Family Based Care
A Difficult Year, A Hopeful Future
Read CIF’s 2024 Annual Impact Report. Despite global crises and funding challenges, we strengthened partnerships, expanded OSCaR, and saw 250% growth in donor giving. CIF’s 2024 Annual Impact Report reflects a year of resilience and transformation. Despite financial challenges, donor losses, and global crises, CIF remained steadfast in its mission to keep children safe in families. The report highlights strengthened government partnerships, expanded use of our OSCaR case management system, and a 250% increase in individual giving. Alongside key data, we share powerful stories of change made possible through your support.
A Volunteer Story: Willingness to Learn and Building Capacity
What happens when a three-day trip to Cambodia from Australia turns into a long-term journey? Being locally run and staffed is one of the core values of Children in Families (CIF); however, there are a few foreigners who volunteer long-term with CIF to help build staff capacity. For International Day for the Volunteer, we are…
Discover Family Based Care
Research shows that voluntourism to orphanages is harmful to children growing up in those institutions. Voluntourism refers to when people combine tourism with the desire to make a difference. They want to serve the people they have been visiting, often by volunteering at an orphanage. Despite their good intentions, this practice increases child protection and…
Beauty in Muddy Waters
The mud comes up to mid-calf height. It is thick and sticky, leaving a dark brown coating on every surface it touches. We step hesitantly, searching for a firm footing, but our feet only sink further. Fortunately, the muddy path only lasts about three meters. Unfortunately, it is the only way in and out of…
Meet Damy: Caring for Children by Caring About Numbers
Have you ever donated to Children in Families and wondered who received the money at the other end? Someone has to make sure it gets to the right people, right? Our administration department is staffed by two wonderful ladies, Damy and Phalyn, who faithfully do the paperwork needed to keep CIF running smoothly. Today we…
You Know My Name: The Journey to Belonging
Last month we introduced you to Courtney, one of our ABLE Technical advisers. This month she reflects on her experience of accompanying one of our ABLE children to a medical appointment. We arrive at the hospital and wander around the massive grounds until we find the pediatric therapy center. Long is a high-energy 12 year-old…
Learning to stand on his own two feet: A day in the life of ABLE
The air is cool, much cooler than expected in July. We are on a tuktuk, heading out to the Cambodian school of Prosthetics and Orthotics. We have a follow up appointment for one of our foster care children, Leak (pronounced Lay-ak). Like many of our foster care and kinship care cases, Leak has special needs,…
Celebrating ‘Anne with an E’ Part 3: Family- based care in Fiction
When we think of foster care and kinship care in popular fiction, we can very easily believe that kinship care and foster care are harmful.
Celebrating ‘Anne with an E’ Part 2: Resilience and Reintegration
Myth #1: Orphans are inherently resilient and institutionalised children can easily reintegrate into society. Last post we introduced the idea that orphans are a central part of Western popular culture. If you missed it, you can find it here. We talked about how the words often used to talk about orphans evoke a strong sense…
Celebrating ‘Anne with an E’: Orphans in Popular Culture
Part One: An Introduction to Orphans in Popular Culture Ludwig Wittgenstein once said “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” Our language shapes our perceptions of what life is like, what our values are and the way we understand the world. The language we use matters. The way we tell stories…
Changing a Nation: One Child at a Time
Meet Naomy. With a gorgeous singing voice and bright smile, this intelligent, talented mother of two children – teenagers – has been our Program Director for almost three years now. She joined us from the collaborative organization, Chab Dai, where she spent four years serving as their Project Manager. Naomy is the oversight for Foster…
Support Families, Not Orphanages
Explaining why you should support families, not orphanages, Friends-International put out a short-but-powerful illustrated ChildSafe video. They reiterated the same message Lumos Int., Children in Families (CIF), and several other organizations have found through research: most children in orphanages have families; they just live in poverty. Many issues stem from placing children into institutional care. The…
Orphanages to Family Care: Leakena at CIF
Meet Leakena. This amazing, 28-year-old Khmer woman started at CIF as our Outreach to Orphanages Manager in January 2016. She was previously a teacher’s assistant for toddlers at an international school. She also volunteered at Raven’s Hope International as a Liaison helping build spiritual growth, leadership development, and mission opportunities to young women from around the world. When Leakena heard about…
Trafficking Children Part II: Solutions
In our last piece, we addressed the problem of child trafficking, and the forms it takes around the world. This time, we’re looking at the hope. We’re going to walk through recognizing the systematic issues behind trafficking and the practical steps all of us can take to help solve the issue. After all, every child deserves a chance to…
Foster Care: Sreynear’s New Beginning
Meet Sreynear, one of our beautiful foster children who went from a place of pain – a sad child who acted out in anger – to a place of life and of thriving. We are so proud of her Foster Care family for their incredible love and endurance through the difficult times. Even more, we…
Kinship for Samnant
*Follow our CIF staff narrative on a field visit to check-in on a Kinship Care Family outside of bustling Phnom Penh. Names have been changed to protect identities.* “Do you want to go with me on a family visit?” My coworker, our Kinship Care Program Manager, peered at me from behind his computer. “Yes,…
Rithy* and Hope for Children with Disabilities
As Children in Families (CIF) grows we hope to never lose focus on what really matters – each individual. Recently one of our Kinship and ABLE program families offered to give our readers a glimpse into their life. We are excited to share Rithy’s* (name changed) story as a snapshot of how there really can be…
What’s in an Orphan Photo?
THE ORPHAN PHOTO Iranian photographer and artist, Bahareh Bisheh, took this captivating image of his little cousin after she had fallen asleep on the pavement outside their home. The photograph took the social media world by storm, the story of this “orphan photo” evolving into an orphan missing her mother. REMINDER AND RESPONSE The incredibly…