Helping Hands Cambodia

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HELPING HANDS CAMBODIA

Helping people help themselves.

Helping Hands Cambodia is a grass roots aid organisation empowering Cambodians living in poverty to be able to help themselves. We work in a number of villages approximately 30-35 kilometers northwest of Siem Reap.

OUR PHILOSOPHY - "GIVING A HAND UP, NOT A HAND-OUT"

Helping Hands is NOT about giving charity. The aim of Helping Hands is not to give “hand outs” which can cause people to become reliant on aid, but to enable the people to help themselves. Our aim is to build up the pride and dignity of the individuals, the family units and the village community as a whole.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for life." (Chinese proverb) It has been said that the way to help a hungry man is to give him an income. We firmly believe this and also believe that giving him an income rather than “handouts” helps to build his dignity and pride.

Whenever possible we try to set up our programmes in such a way that the villagers have to “earn” the aid that we are offering. They then don’t just feel pride and dignity that they earned the item but they also take ownership of it.

For example:

	In order to receive a bicycle from us, the villager must complete 5 days labour fixing a road in his/her village.
	To qualify to receive a toilet from Helping Hands, the villager must participate in a 6 week course about sanitation, pass a short oral test on sanitation and actually build the toilet themselves with the materials we provide.
	To qualify for an irrigation system the villager must complete a 12 week agriculture training programme.
	We happily supply materials to build small bridges and causeways if the villagers are prepared to volunteer their own time to repair roads within their village.

Furthermore, we firmly believe that education is an extremely important part of our work. For example, without teaching someone about sanitation they will not understand the importance of a toilet. We try to design all our programmes on a solid base of education.

Helping Hands employs 9 Cambodian staff (some full-time and some part-time), all from impoverished backgrounds. Helping Hands is registered in the Kingdom of Cambodia as a Non-Government Organisation and is able to offer tax-deductible receipts for donors from Australia and America via our parent organisation Global Development Group.

OUR PROJECTS

This page has an overview of all our projects.

NEWSLETTERS

All of our past newsletters are located here.

THE HISTORY OF HELPING HANDS CAMBODIA

How it all began.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Visiting, volunteering and fundraising.

DONATING

The work that we do is only possible because of the generous financial support of concerned individuals and groups.

MEDIA ARTICLES

Past newspaper articles.

If you would like to SUBSCRIBE to our newsletter please send an email to grovesphotography@yahoo.com.au and type SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. We will then add you to our email address list.

Helping Hands Cambodia is registered in the Kingdom of Cambodia as a Non-Government Organisation.

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