Two Weeks and a Workshop

It's been two weeks since I've written because I really only have time to blog on the weekends, and last weekend, I had a Saturday morning meeting at GCT, got a bike, and moved… so blog-writing just didn't make it in.

I am now living with Kerry, an Australian woman who I know I will learn a lot from. I went to her church with her last Sunday, and it's a charismatic church, which is great, because I have very little first-hand knowledge of charismatic or Pentecostal churches, and I'm curious to learn more about what Christ is doing in this arm of his Body.

On Friday, GCT put on the workshop we’d been preparing for during the past few weeks. It had to do with the research GCT has been doing, which I need to catch you up on before explaining the workshop.

One of GCT’s main missions is to help women and youth receive job training, find internships, and get jobs that are fulfilling for them and good for society. Partly, GCT does this through hiring volunteer or paid interns and training them through the work they do.

But recently, GCT has had a grant from Love 146 to research all this on a broader scale. Love 146* is an organization devoted to the abolition of child sex slavery and exploitation. They are starting to do some studies following the children they are able to free. Unfortunately, youth who find no alternate way of making a living often end up back in the brothels.

Dr. Glenn Miles, a director in Love 146, helped GCT get a grant from Love 146 after talking with my boss, Navy Chhay. Navy’s idea is to research on Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) who provide training to at-risk youth and women, as well as companies who might employ youth and women after they are trained. Eventually, this research might lead to a network of training providers and employers that can be used in finding training for young job-seekers, finding employment for trainees, and collaboration and feedback between organizations to make current training better.

So, for the past few months, GCT has been conducting some preliminary research with some help from the Chab Dai Coalition, which is a network of anti-human trafficking and exploitation organizations. (http://www.chabdai.org/home.html) And as a last stage in our preliminary research – to get more ideas and to increase interest - we invited all of the training providers and employers whom we interviewed to a workshop this past Friday.

The workshop went quite well (although not according to plan time-wise – as is normative here in Cambodia!). As a whole, the participants decided that networking together was so important that they want to meet together again every three months! GCT also received a few ideas on organizations that might fund further research, so for the next week or so, we’ll be finishing up the report to send it out in hopes of funding.

Please pray that if this research is something that God wants GCT to continue, He’ll provide for us to continue it. In my next entry, I’ll have to tell you more about my wonderful co-workers at GCT, as I’m getting to know them better.

Shalom!

Amanda

P.S. I just watched a tourist take a picture of my bike lined up next to a bunch of motos outside of the coffee shop where I'm sitting. Apparently, I am now part of the scenery here :)

*The number 146 comes from a little girl with fight left in her eyes, who the founders of Love 146 saw during an undercover brothel investigation – she was being sold by that number. The full story is well worth reading: http://love146.org/love-story