The Sunshine Center is situated in the heart of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city.
Unschooled children who need to work to earn an income for their families can come to receive informal schooling and literacy training, health care, basic health education and a nutritious cooked daily meal. For many of these children it is the only meal they will receive each day.
Providers for poverty stricken families, they work long hours collecting rubbish to recycle, selling food and selling postcards.
Often with a small sibling to care for as they work the children are unable to attend regular school. Their families are dependent upon their meager incomes.
These children are extremely vulnerable to exploitation as they work on the streets and especially to pedophiles.
Founders of the project saw many children and teenagers working as scrap collectors around the market and on the streets, living a life of drudgery, hardship and danger. What started as an attempt to give these youngsters some relief from the heat and dirt of their day grew into the center offering bathing facilities, health care, nutritious food and basic literacy. By mid-2006, the program underwent some dramatic changes, which included moving to a more spacious venue away from the market and busy roads, enrolling the children into public school.
Today, the program has nearly 90 children, which includes about a dozen pre-school youngsters who stay at the center all day. When the children are not at school, they come to the center for help with homework and revision, and English lessons. Besides providing breakfast and lunch, it is also a safe place for the children to play and relax. The Center also works to introduce training and micro-enterprise programs to help these Cambodian families break the poverty cycle.
Step Up, be an Angel… Feed a Child…
