What the Chab Dai Member Meeting means to me

I have been working for Chab Dai for almost a year. Along my journey of working here, I found the most exciting event of my working life to be our bi-annual Member Meeting, which we host in May and November of every year.

So far I have attended this event two times. My first time was in Nov 2010. It was really a surprise for me to see so many Christian Cambodians and foreigners come together to share and learn from each other as a coalition. It was huge to me! There were nearly 200 participants who came from various NGOs, some were local and some were international. At that time, I was not very involved in the meeting preparation. I wondered how we were able to do it, how we could prepare it and also why we did it? I was really impressed about how members were networking with each other. It was a great time to see everyone talk and laugh together.

In May 2011, I attended a member meeting for the second time. It was a great event, especially as a facilitator of the paperless training. This was the first time I had ever done anything like this. This time, I realised that it is not easy to make this event happen, we put a lot of energy into preparing and organizing it.

What do we do at the member meetings? All of our members have the same purpose and vision to end sexual abuse and human trafficking in Cambodia and around the globe. At the meeting members strengthen and build up each other through collaborative training, forums, meetings and sharing standards of practices.

The next Member Meeting is coming soon (next week)! As I write this, our team is putting their hearts and energies to make the meeting successful!

The Paradox of the Leadership Lens

Chab Dai Cambodia Leadership Team
(Left to Right: Dara, Muylen, Sithy, Helen, Yeng)

One of the greatest privileges of my life has been to lead the amazing team and work of Chab Dai.

It has been a source of some of my life's greatest highs and most extreme lows, it has inspired me with the many amazing people I have come to know and admire, and broken my heart by showing me the impact of those who perpetrate horrendous crimes against the vulnerable.

I have to admit that reflection has never been one of my strengths - it is something that, for me, requires discipline and space; neither of which i have a lot of! My leadership preference has always been in the vision, future possibilities and strategies of the organisation, but I have had to learn how to balance the extremes of many other aspects within the leadership experience.

I remember when I first entered a leadership role and was told that 'it is lonely at the top'. At the time it seemed strange when I was surrounded by so many people for much of the time. However, I soon realised that it was apparent that decision-making and holding ultimate responsibility for the organisation can in fact be - well - lonely.

Another interesting extreme is the tension and partnership of being focused on the strategy and vision of the organisation and at the same time, keeping myself informed of its activities, challenges and successes, the new ideas being discussed, and how the team are doing.

Perhaps some of the greatest extremes exist in my mind - the need to look at a situation or issue through three mindsets simultaneously. The first is looking and assessing the facts of the present situation. The second, to reflect on past experiences to see if there are any lessons I have learned to apply to the present situation, and finally to look at the implications and inspirations from the present, on the future.

I see leadership as a journey rather than as a destination which means I still have a lot to learn even after many miles of travelling!

A fellow traveller,

Helen

Happy Khmer New Year!

Happy Khmer New Year from the Chab Dai Team!

Khmer New Year, or we can say “Bun Chaul Chnam Thmey” in the Khmer language, is the name of one of the biggest Cambodian holidays. The holiday lasts three days and marks the end of the harvesting season, when farmers can enjoy the fruits of their labor before the rainy season begins. Buddhists in Cambodia always make preparations for the new year by cleaning, mopping and decorating around their houses. They believe the angel “Tevada” will attend their houses and bless them all.

During the three days of celebrations, Cambodian people wake up early every morning to cook traditional foods. Dressed in traditional dress, they take baskets of the prepared foods, fruits & drink to pagodas throughout the country, in order to offer it to their ancestors by praying through monks. At home they also have colorful decorations with lights & flowers, for offering prayers to their ancestors.

Khmer New Year is also a very fun time for Cambodian people of all ages. Street corners are often crowded with friends & families enjoying a break from daily routines, filling their free time with dancing and popular games. Along the road during the daytime, people fill plastic bags with water, and throw them at people who drive or walk along the road. They also sprinkle perfume or baby powder on people for fun.

The third day is the most important and fun. Buddhists cleanse the Buddha statues and their elders with perfumed water at the pagoda. It is also thought to be a kind deed that will bring longevity, good luck, happiness and prosperity in life. By bathing their grandparents and parents, children can obtain from them best wishes and good advice for the future.

Khmer New Year is a great opportunity for students, Chab Dai member staff, and also for children in aftercare shelters to return to their home and visit their family. Please pray for their journey and the sweet time that they can spend celebrating with their families.

Building National Leaders

Chab Dai believes in building leaders. This year we are focusing on supporting and empowering directors & managers through forums, trainings, discussion groups, and reading lists. Books are always being passed & traded across our desks!

Our team is currently studying 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey, and say they appreciate the wisdom of John Maxwell too. In Siem Reap we facilitate a monthly directors and managers peer group with our member staff; this week we talked about good communication skills.

We acknowledge that great leadership and management skills enable staff to implement great projects and therefore better serve & protect children.

As a team we have created a mini-reading list of leadership books we like:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey
• Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman
• First Things First , Stephen Covey
• Good to Great, Jim Collins
• 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork, John Maxwell
• 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, John Maxwell
• Servant Leadership , Robert Greenleaf

(Photo above of our Directors & Senior Management Team in Cambodia.)

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A Day in the Life of 3 Abolitionists: It All Starts with Coffee!

A day in the life of Chab Dai directors around the globe – with or without coffee? By Frida Westerling, Chab Dai Intern

Yeng (Cambodia Director) says his habit of drinking coffee started at Chab Dai.

When I ask Yeng about his workday and say, “It all starts with a coffee, right?” he smiles and begins telling me about his day not mentioning coffee even once.

Yeng wakes up at 4.30 a.m., goes for a run (!), helps his kids get ready for school and goes off to work. Being the Country Director, Yeng has a lot of work in his hands. He’s working with local donors, the government, Chab Dai members as well as helping with provincial prevention projects. After work he studies until 8 p.m. and in the evening he helps his wife with her business. When Yeng started working at Chab Dai he wasn’t a coffee drinker. According to his colleagues he now sometimes has two coffees in the mornings. I don’t blame him.

Working at Chab Dai further encouraged Julia (Canada Director) to continue her coffee habits.

Julia was already a coffee drinker when she started working at Chab Dai and she’s still going strong, imbibing this poisonous drink. Her naturopathe is telling her to quit but she always finds herself having coffee after struggling without it for a couple of days. When Julia and her husband started working with Chab Dai heconsequently became a coffee drinker.

After her morning cup of coffee, Julia keeps up-to-date with the human trafficking situation in Canada, networking and doing contractual work. Her work entails meeting a lot of people and introducing them to Chab Dai.

Helen (International Director & Founder) has always been a coffee lover herself, and is passing on her ‘coffee-loving-legacy’ at Chab Dai!

Waking up to 60+ e-mails a day and numerous meetings and visitors a week, Helen and coffee are practically one. As Founder of Chab Dai, Helen spends a lot of her time discussing, talking and brainstorming with people with oh so often a cup of coffee in her hands.

“Relationships come first. It’s where we’re able to make a difference. It means, I guess, my days might look chaotic from the outside," Helen says. Her role is also to ensure the well-being of the expatriate staff in US, Canada & the UK, and supporting their direct projects.

Part of Helens daily framework is looking strategically on the impact our work is having in the future. “We need to have big dreams and big visions and if something seems impossible, we strive creatively to bring about change”, she adds.

About her staff’s relationship with coffee she says with a laugh: “It’s my legacy to the staff. I guess it’s one of the less positive aspects of my influence on them.”

Why do I do what I do?

Why DO they do what they do? Chab Dai Directors around the globe answer why they have become passionate about ending modern day slavery, and where it all started…

It started with a vision in 2005. Meet Helen Sworn, International Director:

“There were rumors that children were being sold through the Thai boarder in Poipet. At the time, in 1999, I was working for an NGO and was sent to the boarder to find the truth. I spent some time in the border area seeing clothes, food etc. being traded. But the rumors were true: children were also being exchanged for money while the boarder guards turned a blind eye to them.

I was introduced to human trafficking for the first time with my own eyes and I was determined to dedicate my years to find more about it & how to be a part of addressing it.

At that time the world was very much focused on HIV/Aids and I realized that besides one researcher and a few organizations addressing human trafficking in Cambodia, no one was doing anything regarding this issue.

Few of the organizations were working together and the staff didn’t have training about the issue or how to address it. They had a huge heart but a lack of knowledge.

And the donors were asking: Why address slavery when it was abolished hundreds of years ago?

The vision expanded. Meet Ros Yeng, Cambodia Country Director:

“When I became a Christian I wanted to be a church leader. I went to the city to study in Bible school so I could get a job as a pastor. As a church leader I then saw that many Cambodians went to church because they were in need of material help, such as food and clothes.

The issue with the churches was that they only focused on evangelizing. I changed my goal and started working in a local NGO.

For eight years I worked with street children. I met boys that had been sexually abused and once a boy asked me for help. I did counseling with some of the boys but furthermore I didn’t know how to help them. So I changed my goal again. This is my 6th year working at Chab Dai.”

The vision of collaboration & coalition-building was transplanted in 2008 to the USA and Canada. Meet Julia Smith-Brake, Canada Director.

“My husband and I studied international development and we really thought we were supposed to go to West Africa, since we had specialized in that and both of us knew French. I met Helen in a child protection conference and had a good talk with her.

It was all very providential.

The doors to West Africa were closed and we started e-mailing with Helen. Within a week practically everything was fixed: the internships, flights and housing. So it really was a clear message from above that we’re meant to go to Cambodia.

By learning more about human trafficking we got so passionate about it that it has become our life calling.

So the issue found us and now I’ve been working at Chab Dai for two and a half years.”

Support to Siem Reap

Chab Dai Learning Community Team headed to the provinces this week to encourage, support, and provide training for our members working in Siem Reap.

Where is Siem Reap?

Siem Reap is the top tourist destination in Cambodia, located in the northwest region, about 5 hours from the capitol city of Phnom Penh. It houses the ever-stunning Angkor Wat temples that were built in the 9th-13th centuries, at the height of the Khmer Empire.

Despite the face of the quaint tourist town, which is overflowing with souvenir shops, guesthouses, and cafes, the province of Siem Reap indeed has the 3rd highest level of poverty in Cambodia. More than 80% of its residents are farmers, and 50% of the population lives below the poverty line.

For better & for worse, the number of international tourists coming to Siem Reap annually is increasingly enormously. In 1993 there were an average of 7,000 tourists. Today there are 2 million tourists annually!

While we can see the benefits of this, for example better infrastructure and job creation in this region, Chab Dai members have also seen a direct correlation in the growing number of human trafficking, exploitation, and abuse cases being reported.

So, they responded!

As a coalition, in 2008 we discussed the likelihood that growing tourism would translate into becoming a hotspot for trafficking & exploitation (also not to mention that it is 2 hours from the Thai border). We encouraged members to open field offices and projects in this area to proactively and reactively address the issues of sex tourism and commercial sexual exploitation.

A few bold organizations made the move!

Now they have started offices, networked with local police & partner agencies, and are working with children who are at-risk & survivors of human trafficking.

At our meeting this week we had 50 member staff present, including caregivers, directors, social workers, and counselors. We asked those who had been working in the field of trafficking & exploitation to raise their hands.Only 6 hands were raised!

The difficulty, on top of lacking experienced staff, is that the majority of trainings are only in Phnom Penh (a day-long bus ride away, both ways). Limited human resources & time constraints had our members pleading with us to be more present in Siem Reap.

How did Chab Dai respond?

Nope, we are not opening our first field office. But we are responding with a 6-month commitment to be in Siem Reap one week every month, during which time we will facilitate trainings, cross visits, share resources, and show our support for the work they are doing.

International Director, Helen Sworn, made it clear this week that they are not alone. In fact, she can remember the same scenario and struggles in 2005, when Chab Dai first began. Her words were full of hope, as she encouraged the staff that they have an exciting role to play as they “forage prickly unknown territory” in Siem Reap; and emphasized that they are not alone!

To kick off our 6-month commitment plan, we organized aweek of activities targeting not only directors & managers, but all caregivers as well. The week included:

• a meeting with all our members in the region,
• job-based support groups,
• trainings on minimum standards & child protection,
• a forum lunch discussion about medical procedures,
• and a facilitated cross-visit to one of our members.

Beyond this week, we created the framework for members to continue learning from each other & practicing solidarity. Three practitioner peer groups will meet monthly for encouragement & sharing.

At the end of 6-months Chab Dai will evaluate the impact the trainings, peer groups, and meetings had on raising the quality of care for victims & survivors of trafficking, abuse & exploitation.

If you are planning a visit to Siem Reap, check out ConCERT Cambodia for volunteer/ donation options, and Child Safe Network for SAFE hotel & dining option.

Chab Dai’s Urban Prevention Project also works in Siem Reap.

What’s so great about a CIRCLE?

Chab Dai's Learning Community began in 2005 as an innovative response to ending human trafficking (we started in Cambodia, but that doesn't mean it's not happening in your neighborhood!). Our solution was & still is sitting in a circle.

What's so innovative about sitting in a circle, you ask?

Well, imagine for a second a room full of people with different skills, backgrounds, training, and experience. And take into account that they all have the same shared vision. What if no one spoke with the man next to him about what he was thinking? What if he didn't even know the other man existed? What if one person lacked skills and the man next to him was an expert in the exact skills the first man (still next to him) lacked?

A circle draws all of those skill sets, experiences, and strengths together and lays them on the table.

A circle facilitates the sharing of ideas and prevents reinventing the wheel.

A circle levels the playing field, and recognizes that everyone from every background has something valuable to contribute to the discussion.

A circle coordinates networking.

A circle adds volume to advocacy.

A circle allows others to see others, to talk with others, to share with others, to learn from others, to build trust with others, and to work with others

And now you see, the power of a circle:

Learning from each other.

Sharing with one another.

Seeing value in everyone.

Coordinating others with others.

Advocating as one voice.

Trusting & working together!

If traffickers can form rings, we can create circles. And with the power of the circle we can outwit, outsmart, and stop abuse, trafficking, and exploitation.

Fun Family Day Out

Last week Chab Dai had our first (and now going to be annual!) outing with ALL the staff and their families. It was a like a late 'New Years & Christmas party'. We packed kilos of meat and fruit, and piled into two buses to relax at Kirirom National Park for a whole day of playing games, meeting family members, & eating delicious food.

Like everyone around the world, the men congregated around the BBQ! And we all benefited from Dara's cooking: eating our fill of grilled beef, chicken, prawns, squid, and 'pra-houk' (fish paste).

All together there were over 20 kids. Sok & Naomie organized some games (like limbo), but they also enjoyed splashing in the small creek nearby. Makera played "Santa" for Chab Dai, handing out small gifts: sundresses for the little girls, wallets for the boys, & stylish purses for the teen girls.

It was a memorable day, and one surely to be repeated.

Building Quality Together

Chab Dai team finished a week of strategic planning for our activities in the upcoming year. Each of the 6 project teams met to review and evaluate our activities, lessons learned, and impact last year.

Based on our evaluation of each project's strengths and weaknesses, we drafted goals for each quarter in 2011-2012.

A running theme for the Learning Community Project was QUALITY.

This year we want to focus on quality rather than quantity by:

• Building the capacity of our existing members, rather than the size of the coalition (this year we grew by over 15%);
• Focusing on offering only practical and contextualized training;
• AND cleaning our library (almost 2,000 resources in 3 languages) to focus on sharing only the most relevant and helpful books and research with our members.

Other Learning Community events to stay-tuned for this year are:

• A new Khmer website customized for our members to use
• Advocating for dignity and respect of our clients in the dissemenation of our media policy
• Assessing the project gap areas in the provinces
• Starting a new, Khmer-led, Leadership Forum.

Through the goal-setting training and planning sesssions the bonds of our team strengthened and we are excited for the new year ahead! Please pray for wisdom as we finalize our plans on the following weeks and put them into action!