Help Children in Cambodia

Challenges for Children in Cambodia

Despite gains, too many children in Cambodia struggle to survive as newborns, as well as with getting the nutrition and education they deserve – in particular, girls, children with disabilities and those from ethnic minority groups. Entrenched gender norms prohibit girls from participation as equal members of society, further limiting their potential. You can help.

Our Work for Children in Cambodia

Save the Children has been working in Cambodia since 1970. Although we were forced to leave the country when the brutal Khmer Rouge regime took control, we returned in 1979 to provide much-need relief to the worst-affected families.

Today, we are a leading children’s charity in Cambodia, with a focus on early childhood care and development, basic education, child rights, child protection, health and nutrition, child poverty and disaster risk reduction. We work closely with government and nonprofit partners to improve children's lives, especially those living with disabilities, children in contact with the law, orphaned, vulnerable and disadvantaged children.

Here are some recent examples of our work:

A healthy start in life

• We’re leading NOURISH, a six-year (2014-2020) USAID-funded Feed the Future project, including nutrition, WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) and agriculture components that aims to improve the nutrition of women and children in underserved, rural communities during the critical first 1,000 days of life – supporting 563 villages across three provinces, reaching 500,000 women and children each year; recent results show stunting has been reduced by 6.5% and children maintaining a sufficient diet increased by 25% 
• We’ve screened 25,000 children for malnutrition and helped establish 10,000 home gardens to promote nutritious diets since 2014
• Through our BASICS (Bold Action to Stop Infections in Clinical Settings) partnership, we’re working in collaboration with the Ministry of Health on a revolutionary package of simple, cost-effective and scalable interventions that reduces the risk of health care-acquired infections, projected to initially prevent at least 105,000 infections in four countries, including Cambodia
• Through our Saving Children’s Lives in Vulnerable Communities project, we’re working to improve nutrition of adolescent girls and boys
• We’re fighting HIV/AIDS discrimination through community outreach activities and an awareness development campaign, as well as providing affected people and their children with basic health care services, technical support in agriculture, small grants and resources to improve their livelihoods

The opportunity to learn

• We’re working to improve the quality of children’s early learning at existing preschools in remote areas
• We’re enhancing accountability and administration of  preschool services by focusing on management, monitoring and advocacy at local, district, provincial and national levels
• We’re helping ensure primary schools improve performance and provide better learning outcomes
• We’re working to improve the quality of learning environments within target schools
• We provided technical expertise to develop a policy and action plan for protecting children in schools, which has been adopted by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport

Protection from harm

• We’re working to ensure children are protected against violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation in their communities
• We’re promoting children’s participation, especially marginalized children, in local- and national-level decision making that affects their lives
• Through our Family Care First program, we’re helping strengthen families struggling with crises, so that they can care for children and not resort to placing them in an institution, as well as supporting family-based alternative care when children can’t stay with their biological families – this includes building partners’ capacity, supporting local governments and hosting learning exchanges of best practices, so all children can grow up in strong, caring families
• We’re supporting children to lobby at the local level and building capacity of local authorities to consider children’s rights when they prepare their local budgets
• Through our REACT (Responsive and Effective Child Welfare Systems) project, we’re helping ensure girls and boys separated from their family, or at risk of separation, are protected by legislative and regulatory frameworks, quality services and safe, nurturing families within a community environment

Emergency response

• We’re working to support government partners with disaster preparedness and risk reduction within the education system, with the goal of scaling up nationally
• We launched our Education Safe from Disasters project to help create safer environments for children and ensure educations aren’t disrupted in disaster-prone Cambodia, completing a major risk mitigation project benefiting several thousand students