One of the many challenges of living in a poor rural community is the lack of basic infrastructure such as adequate roads and bridges.  During the wet season life gets even more difficult, as the “tracks” that pass for roads are often completely underwater and many homes are completely cut off.  Many of the people in our target villages travel to the tourist town of Siem Reap in order to work as labourers on construction sites.  They ride to and from Siem Reap each day on their bicycles – a journey that can take anything from one, two or more hours depending on which village they live in, the time of year, and the condition of the roads.

Poor infrastructure also makes it difficult for children to get to school (often resulting in poor attendance levels), makes it difficult to access medical care and inhibits economic opportunities.  It is simply too hard for traders to travel into the villages to sell their wares; and similarly, difficult for villagers to transport their produce out of their villages to markets in larger towns.

This project is often (but not always) operated in conjunction with our work for a bicycle project.  In order to receive a bicycle from Helping Hands villagers have to work on an infrastructure project for five days.  The end result; they get a bicycle AND a new road (and pride in their own achievement.)

Helping Hands has built two large bridges in Prasat Char village, one in 2007 and another in 2008.  These have made life much easier for the residents of quite a large number of villages (the bridges opened up year round access to Siem Reap).  We have also facilitated the building of many smaller bridges, under-road culverts and many kilometres of roads. 

Our involvement often goes no further than providing the materials – the villagers volunteer their labour.  The fact that the villagers are prepared to get in and help themselves is what really impresses. The fear and distrust of others, even closest neighbours, engendered by the tragic events in recent history in this country, has been deeply entrenched. To observe the rapid development of co-operative effort and a real community spirit resulting from this programme, is a most gratifying result for us at Helping Hands.