Hiking 23 miles for the Cambodian Children's Fund

Please help us meet our mentees and raise money for impoverished children in Cambodia!

On the 19th of April, we are completing the Jurassic Walk in Dorset to raise money for our plane tickets AND a donation to the Cambodian Children’s Fund (CCF). We mentor one CCF female student each and we have the opportunity to meet them in June. We are desperate to visit them, get more involved with the CCF AND take a generous donation with us to aid the CCF’s life-changing work.

Thanks to donations, the CCF can support vulnerable children by keeping them off the street by enrolling them in schools, and students at the NCA can continue to thrive. The 23-mile sponsored walk will start in Durdle Door and finish in Old Harry Rocks. We kindly ask for donations toward our fundraising. We aim to raise £5000 for the flights AND £5000 as a donation.

In the last 20 years, the Steung Meanchey community in Phnom Penh has seen vast improvement due to the vital work of the CCF. Before 2004, the community experienced extremely deprived conditions in which there was a high morbidity rate and high levels of poverty, crime, child labour and child abuse. In 2017, the CCF opened the Neeson Cripps Academy (NCA), their flagship education facility. It provides students with world-standard education in STEM, IT and many other subjects. The NCA challenges Cambodia’s patriarchal norms, allowing its female students to study STEM and male-dominated fields.

We were lucky enough to become involved with the CCF thanks to our university lecturer, Nigel Lee, who works with CCF’s Child Protection Unit. Nigel explained to us that young women attending the NCA still default to traditional Cambodian female jobs and degrees (e.g., work in tourism) despite showing great promise and enjoyment in STEM subjects.

Nigel called on his female criminology Southampton Solent University students to mentor a handful of female NCA STEM students, and we stepped up to the plate and volunteered! Our role as mentors is to encourage and motivate our outstanding mentees in their studies and help them manage their workload. Essentially, we are their biggest cheerleaders, reminding them they can and should strive for their goals.

The mentoring scheme started last year, and we are the first group to participate. We each have one mentee, ranging from 15 to 17 years old and meet with them over Teams. We thoroughly enjoy it and learn a lot, particularly about Cambodian culture, festivals and the Khmer language. We have all built a strong bond with our mentees.

To see the people you’d be helping, please visit https://youtu.be/BPSJxXz9oEE

Thank you for reading our story.

Best wishes

Katie, Temi, Beth and Sophie