For the past seven years, Children’s Future International (CFI), a community based organization in Battambang Cambodia, has received USAID funding to support our social work program. When the stop work order came into effect, CFI lost $50,000 of our approximately $240,000 grant which was scheduled to close in June 2025. The program was designed to prevent family separation and reunite children who had been sent to live in residential care back home to their families.
One family that CFI had begun helping in May 2024 was a 12-year-old girl named Neary (pseudonym) and her 9-year-old sister named Sreypich (pseudonym) living with their stepmother and father who both work in construction. Sreypich has a severe developmental disability which meant she was unable to care for herself, is incontinent, and self-harms when she cannot control her emotions. For three years, the parents had kept Neary out of school in order to care for Sreypich, but they wanted Neary to receive an education, so they decided to send Sreypich to live in a residential care institution, often referred to as an orphanage.
CFI stepped in to keep both girls living with their parents by providing emergency support which included food, household materials and clothing. Our social workers helped Neary enroll in school while supporting Sreypich with occupational therapy through partner NGOs and counseling the parents to find a solution to care for the girls. We could see real progress for both girls and social workers pushed the family to practice the occupational therapy exercises at home so that Sreypich could begin to do basic activities such as putting on clothing or holding a spoon.
One key solution was providing the family with cash support so that the stepmother could reduce her work to be able to care for Sreypich. Though the family situation was much better, the parents faced renewed challenges when their employer cheated them out of their salaries. The parents tried to stay with the employer to keep Neary in school and Sreypich in therapy, but a month later the USAID funding cuts were announced, putting their cash support from CFI in danger.
CFI had been supporting over 50 families with cash before the stop work order was put in place, but had to face difficult decisions when the funding was cut. Using reserve funding and later support raised through private donations and the Martin James Foundation, CFI was able to continue to support some of the families that were the most vulnerable. We have continued providing support to 24 children and youth who would be in extreme danger if we withdrew support.
However, Neary and Sreypich’s family were not initially in the list of families to receive continued support since their parents had steady work and our social workers weren’t aware of their employer withholding pay. The parents began to consider migrating to another province to find work, but this put the future of their girls in jeopardy. The family reached out to CFI and we are working with the family to try to find solutions so that the children are able to continue their growth in the community.
Yet there has been a huge reduction in social work funding in Cambodia over the past few years, with the USAID cut being the most dramatic. We must reduce the support provided to families and focus on those in immediate danger. At the same time, we can see that this can leave vulnerable families without options and puts children in immediate danger of not receiving the care and education they need to grow up and make a positive impact on their community.
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