Pchum Ben - Everything you need to know about the festival of the dead

Kimleang, our 1st year scholarship student tells us about Pchum Ben, Cambodia’s upcoming festival where families pay their respects to deceased relatives.

My family always enjoys Pchum Ben; it is one of the best holidays of the year. Before the festival arrives, we always spend time preparing and buying things. Every year, when we see him, my grandfather always tells us the story of Pchum Ben.

Pchum Ben, the ‘ancestor’s festival’, is a Cambodian religious festival celebrated by Buddhists. It is one of the longest festivals in Cambodia, lasting for fifteen days. A Ben is an offering. The first fourteen days are called Kan Ben, where villages take turns making offerings, and the last day is Ben Thom, great offering, where all families go to the pagoda to make an offering. Pchum Ben is celebrated every year at the beginning of the 10th month, Phutrobot, of the Khmer calendar. During the fourteen days of Ken Ben villages take turns bringing food to the temples and pagodas. The last four days of Pchum Ben are public holidays in Cambodia and most Khmer people will visit the province where they were born for family reunions. The fifteenth days, Ben Thom, is the special day when all families bring overflowing baskets of flowers, and children offer food, sticky rice cake and presents to the monks. It is a colorful festival and everyone is dressed in their best clothes, women wear bright colored silk scarves, blouses and dresses. During the festival, special rice offerings are made called ‘Bay Bens’. Bay Bens are balls of sticky rice cooked in coconut milk with various ingredients depending on local customs.


Cambodians celebrate Pchum Ben because they believes that after death they become ghosts whose earthly actions shape their appearance and that they walk the earth at this time. Everyone prays to help their ancestors pass on to a better life. According to Khmer belief, people who do not follow the practices of Pchum Ben will be cursed by angry ancestors. The living relatives ease their sufferings by offering them food. People also make offerings of money, dresses and other items to the monks in the pagoda. The offerings made are shared by the poor and the disabled during Pchum Ben.

I hope that all of you enjoyed learning about Pchum Ben and understand more clearly about Cambodia culture. I wish all of you and your family all the best like my family too.

One step ahead; working with the community to mitigate the effects of flooding

Flooding during the rainy season in the months of September and October is common in Cambodia. In 2011 and 2013, the flooding was particularly severe and damaging; thanks to the generous support of donors, JWOC was able to provide emergency relief to villages in the communities that JWOC serves in Siem Reap Province.

In 2013, Cambodia experienced severe flooding with a death toll over 100 and over 60,000 people having to leave their homes. There was great concern over disease outbreak from water-borne diseases due to a lack of sanitation and hygiene in these extreme living circumstances. The flooding seriously affected nearly all of Cambodia including Siem Reap Province, and many of the communities JWOC serves. The flooding damaged homes, crops and caused harm to roads and infrastructure.

The risk of water related and mosquito-borne diseases, such as Dengue Fever, increases during flooding. As well as the large concern over the risk of disease there is also recovery to consider with clean up and repairs to roads and houses needed. Many families lose their crops as their rice fields and poultry are destroyed by the flooding, a source of both income and food for impoverished families. The longer-impact of the flooding is fear for food security with concerns over food shortages.

JWOC’s Community, Liaison and Assistance program works all year round to address these issues. This year we made some changes to improve our preparedness and response to the high waters that occur each year.

To develop an emergency preparedness plan, we started by collecting data to find out what villagers did to help themselves before and during the floods. We found that the knowledge that the floods come each year isn’t enough for families to take preventive measures. In the squatters villages surrounding JWOC the root causes of flooding are not easily addressed -- these villages have poor irrigation systems, and uneven land. As villagers do not own the rights to build on the land, root-cause solutions will be slow in coming.


The data we gathered demonstrated high health risks among a population where over 60% of the villagers live below the poverty line (between $1-3 a day). This helped us prioritize alleviation of health risks in our emergency preparedness plan.


This week, JWOC will run an emergency preparedness pilot training effort to prepare villagers before the floods. We will work in collaboration with the Angkor Hospital for Children (AHC) to conduct Health Care training focusing on basic hygiene, safe drinking and disease prevention to 60 beneficiaries from Teaksen Tbong Village.

We will offer villagers the opportunity to purchase emergency kits consisting of mosquito nets, soap and water filters. The cost for JWOC to purchase these items and field this pilot is $2090

JWOC does not want to create dependency that may occur by simply giving items away, so this year we will offer these emergency items at a subsidized price. JWOC will sell the items to the communities at a 60% discount, with a further reduction if purchased as a set ($7.50 per set). The money from these items will help defray the emergency kit cost and go straight back in our Community, Liaison and Assistance program fund which works all year round to make sure we prepare for, respond to and recover from emergencies like flooding.

We'll begin our pilot to 60 people, depending on the response to the pilot and what we learn, we aim to train other villagers (there are 250+ families left in the pilot village and around 300 families at two other villages who we hope train). Though to proceed with further training and emergency preparedness supply distribution, we require support from donors.

In addition to providing a donation now in support of our emergency preparedness efforts, please consider becoming a subscription donor where you can provide a monthly amount in support of our Community Liaison and Assistance Program. To make a donation please click here.


Thank you for supporting us in our mission to strengthen our Emergency Preparedness, Recovery and Response practices.

Sarah tells us all about JWOC's Summer Camp

Hi! My name is Sarah. I’ve been volunteering with JWOC for the past two weeks at their Summer Camp. The Summer Camp runs for 2 weeks while Khmer Schools are on holidays and is free and available to all.

Day one, I joined up with my new workmates, six high school interns from various schools in Siem Reap who have been selected to help supervise and run the Summer Camp. I can’t wait to work with them for the next 3 weeks. I was met with six huge smiles and instantly found six new friends Srey Ly, Srey Mouv, Thoeur, Sopheak, Yar and Socheata! We got to it straight away; Sarah Crowley (yes that’s right we have two Sarah’s now at JWOC) JWOC’s  Education and Volunteer Manager went through the Child Protection Training and gave us an overview of last year’s programs.

The planning begins! As a group we brainstormed craft activities, games, performances and put a plan together ready for camp. It’s interesting that a lot of the games we play in Australia are also popular in Cambodia such as duck, duck, goose and Simon Says.

The next step is advertising; the intern team made flyers and headed to local villages and current classes at JWOC to promote Summer Camp. The children give the interns the feedback that they would like, lots of singing, dancing and painting – Roger that!!

During the week of planning we ran through the games to make sure we all knew how to play, wrapped up our pass the parcel and tried out some of the art projects. I discovered that my drawing skills peak at stick figures and butterflies, luckily the interns on the other hand are extremely creative. Socheata was busy writing a song to sing with the children, while Sopheak came up with educational games about road safety. 

Summer Camp starts!

Everyone was excited, the interns asked “Sarah will we have enough students?” I replied “Yes of course” and crossed my fingers that we would. We completed the activity plan for each session stating the resources we need, location, group sizes and contingency plans, bring it on! We were ready for anything.

Summer Camp started at 10am and we had 30 children (YAY!). Yar went through the Summer Camp rules then straightaway we were finger painting.  Many of the children attended JWOC’s art classes on Sunday and are really creative, their drawing and colour blending skills are fantastic. By the end of the first week we have had a banana eating competition, have read numerous stories (ghost stories are the favorite), played musical chairs, made collages, learnt the chicken dance and painted faces just to name a few. The children are having a ball and are excited each day to take home the craft goodies they have created. Some of the children even take it upon themselves to improve my very average Khmer by pointing at objects and saying bicycle - “kong” , chicken “mourn”etc .

We still have one more week of Summer Camp ahead; I’ve recruited my friend Prue from Australia to join the fun too. We still have three legged races, a talent show, balloon games and yoga to go. I don’t know who will be sadder when Summer Camp ends …. me or the children!

Let's Begin - Giving the Gift of Education

It's that time of year again! At JWOC and across the world, students are going back to school - and for some it will be their very first day. As our current crop of Kindergarten students move on up, a new group of children will anxiously walk into our classrooms for the very first time. For this precious age group, we offer bilingual classes in English and Khmer, using games, music, and art to develop their blossoming drawing, math, and behavioral skills.


In addition to welcoming 30 new Kindergarten students, we are also starting two new Computer classes, two new Let’s Begin Classes and two new Starter Classes! With over 700 students visiting the JWOC Community Center every week, it is exciting to watch our Free Classes Program continue to expand and serve as an important hub to our local community. By providing critical computer and English skills, we aim to prepare our students to be able to enter the ever-growing Siem Reap job market.

We just launched our Back to School campaign to help support our expanding Free Classes Program. You’ve seen how fast we’re growing! To support JWOC’s Free Classes Program, just visit our homepage and take a look at the many ways you can help – big or small, the impact is huge.

JWOC's Back to School Appeal 2014

Dear Supporter,

Back to School! This familiar phrase is all around us, marking the end of summer vacation and the start of another school year.

As many of Cambodia's children are also going back to school right now, we are reminded that not all are so fortunate. The state school system in Cambodia is plagued by a lack of investment, poor facilities, limited resources and under-trained teachers. This can lead to limited educational opportunities, no matter how eager the children are to learn. In addition, there are many adults who have been unable to complete their education because of the need to work or support their families.

Last year JWOC provided English, Computer and Art lessons to over 700 students through our Free Classes Program in an aim to provide disadvantaged students educational opportunities to help them build better futures. Help us to continue our efforts this coming academic year by helping support JWOC Free Classes.

Give the gift of education and support the students who attend JWOC's Free Classes. A single donation can provide one more member of our community with a brighter future.

 

Thank you for making a difference in our community, and continuing to be a part of the JWOC family.

Kind regards,

Alex Plummer 

Journeys Within Our Community