Pray with Cambodia, July 2, 2023
Lectionary Selection: Matthew 10:40-42
Prayers for Cambodia
Gracious God, our father and mother, and the greatest of all rewards that we humans can ever yearn for, we thank you for this fellowship we have with the people of Cambodia in and through you. We remember all things, the indiscriminate violence and the loss of many lives that Cambodia has endured. We pray that you reward us with an unfading memory of such horrendous events in history and resolve to steadily remember what extreme positions on both ends of the political spectrum can do to lives, livelihoods, private and public property, and to nature—the whole of your creation itself. We pray to you, O God, to heal the divisions, the lack of trust among sections of people, and the hatred, that spreads in all countries across this world, including our own. God, we pray that you bless us with an abiding ability to discern who a prophet, a righteous person, and a disciple of yours are in these times and make us give at least a cup of cold water to those little ones of yours in their names and upon their urging. We pray for everyone in Cambodia whom you consider to be among the prophets, righteous, and disciples and all those who welcome them as such and do heed their appeals. God, make us do this not to receive any reward in heaven but bless us with the utmost reward of being counted as a disciple of yours for at least a moment in this earthly sojourn of ours. Give us strength and grace as our reward for striving and yearning to follow you, O God, even if we continue to falter. In Jesus name, we pray, Amen!
Prayer written by Dr. Sarosh Koshy, Global Relations Minister, Southern Asia
Mission Moment from Cambodia
Children’s Future International (CFI) was founded in 2009 as a community-based organization to protect, promote rights, and defend the dignity of the most vulnerable children. Today, CFI supports more than 400 youth and their families in the rural areas of Battambang Province in Cambodia through four interlinking program areas; the learning center, education advocacy, social work, and youth empowerment projects.
CFI aims to prevent child labor or even trafficking but is ready to intervene and support children and their families in extreme situations. CFI also believes that education is key to improving their future and the situation in the community.
CFI has four service areas to meet the whole needs of each individual child. With social work, our team reaches around 300 children and young people through case management, counseling, emergency food support, livelihood support, and housing support. Our Learning Center supports over 100 students by providing children struggling with public school education with supplementary classes to build basic literacy in Khmer and math, English, and computer classes. Our advocacy education team keeps more than 200 students in the school, helps re-enroll them if they’ve quit school, and provides workshops to encourage children to pursue excellent jobs through either formal education or vocational training. Besides our core programs, CFI offers several special projects to provide additional opportunities to nearly 1,000 students through leadership programs, youth empowerment, and professional preparation. For example, we work with an India-based NGO called Enabling Leadership to implement two leadership programs in public schools around Ek Phnom which build skills through football and Lego.
Since 2017, Global Ministries has supported CFI’s Social Work team to help the most vulnerable families in our community who suffer from challenges such as poverty, abuse, neglect, migration, trafficking, and child labor. The collaboration with Global Ministries has been able to change families’ lives in our target communities through working with local authorities to prevent human trafficking, promote migrants staying in their home community or providing safe migration workshops, providing counseling and support to families in difficult situations, housing repair, and small business start-ups support such as raising chickens or starting a convenience store or laundry business.
One family that CFI worked with to repair their home wanted to thank everyone for the support, saying, “Now we have a good place to sleep, and we don’t have to worry about the roof leaking when it rains now.”
Mission Moment written by Mr. Sophannak Soun and Ms. Partice Davison, respectively the Communications Officer and the Executive Director of Children’s Future International (CFI)
Mission Partners in Cambodia
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