| Project 624: Cambodia: Kampong Speu
Field of Heartbreak Cambodia’s provincial villages provide the setting for Khmer Farmers to live out their traditional farming lifestyle, educating their children in the local temple school, growing rice in the endless paddy fields and tending to the chickens and cows who share their simple wooden buildings.
Each year the rainy season commences in July, bringing with it, flooding, that causes the rice shoots to grow in the paddy fields, but with it, the start of a cycle of tragedy. Babies and toddlers are left to roam the wafer thin edges of the water-logged paddy fields, untended and unsupervised.
Kampong Speu is such a place. Home to burgeoning numbers of young village children but each year, the place of tragedy for many young Mothers whose toddlers drown in the waters of the rice fields. The Fields of Harvest have become the Fields of Heartbreak.
Mercy Teams (Cambodia) is providing an answer in one such place. A pre-school Learning Centre is springing up in Kra Nhoung Village in Kampong Speu where Sonn a long time daughter of the village grew up. She has become a christian and wants to take the message of Gods love back to her many relatives. She also has a Dream that the other sons and daughters of the village, still young and needing nurturing and protecting, will survive the floods and live to take their place in Khmer society.
Mercy Teams (Cambodia) is making that dream come true. Along with the Pre-school centre where young children will be freely welcomed, will be Parenting classes, child health lessons, education training, and religious studies which will become a regular part of this Child Learning centre to help turn Kra Nhoung Village back into a joyful place, a Field of Harvest.
Cost of Project : $US30,000. Estimated completion : July 2006
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