Here’s a great new initiative by Treak Creations, the new social enterprise linked to Treak Community Centre in Cambodia. Treak Creations is run by Salin, the manager of Treak Community Centre – it is a community-based programme which creates work and training opportunities for women from Treak Village. Their first focus has been sewing, making garments to sell both locally and online – take a look at their website to see some of their beautiful creations.

One of the things for sale on their website is the opportunity to pay for one of the women from Treak Village to make a school uniform for a local child. Children in Cambodia are not allowed to start school if they do not have a uniform, and these are quite expensive to buy, effectively excluding children from poorer families from the education system. Paying for someone to make uniforms benefits local people in two ways – it provides employment for local women AND enables children to start school – all for the very reasonable sum of $15! Uniforms will be distributed via the nursery classes at Treak Community Centre, one class (about 20 children) at a time to avoid any discrimination.

One of our volunteers included information about this initiative in a talk she gave to a women’s group. The ladies in this group had no interest in volunteering themselves – however they loved the idea of sponsoring this initiative which enables them to support both women and children – two subjects dear to their hearts. Donations from that group alone are paying for 14 uniforms to be made.

If anyone would like to contribute to this initiative or could promote it to others, you can donate through their Just Giving page, labelling your donation ‘school uniforms’. It would be great to get enough donations for at least 6 more uniforms so the first class can be kitted out ready for the new school year!

Treak Creations is starting to expand – a new kitchen is being built and their next focus (alongside sewing) will be on cooking and food products. Look out for news of this in future newsletters.

To learn more about volunteer opportunities at Treak Creations and/or Treak Community Centre follow the links or email dianne@travel-peopleandplaces.co.uk