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Many poor families have been drawn away from the land with the hope
of finding better economic alternatives. They live in urban slums
or rural resettlements, which suffer from a severe lack of basic
infrastructure including roads, water, education, health services
and where they have no means of economic support.
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Strategies for basic survival skills and alternate income generation
activities for these poor vulnerable families were designed by CVD
with the organization Terre des Hommes - Netherlands as the funder.
The Project provides
long-term, sustainable development to vulnerable families whose
children are at risk of trafficking, labor and exploitation in the
form of self-help groups.
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Self-help groups aim is to be self supporting at which time CVD
will gradually withdraw. Withdrawal strategy may include training
programs packages, which are aimed at capacity building for the
groups/association and networking to provide linkages with other
entities that are beneficial to the sustainability of the groups,
as well as other strategies.
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One of the aims in development is that all the activities should
ultimately lead to the overall development of the families, which
includes security in terms of basic needs like food, health care,
and education. This security must be sustainable, with one of its
features being that the families continue to enjoy security in
terms of their basic needs even after the Cambodian Vision in
Development agency withdraws its services.
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This means that the community has to take over the processes initiated
by the external agency and continue to cater to the needs of its members.
The sustainability can happen, if there is full participation of the
community in the intervention process right from the beginning, and
if the community is organized in such a way that it clearly understands
its role.
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CVD has had a lot of experience in working with children and vulnerable
groups, both in Battambang and Banteay Meanchey province for the last
two years. CVD's TDH project deals a lot with the underprivileged
children and thus helps the vulnerable families out of poverty. CVD
sees this as the key to breaking the trafficking cycle of poverty.
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Women as well as children are at risk. Women who are vulnerable
are socially disadvantaged and ill prepared to take advantage of economic
growth as other people are. Men who head families in these conditions
are more apt than women to walk out on the family and abandon their
responsibilities.
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Women, therefore, are frequently left with an intolerable burden.
Their physical health often fails and as a consequence, their inner
confidence and spirit is sapped. Their poverty, and that of their
children and dependents, deepens.
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