Cambodia - Place of Rescue Transition Home

Cambodia is a country with long and rich traditions.  Its people are friendly, industrious and gracious.  But in recent decades this southeast Asian country has endured the immense pain and anguish of war and the ravages of HIV/AIDS.  As its economy has suffered in the midst of this turmoil and many rural people are drawn to larger centres for work and opportunity, the country has also witnessed the devastation of many of its younger generation as young boys and girls are drawn or forced into prostitution or become victimized by sex tourism in all its destructive ugliness and depravity.   However, despite the images of seedy devastation broadcast on international news, the spirit of the Cambodian people to love and care for its own people has not been quenched.

Place of Rescue is an orphanage and AIDS hospice in the outskirts of the capital, Phnom Penh.  Founded by Canadian missionary Marie Ens, Rescue is operated and staffed by Cambodians and endeavours to raise the children to know and respect their Cambodian culture while also experiencing first-hand the love of Jesus through the lives and testimony of the Place of Rescue staff.

Along with providing care for families where both parents are ill with AIDS and the orphans they and others leave behind, Rescue is also home to two other groups: grannies who have been left in poverty and without care due to the prevalence of the disease among the younger generation and young, unwed pregnant factory worker girls who (many having come from rural areas to look for work in the capital) have been abandoned by the father of their unborn child.

Now in it’s sixth season, Place of Rescue is beginning to see some of its young children grow to become teenagers and young adults.  After receiving elementary and high school education at Rescue, many are beginning to leave the safety and security of Rescue to find work or attend vocational training school in the capital.  To facilitate an easier shift to independence for these young people, Rescue is now establishing a Transition Home in the capital.

Two adjacent residential lots have been purchased and combined into a single property.  One existing house on the property is in decent condition and has undergone extensive refurbishing.  The other was demolished and on Saturday, May 30 I will land in Phnom Penh with a small eMi team to spend a week in the refurbished house to design a 3 storey Transition Home on the adjacent vacant space.  More than a simple residence, the Transition Home will incorporate segregated housing for boys and girls, residences for house parents as well as integrated communal spaces.

Our team will include an architect who will design the facilities, another architect to investigate and assemble project management documents (budgets, construction timelines etc) and create as-built drawings to document the existing house and property, a structural engineer to design the multi-storey structure and a civil engineer intern from UC Berkely.  As the team leader, I will coordinate all activities, hold the measuring tape…basically whatever the team needs in order to do its work!

The wife of our architect is coming with us and during the week will be teaching English at Place of Rescue to fill this need because the ex-pat English teacher for most of the school year had to return home overseas.  Our work will also be supplemented in-country by a former eMi intern, an engineer specializing in water supply and sanitation who now lives in Phnom Penh.  This engineer will be providing advice for remediation measures for current sanitation infrastructure problems at the orphanage property.

Please pray with us and for us as our team from Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, San Jose and San Antonio travels to serve Place of Rescue.  We will be praying for sensitivity and understanding of the local culture, travel safety as we travel to Cambodia and on the streets of Phnom Penh.  We will also be praying for all our families at home as they carry on they busyness of life without those of us on the team.

You can see more details of the project by visiting the link under Upcoming Projects at the top of the right side bar of my blog.  You can also visit the Place of Rescue website at www.placeofrescue.com.  Thank you to all our supporters and friends who have come alongside my family and me in so many different ways, making it possible for me to be a part of this work.

HCRM Orphanage in Haiti

Children are the same everywhere you go. Inquisitive, fun loving…waiting for an opening for friendship…hoping for someone to hold their hand…someone to give them a hug. It’s what I found in Brazil, Rwanda and this past week in Haiti. In children we see promise and hope and collectively our hearts ache when we know a little one is hurting. If we also know the future holds few promises for the child before our eyes, how can we walk away and pretend it doesn’t matter?

Haiti is a tough place to like. Flying over this island nation, one is less than inspired by the expanse of brown, deforested hillsides. Instead of tourists, the beaches and streets in and around its capital, Port-au-Prince, are covered with garbage.

Hope. And yet, in a city where hope seems to have no business showing itself, one can glimpse splashes of hope in the midst of gaudy signs and brightly painted buses filled with expressionless people: children heading to and from school in their uniforms, singing and holding hands. Among these are the children of Haiti Children’s Rescue Mission (HCRM) in whose eyes you can find a hope that only God's love can provide.

Pastor Jean Fritz Nicolas and his wife Mireille operate HCRM along with a local Haitian staff. They currently have a little more than 50 children but have had as much as 100 in the past. The children arrive at HCRM in a variety of ways but invariably they are children with few prospects and are vulnerable to starvation, exploitation and abuse.

Although some will grow up under the roof of HCRM, opportunities will be sought for each child to be adopted to new families, mostly in North America where they will have greater access to higher education and opportunities in the future. But whether these children remain in Haiti or become part of families abroad, each will be raised in an environment where they will know and experience God's goodness, a goodness that heals and transcends the hurt and bitterness already experienced in many of their young lives.

Warmed Hearts. The team lived in the current rental property with the 52 children and had many opportunities to play and build friendships with them. Their cries and laughter became the back-drop of our work and always reminded us of why we had come to Haiti.

In an environment where one would expect selfishness and a desire to hoard any small morsel or treat, the children challenged us with their great generosity. Whenever we brought them candies and treats, they would seek out other children to ensure they received their share. We are taught that God's goodness is found in relationship and the children drew us into that goodness every day.

One day we were absorbed with troubleshooting the electrical system of our residence. As I stood lost in thought a little hand slipped gently into mine. The little boy simply wanted the contact of having his hand held. Could I possibly be "too busy" for that?

New Land. Having operated out of rented facilities for a number of years, the establishment of HCRM as a viable, long-term ministry dictated that it begin to seek property for a more cost effective, permanent home. In 2008 HCRM purchased a raw piece of land in the municipality of Gressier, just beyond Carrefour which is a district outside of Port-au-Prince. The property, located on the top of a hill, is about 12 miles (19 km) from HCRM's present location in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville.

The expansive view toward the Caribbean Sea on the new property is stunning and the air is fresh and clean. With its modest but growing financial support base it was crucial that HCRM establish a practical and economical strategy to develop the property, with all their required facilities and infrastructure, to its full potential and so for that, HCRM contacted eMi.

eMi. An eMi team of 11 (1 staff, 1 intern and 9 volunteers) arrived in the bustling airport (with as many want-to-be porters as travelers) of Port-au-Prince on February 14, 2009. For the next week the team would conduct a detailed topographic survey of the property, investigate issues of infrastructure (water, sanitation, power) and design all the facilities needed through a series of detailed interviews and discussions with Pastor Jean Fritz and his wife.

As this property is not connected to the government electrical grid or municipal sanitation, the technical challenge to our team was to design facilities and infrastructure that would operate with maximum efficiency and cost savings to conserve fresh water (from collected rain and an on-site well) and generated electrical power. The treatment of all waste-water would be done on-site. Potable water would be brought in until an economical on-site treatment system can be installed.

New Orphanage. The result was a facility in several buildings that could house and feed 200 children with 20 live-in nannies and provide living space for 22 resident staff and 38 guests/volunteers. There would also be individual homes for the director’s family and one other long-term volunteer family. Also included on the property will be a church, a health clinic and land for small scale agriculture. The health clinic and church will benefit both the orphanage as well as the surrounding community. The children will receive their education at a school in neighbouring Carrefour which is also being established by HCRM.

Project Photos. A new set of photos has been placed in my Photo Gallery for this project, so click here (Photo Gallery) and see the HCRM set with a slideshow (click the middle of the photo for commentary). If you want to spend a little more time looking and reading, click here in Details (Photo Details). Check it out and see what your support, encouragement and prayer have produced in the work of this team. “Thank you” to all our prayer and financial supporters for making this project a reality.

Haiti Children's Rescue Mission

The Children of HCRM

In a country dedicated to the practice of voodoo where an estimated 80% of the population live in poverty, Haiti Children's Rescue Mission (HCRM) is a light of hope in a place of spiritual and emotional darkness.  Child slavery, rampant sexual abuse and exploitation and other horrors are all too prevalent in a country where parents who cannot afford to feed their family sometimes resort to selling their children into bonded slavery or turn them out onto the streets to beg and fend for themselves.

HCRM is a place of refuge and hope as children in their care live in a safe home, receive an education and have an opportunity to be adopted by loving and caring families.  All this happens in an environment where the love of Jesus is lived out by the staff and experienced first hand by each child.  The orphanage is currently housed in rented facilities but HCRM has now purchased an undeveloped property on which they hope to build a permanent home, one that can accommodate more children and be more affordable to maintain in the long run.

Pastor Jean Fritz at the new property

From February 13th to the 22nd, I will be leading an eMi team of two architects, a site planner, three engineers, a draftsman and two engineering students (one an eMi intern) to help design the facilities and infrastructure (power, water, sanitation) for the new property. Also coming is a volunteer photographer/artist/writer who will help to produce fund-raising and awareness documents for the orphanage as it continues to fund-raise for the construction project as well as its many ongoing expenses.

We would welcome you to pray for our team: for travel safety, sensitivity to the needs of the orphanage, flexibility and grace in working together toward a common goal and an openness to love all the people we will be there to serve.  Please also pray for my family and the families of all volunteers as they sacrifice time with their loved ones and fill the void in the busyness of family life at home.

You can see more details of the project by clicking the link under Upcoming Projects at the top of the side bar of my blog.  You can also visit the HCRM website at www.ourchildreninhaiti.org.  Thank you to all our supporters and friends who have come alongside my family and me in so many different ways, making it possible for me to be a part of this work.

2008 - Year in Review