Saving the children of Stung Mean Chey

Holley native Sandi Smith with a group of children at the Cambodian Center for the Protection of Children’s Rights. The facility houses children who have been removed from severely abusive situations.

A child in the dump at Stung Mean Chey. Cambodian orphans scrounge the refuse for edible and usable items.

Brahma bulls and oxen are used to plow the fields. Above, they walk in a small stream. Sandi Smith says this is a typical Cambodian landscape.

A typical Cambodian home.

Saving the children of Stung Mean Chey
Holley native packs up her life to run Cambodian orphanage

When Sandra Smith was four years old, she knew that she wanted to work in an orphanage. As one of her earliest memories, she recalls watching a television program about Mother Teresa and can still visualize her picking up sick and homeless children from the streets, children no one else wanted to touch. “I remember watching her, and how gentle and loving she was, seeing how she changed the lives of these people just by loving them,” said Smith. “At four years old, I really didn’t have a concept of what that was all about, but I knew in my heart that some day I wanted to do the same thing.”

After earning a degree in studio art with a minor in art history, Smith worked a variety of jobs from construction to management. When friends adopted a Cambodian child, her longing to work with children in need was renewed. “I learned a little bit about Cambodia from them, then started studying (the country) and decided that is where I wanted to go,” said Smith.

While surfing the Internet to find organizations that worked with Cambodian orphans, she came upon NCLO, No Child Left Out, a non-profit organization of volunteers dedicated to helping children in desperate situations worldwide. Research led Smith to realize that NCLO’s ideals matched her own and she immediately wanted to get involved. She signed up to be a Writing Buddy, someone who e-mails a Cambodian orphan to help him or her with English skills, learn about another culture, and feel cared about. Smith’s involvement grew quickly and it wasn’t long before she was hopping on an air plane to Cambodia.

First impressions of Cambodia
Smith became an NCLO volunteer and embarked on a 10-day trip to Cambodia last July. A talented photographer, she knew she’d be taking photos for NCLO, but didn’t really know what else was in store for her. Upon arrival, she and other volunteers worked at several outreach centers painting walls and delivering supplies, played with the children and gave them as much love as they possibly could during their short visit. Night after night, they pumped up soccer balls and sorted through bags of donations. But it was during Smith’s first trip to Stung Mean Chey, the Phnom Penh city dump, that she really began to see her purpose.

Orphaned children live in Stung Mean Chey, scrounging for things they can sell to get enough money to eat. “They are as young as four and five, and often are working barefoot or naked in rotting, disease-filled, rat and snake infested garbage, for up to 14 hours a day,” said Smith. “The average daily income is about 50 cents.”

“I knew from the moment I arrived here that this was a place I would be returning to, but at Stung Mean Chey, I began to realize why,” Smith said. “The children there are so far beyond desperate. I have seen children get into a fist fight over a small piece of fruit out there. They are fighting for their own survival.”

Cambodia’s condition
According to Smith, there are over 200,000 documented orphan children in Cambodia, which is a country roughly the size of Oklahoma. This does not include the children who live in the streets, at the dump, or in the many temple complexes throughout the country. When people ask how the country could be in such a horrible state, Smith gives them a historical perspective. “During the Vietnam War, Cambodia became embroiled in a vicious civil war that stemmed from communist rebels, known as the Khmer Rouge, taking over the country,” she explained. During this time, many thousands of Cambodians were taken to places known as killing fields where they were executed and dumped into mass graves. Over 20,000 people were exhumed from one killing field near Phnom Penh and only about half of the field has been excavated. There are at least three other killing fields in Cambodia, according to Smith.

Smith said that during this time, families were torn apart. “Almost every Cambodian you speak to over the age of 30 has lost someone…to this genocide.” Landmines are one of the lingering problems from the genocide. The Khmer Rouge planted over two million landmines throughout the country.

Many of Cambodia’s orphans are products of these mines, as parents step on them while clearing the fields, Smith said. Diseases, such as malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis and AIDS are also rampant in Cambodia, leaving many children orphaned and left to fend for themselves. “Child prostitution is a fate many of them befall because the orphanages simply cannot support any more children,” she said.

A job offer
Smith was slated to return to Cambodia in October for a week-long trip that would give her the opportunity to help NCLO’s founder, Elizabeth Mallory, open its first orphanage there, The NCLO Children’s Home and Educational Center. Three weeks before she left, Mallory offered her a paid position as operations director for The Center and Smith accepted. “The actual decision to do this was very difficult,” she said. “I had to leave behind all that was safe and familiar, a good job, good friends, a loving family. The hardest part was telling my family.” Smith’s family had less than three weeks to prepare for her move to the other side of the world. Her initial stay was for three months. Then she came home for the holidays and returned to Cambodia in late January for seven months. After coming home for a visit this September, Smith’s stays will be for a year at a time.

The opening of an orphanage
NCLO has been providing support to existing orphanages across Cambodia for a couple of years. But it wasn’t until St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sharon Center, Ohio offered to cover the expense of renting a facility that the organization’s goal of opening its own orphanage began to take shape. Smith’s first priority when she arrived in the fall was starting the long and delicate process of registering the organization with the Cambodian government. After an incredible amount of paperwork, the process should be nearing completion soon.

Currently, Smith is working on finding children for The Center, which is large enough to house up to 30 orphans and the appropriate staff. “We’ve decided to focus on the children living in Stung Mean Chey,” she said. “…First, we have to identify the children. We then have to do a thorough background check on them to ensure they are true orphans.” Once that is complete, the children undergo a full medical evaluation to identify any serious illnesses. “After that, they have to be cleaned up, as these children live and sleep in the dump. They are covered with lice and any number of skin diseases,” noted Smith.

At the same time, Smith has been working on getting beds built, buying all the necessary supplies, hiring staff, enrolling the children in school, and finding a hospital that is willing to treat the children for free or at very reduced rates. Smith also oversees project leaders and translators at each of the six orphanages supported by NCLO in Cambodia.

Even after months of work, The Center is only a temporary facility. NCLO is hoping to open a permanent facility, called The Village, in 2007. Both will be founded on the same mission – to provide a loving, family-type home to children in need that also reaches out to improve the conditions at area orphanages and poverty-stricken villages.

Making a life in Cambodia
After working until nearly midnight, Smith is up at 6:30 a.m. when she immediately logs onto her computer – her connection to people around the world. “My schedule is a bit strange because I need to talk to and deal with people all the way around the planet,” she said. “It’s not uncommon for me to be on instant messaging at all kinds of crazy hours, hashing out some issue or another.”

Smith lives at The Center and said the atmosphere is home-like, not institutional. Unlike home, however, she has a security guard living on the grounds. He watches out for her safety, and will protect the children and other staff members when they arrive.

Challenged by the language barrier, Smith said she’s slowly picking up the native tongue, Khmer, but gets pretty far by smiling and pointing. At the market two blocks away, she buys freshly-picked fruit and drinks juice straight from a coconut. The hot, humid, snow-less climate is a world apart from western New York

In her spare time, Smith likes to hop on a moped, accompanied by a driver, and take photos out in the country. “The rice paddies shine like fields of emeralds, green beyond any color you can imagine,” she describes. “You see people out working the fields with teams of oxen, up to their knees in water.”

A member of the New Covenant Worship Center when she lived in Holley, Smith’s experience teaching children’s Bible classes, leading a children’s ministry team, and going on a mission trip, along with college-level coursework in world missions, may come in handy in Cambodia. But nothing could have prepared her for what she’s now experiencing. “You just have to throw yourself in headfirst and do it,” she said. “You learn more about yourself, how strong you are, how weak you are, so very fast in a place like this.” Smith now relies on her faith more than ever…and still takes her inspiration from Mother Teresa.

Note: For more information on NCLO, Stung Mean Chey, and sponsorship opportunities, and to read Smith’s ongoing journal, visit www.nclo.org or www.nclosam.org. Information provided for this article was communicated largely by e-mail. Ellie Murchie took the photo of Sandi and the children used on page one. Sandra Smith shot the other photographs used in the article.

In a message received March 7, she said, “We just got our first child at our orphanage two days ago! His name is Chanthy, and he is absolutely the sweetest little boy. He doesn't speak a lick of English, so it is a little challenging, but I'm learning Khmer fast, and we figure it out as we go. He's a child from the dump at Stung Mean Chey.”