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Child Protection Program Overview
SSF's Child Protection Program aims to alleviate child poverty in Cambodia's poorest communities, while preventing all forms of violence, exploitation and abuse against children, especially commercial sexual exploitation, trafficking, child labor and child marriage.
This is achieved through a comprehensive and integrated one-to-one child sponsorship program that takes care of each child's needs in terms of health, education and social welfare. Currently, SSF supports 50 children, half of which are fully sponsored.
SSF's Child Protection Program aims to alleviate child poverty in Cambodia's poorest communities,
while preventing all forms of violence, exploitation and abuse against children, especially commercial sexual exploitation, trafficking, child labor and child marriage.
This is achieved through a comprehensive and integrated one-to-one child sponsorship program that takes care of each child's needs in terms of health, education and social welfare. Currently, SSF supports 50 children, half of which are fully sponsored.
Health: The majority of supported children have had little in the way of medical care before their involvement with the Sao Sary Foundation. Health assessments are conducted immediately when the child has been selected for aid. Additionally their progress is traced through monthly follow up appointments while full medical checkups are conducted every six months, with the goal of improving and maintaining the overall physical and mental health of all sponsored children during their participation in SSF’s Child Protection Program.
Education: In order to ensure access to basic education for all program participants, every child is enrolled in public school. This includes providing bicycles if necessary, all required school materials, pocket money, and daily meals. Moreover, SSF offers informal English and computer literacy classes in order to prepare each child with the skills that are required for success in the workplace and in institutions of higher learning.
Social welfare: The organization places importance on supplemental training that seeks to build social skills that many children do not develop at home. Examples include health awareness, social morality, human rights, legal rights, goal setting, craft skills, vocational training (sewing, haircutting, small business management, etc), and agricultural skills (vegetable gardening, poultry raising, composting, etc).
Shelter: Although the SSF compound provides shelter to children with no other options, its primary focus is to serve as a support within the community to reinforce the organization’s mission and goals. Additionally SSF has pursued partnerships with local Buddhist temples (for boys) and run own compound (for girls) as an alternative to living at home in special circumstances.
Income Generation – Because emergency aid only offers a temporary solution to a long-term problem, SSF encourages supported children to take responsibility for their own future in order to ensure that they will not always need to be dependent upon aid to survive. Following emergency measures that include helping families to settle their outstanding debts that prevent them from doing anything other than pay interest and purchase food for their families, SSF has sought teach children the skills they need to earn money through participation in projects such as the banana cake selling operation located at the front of the SSF compound.