In mid-December, I was part of a team of 5 dentists and 7 other volunteers who went to Cambodia to offer dental treatment to the residents at the Goducate Children’s Home as well as the people in 2 neighboring villages. These impoverished villages are where the staff and the older children from the Home go to teach English and basic health education to the villagers.
The four days we spent at the Home and in these villages were memorable. I was struck by how the work at the Goducate Children’s Home has had a tremendous impact on the lives of the residents. I saw young lives in the process of real transformation in their ability to help themselves and help others. The children there are being equipped with practical skills that will enable them to reach out to their own people in the future. The short interaction we had with some of the older teenagers who acted as our translators gave our team an insight into the substantial value of Goducate’s mission of helping the needy to help themselves
Our work in the neighboring communities showed me the challenges faced by the staff of the Home in reaching out to those communities. The education of kids in such impoverished communities is a significant challenge. At Diamond Farm, one of the rural farming communities that the dental team served, not all children who attend school live close by. Some children walk 2 hours to the school, and during the long rainy season the clay roads leading to the school turn into muddy red tracks that make walking impossible. The ultra-poverty among the adult rural folk and their priority for survival make the task to implement and sustain a very basic set of health habits at community level extremely difficult.
