PODCAST: Cambodia's Orphans pt. 1

Solveig Rennan
Welcome to the first episode of Under-Told: Verbatim. I’m Solveig Rennan for the Under-Told Stories Project. We report from all over the world for PBS news hour on the consequences of poverty and the work of change agents addressing them. We’ve done extended interviews with hundreds of experts and people making a difference in their communities. In this podcast, we’re revisiting those under-told stories, so you can hear change makers around the world in their own words. This is Under-Told: Verbatim.

Solveig Rennan
We’ll start this podcast with a two part series. This past summer, under told stories correspondent FRED DE SAM LAZARO and our team reported on orphan care in Cambodia. In 2005, there were about 150 orphanages in the country. But that number grew to more than 400 in 2019. But an estimated 80% of kids in Cambodia’s orphanages aren’t actually orphans. Now, non governmental organizations are pushing to reform the system.

Sebastien Marot
child in a terrible situation fly on the I give me $5 a month and then the child’s life is safe. If it were that easy, it would be fantastic, but it’s not.

Fred
That’s Sebastien Marot. He founded Friends International, a social enterprise working to support marginalized children and their families. He’s part of the campaign to remove children from orphan care. In a courtyard near a busy Phnom Penh street he explained the business of orphanage tourism, the harmful impact it can have on the children and how international volunteers, often part of the problem, can be part of the solution.

Fred
Why is this country so

Solveig Rennan
and that’s Fred, the reporter

Fred
attractive to orphanage tourism and volunteers?

Sebastien Marot
Yeah, I’ve been here 25 years and over the 25 years we’ve seen actually an increase in number of orphanages and number of kids in orphanages. And there are lots of reasons for that. It started with the after Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese occupation, and a lot of children were orphans, and there was a big need. And the Cambodia is carrying the history of trauma. And when people think, Cambodia they think that the Khmer Rouge the terrible times, the killings, and the movie Killing Fields and all the movies that come out about Cambodia is about this. So when people think Cambodia they think that all the children are being victims of destruction, and everyone is orphaned, which is far from the truth, but that’s the image. So camera carries that image. And I think that’s one major factor. The second is then it led to having a lot of, of NGOs coming to the country and a lot of charity organizations and immediately that creates also then this movement of wanting to help. So I think you had a lot of attention from the west, coming from very good intentions. And that’s why you have you have this release, you had this very strong increase in overall organizations working as orphanages in this country.

Sebastien Marot
And why did it stay you say the stereotype of a country in dire need is no longer applicable. Why did it continue, why does it continue?

Sebastien Marot
Orphanages start on, on the premise of a crisis and kids are in need and then therefore kids need a place to go which is a safe system. The problem is it’s designed to become long term when actually it should be a short term solution, kids need to have a space with a safe and this should be done time bound, eventually they need to go back into a family based system in the community as much as possible. The problem is the logic of the business if I may say enters and then the children are not staying in those services because orphanages start to become their own logic. They start having funding and as they receive funding they need kids they some of them have special agendas. They need to have children for for religious reasons to have a religious impact then they will have and their objectives to keep the children as long as possible in the system. First thing that happened in Cambodia is that you started having a number of tourists coming in wanting to contribute coming from a very good intention but wanting to help. And for them helping the easiest way is to spend a little time in an orphanage and then orphanages were built to respond to that need. At the end of the day, because there were no more orphans in this country because the crisis was over. People in order to fill those orphanages started taking children from communities away from their families, and we started having more children in orphanages then after the war. And 80% of them had parents.

Sebastien Marot
What would you say to another industry that seems to be driving a lot of orphanage tourism and that is the aspirations of young people, young high school and college students who want to come and feel like they’re doing something meaningful.

Sebastien Marot
So the volunteering for gap year, or voluntourism, for a shorter time comes from a very noble, very nice desire to help and that should not be blocked because it’s a it’s a very positive. However, the having young people, especially that are not trained, don’t speak the language don’t understand the culture dropped into an orphanage into school, interacting with children. People who are not checked in many cases is extremely dangerous, background check, sorry, is extremely dangerous because the actual value that you bring to the children is very minimal. You don’t speak the language. And most of the time people then say, Well, I teach English, but you need to teach first the Khmer, the math, the regular lessons. So that’s done by Cambodians. And if you replace the Cambodian staff, then you’re hurting the children. English is not enough. Culturally you don’t understand so you don’t bring what’s needed. Then you actually by having too many foreigners coming in. You continue to build what we’re trying to unbuild building the stigma, you building the differentiation, you’re building the incapacity of young people to then leave that orphanage and be functional in their own society because they’ve been dealing with foreigners, not with Cambodians, that is creating the problem, reinforcing the problem. So, my message is, there are many ways to help. There are many ways to be very useful. There are many ways to be very have a very rewarding experience without directly interacting with children without putting the children in situations of risk

Sebastien Marot
What would those be, for example,

Sebastien Marot
well, we have at friends we’re building what’s called a child safe academy and a child safe academy is about offering options. So for the voluntourism, people who just want to have an interesting experience that’s culturally relevant and gain interaction, we for example, have a cooking class here where you work with the students have friends in in a safe environment. Learning how to cook Cambodian dishes. You are in contact with Cambodian, Cambodian youth. And the dynamic is also reversed. You’re learning you bringing but you’re also learning. So you’re not just the white Savior. But you’re also you’re more interested in the equal level interaction. And that’s very important. So this kind of experiences where you have a significant interaction at a, at a personal level, which is what you look for a cultural level. And but it’s an equal interaction, and it’s so rewarding on both sides is feasible. And we have many of those.

Sebastien Marot
What did the kids from the west impart that’s valuable to the Cambodian kids? And let me tell you where I’m coming from with them. Because the general perception is, if you have an English proficiency of any level, you’re going to do much better in the world, and especially in a place like Cambodia or in Asia, and that’s a widespread perception. So if you take that away, and you say no, just working in In a kitchen, first of all, is that valid? And second of all, if you’re discouraging it, what do the Cambodians get from this interaction?

Sebastien Marot
I’m discouraging the short term input. You’re not learning a language by having a teacher changing every week. And you’re not learning the language if the teacher is not a native speaker. And we have a lot of non native speakers pretending to be English teachers having fun with children. So a lot about their own experience, not what the kids experience is about. It’s not true, unfortunately, but also a very good feeling that I’m helping. But realistically, would you like to have your teacher change every week if you were learning?

Sebastien Marot
Is that how short the volunteer stints are

Sebastien Marot
I’m talking about on voluntourism. Yes, voluntourism is a few hours to a few days maximum, the longer volunteering, the gap here is a few months then it’s a slightly different game if it’s well organized, it might have some value, if it’s not at the expense of other lessons.

Sebastien Marot
What’s in it for the Cambodian kids in an interaction like this?

Sebastien Marot
The Cambodians, they appreciate and they actually like having the language, that’s for sure. And it’s extremely valuable to have no denying. So having a, a professional teacher knows how to teach that’s at least a been trained as a teacher for English as a foreign language. No problem. If it’s always the same, you need to turn this around. This is very difficult to explain, coming from this perspective, let’s turn the perspective. What if in your own country, you were in school, and you work to learn Spanish, and it’s a Cambodian coming to teach you Spanish who speaks a little Spanish, and he would stay for one month and then the next month is another Cambodian coming to teach us Spanish, would that be in any way? relevant, useful? And would you accept it? Certainly No. So why is that? Okay, here? It was the same question. If I wouldn’t do this in my own country, or accept this in my own country, why do it here?

Sebastien Marot
What about the whole issue of detachment syndrome, which is the revolving door and what it does to a child at especially the tender age, who needs to bond with an adult, consistently, it’s really

Sebastien Marot
important to have an adult figure that is guiding you and and teaching you and being there for you. ongoingly that’s the parents role. And losing that is extremely damaging for development. This is why it’s so important to rebuild it as fast as possible. And when I’m talking foster care, I’m not talking the American system where kids jumping from one family to the next and talking about long term Well, they stay with that family. It’s a different model. So the family would take care of the child for for long term. So we were trying to rebuild that connection. And that’s, I agree very, very, very essential. orphanages, not necessarily I mean, some people will argue that orphanages is provide that not necessarily because their staff and as staff, they are also moving and they have a in the less well run places is one staff for a lot of children who don’t get that personalized attention. So these are the risks in orphanages. So we prefer to have a stable family to care for the child. That’s why I’m always saying we’re looking first for the direct family then secondly, extended family extended family being grandparents, aunts, uncles, older brothers and sisters because that’s family and that’s longer term. And if that doesn’t work, foster care. One family keeping the child and then last option is an orphanage.

Sebastien Marot
And you say that this is a cultural hurdle that can be crossed is being crossed in Cambodia today. Wrap up now. Why do you think it’s so plausible for an American audience that funds orphanages, for example, when an operator says, you know, culturally, foster care doesn’t work, and to go back to the place we visited yesterday,

Solveig Rennan
a little context, Fred’s talking about evangelical American pastor Ted Olbrich. He runs Foursquare Children of Promise, one of the largest providers of orphan care in Cambodia. We’ll hear from him in the next episode of this series

Sebastien Marot
which look very nutrient. You know, Pastor Ted says, You know, I go into the villages and I find widows who are very, very ostracized people. Nobody wants to deal with them. I bring them in and make them care for the children who are ostracized. I’ve got a win win-win situation. Sounds pretty possible people open their wallets when they hear that.

Sebastien Marot
The marketing is the marketing of orphanages very simple. So it works because it’s, it’s an easy sell – child in a terrible situation fly on the I give me $5 a month and then the child’s life is saved. If it were that easy, it would be fantastic, but it’s not. And the response, an orphanage response is a simplification to a complex issue because a human being is way more complex than just a $5 solution. And when we try to explain our work, which is holistic, we have to work with the individual child, you have to work with the family, you have to look at all the different aspects of development. If you start talking about all this, you lose your audience really, really fast. But then the human being is complex, and it’s it’s ridiculous to simplify it and make a caricature of what the reality is. But in marketing, this is what works. And that’s one thing. The second thing where I have a serious problem is, especially when religious organizations that do proselytism, and I don’t know this situation,

Fred
he’s an unapologetic proselytizer

Sebastien Marot
you know that that’s another issue but there are different types of organizations with different agendas you have the the organization that does it, because it’s it’s good business. Get donors to give money and marketing 101. And especially for for short term, for tourists coming – Marketing 101, my kids need to look sad and sick, my house needs to look run down because then I create pity and therefore people will give me money. If people give me money, I will not repair the house and not make my kids look better because otherwise I’m destroying my own marketing. One. Second are the ones that are built on long term donations and sponsorship For example, sponsorship, you support the child throughout the life. But then you create a dependency system with a foreigner to whom you have to write letters, you have interactions, and you create this white savior complex and dependency complex with the young person in the system again, that is not necessarily run as well as the sponsor would like it to be or thinks it is. And then you have the other business, which is the religious business was the business of souls. It’s not about anything else. It’s how many souls have I saved? And you have to look at the business side of it. And then you ask question, is that what I want to support? Yes, no. Will I accept this and I understand that religious people will support proselytism and changing religion, but I’m sure they would be very upset if a Muslim organization open centers in the U.S. or in France, started taking children from communities, put them there to turn them into nice little Muslims. And this is what they’re doing here. It’s a Buddhist country. So those politics behind I think needs to be clarified. People need to know what they’re doing and why.

Sebastien Marot
So interesting that that that whole social condition that pastor Ted describes ostracized widows, and ostracize children getting a refuge that’s built on some plausible cultural belief or reality?

Sebastien Marot
I mean, if you look around, you had windows from the war, an orphan children, so many of them. You can’t ostracize people because it was the norm. I don’t believe it’s true. I believe that what happens is, is often you make promises and a lot of families give the children to orphanages willingly because the orphanages make promises, promises of your child will be fed, every day, your child will get an education, your child will have a future. And if your parents you love your children, Cambodian families are not different from any other family in the world. They love their kids, exactly the same as an American family or French family would, but they love them so much that they want to give them the best chance. And if they’re told that this is the best chance, they will give the child away. And that’s a lie. Because it would be cheaper and more efficient to support the family directly to care for their own children. Why not give them the money to feed the children? Why take the child away?

Sebastien Marot
It’s hard to put yourself out of businesses and not I mean, essentially what we’re talking about is, is asking an industry to put itself out of business.

Sebastien Marot
Yes, that’s the first reaction but my reaction is we need those services because the kids situation is still very fragile. So I’m not saying we should close them. I’m repeating to them all the time. You need to transform yourself, there’s still a lot of work to be done. But the way you do it needs to be changed. It’s not about taking the kids away from the families, put them in your center, and then you work with them is you break down the walls, and you work in the community directly. So you move and you support the families and the children in the communities and you can continue to support classes, because that’s needed, you can continue to support health because that’s needed, you can still be there for in terms of crisis, because it’s still needed. But it’s a transformation. It’s not a closure, closing those services. Closing the orphanages without having new services in place would be very bad for children. It’s way more important to transform. So what they do today is not good. Closing would be worse. transformation is the ideal scenario.

Sebastien Marot
So the orphanage people are not necessarily the bad guys.

Sebastien Marot
No, because again, it comes from a very good feeling. It’s just not adequate with the development of Cambodia and many other countries in Southeast Asia because you see this in other places. says it’s just not the right response at the right time. And often it is a response of times of crisis. And it should always be seen as a temporary solution until you’re able to rebuild the families and the communities to care for the children, because families and communities are in charge of children, not orphanages.

Fred
And this is not just a Cambodian issue. I mean, Cambodia is sort of like a poster child but Haiti is another but it’s it’s kind of global isn’t it.

Sebastien Marot
It’s very global. That happens in the rest of Southeast Asia. We had the premises of this happening in Myanmar, because menma was suddenly opening to NGOs. And with UNICEF, we managed to put a moratorium on opening new orphanages in that country because again, there was no need, there was no crisis. There’s some parts in crisis, but those parts are not accessible anyway. So you have this in Thailand, you have this in in Laos, some extent, Africa. Haiti is a good example. But the response is also global, saying we need to transform see this as a temporary solution and transform this into a community support.

Sebastien Marot
Okay. Well, Sebastian Marot, Thank you very much.

Solveig Rennan
Our interview with Sebastian Moreau was originally featured in our story called sending Cambodia’s orphans home which aired on October 24 2019. To check out the full story, go to undertoldstories.org. The next episode in this two part series features a different point of view on orphanage reform.

Ted Olbrich
We didn’t come here intending to take care of orphans. We came here to build a church.

Solveig Rennan
Stay tuned for our interview with evangelical pastor Ted ulbrich. He founded Foursquare children of promise, one of the largest providers of orphan care in Cambodia. You can find every Under-Told: Verbatim episode virtual reality 360 experiences and our entire library of under-told news reports from around the world under told stories.org This episode was hosted by me Solveig Rennan produced and edited by Samantha Hong and Simeon Lancaster. The interview was conducted by our director Fred de Sam Lazaro. Under-Told: Verbatim is brought to you by the Under-Told Stories Project at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. As always, thanks for your support.