laughter, but their hopes are limited by poverty, and they have little access to education and health care. Helping these children and their families is the point of the work of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

In Cambodia, UNFPA is helping the government and non-government organizations (NGOs) build the organization and material capabilities to give these children and their families access to health care and health education, to reproductive health services, birth-spacing and maternity services, HIV prevention, and job training.

To see the impact of these programs, see this little boy open and put on the first new clothes he ever had, or this little girl watch a quiz show arranged by the Seim Reap Adolescent Reproductive Health Clinic in a country village.

In the US, to appease the religious right, the White House has chosen not to release the funding approved by Congress for UNFPA to help children like this. Americans for UNFPA is working with American donors to replace the support that the US government won't give.

Like all the magical places in the world, Cambodia is a mix of good and evil, of joy and sadness, of life and death, and often the difference between life and death is due to ignorance. The contrast between this child's smile and the display of ignorance and evil that was behind me when I took this photograph could not be more stark. I was standing in the parking lot of the the killing fields of the Khymer Rouge.

Americans for UNFPA Leadership Trip to Cambodia January 2006	Cambodia
Home The trip UNFPA in Cambodia Engaging children The people of Cambodia Cambodian life Tourism Dr Chea Samnang The context Killing Fields Thoughts Contacts UNFPA Americans for UNFPA email Jim Cowan
	Cambodia is the magical land where I met this little girl. She lived in the countryside. She was watching tourists in the parking lot where I was standing. Poor children like this are full of hope and laughter, but their hopes are limited by poverty, and they have little access to education and health care. Helping these children and their families is the point of the work of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). In Cambodia, UNFPA is helping the government and non-government organizations (NGOs) build the organization and material capabilities to give these children and their families access to health care and health education, to reproductive health services, birth-spacing and maternity services, HIV prevention, and job training. To see the impact of these programs, see this little boy open and put on the first new clothes he ever had, or this little girl watch a quiz show arranged by the Seim Reap Adolescent Reproductive Health Clinic in a country village. In the US, to appease the religious right, the White House has chosen not to release the funding approved by Congress for UNFPA to help children like this. Americans for UNFPA is working with American donors to replace the support that the US government won't give. Like all the magical places in the world, Cambodia is a mix of good and evil, of joy and sadness, of life and death, and often the difference between life and death is due to ignorance. The contrast between this child's smile and the display of ignorance and evil that was behind me when I took this photograph could not be more stark. I was standing in the parking lot of the the killing fields of the Khymer Rouge.