A number of people have contacted us suggesting they would like to travel with us as soon as possible.  This is fantastic news, and we so want that too, BUT…current travel restrictions, (both for leaving the UK an other countries and entering the countries where our partner projects are located), make volunteering on site impractical at the present time.

In addition, as our partner projects are in developing countries where health care facilities may not be the same as in the UK, we would like to wait a little longer before placing volunteers abroad again.  As an example, we’ve just heard from our partners at Treak Community Centre that as a precautionary measure they’ve decided to close for two weeks – having just opened again a week ago….  This is because the Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who visited Cambodia on the 3rd November in connection with opening the Hungarian Embassy in Phnom Penh, was declared positive with the COVID-19 on the 4th of November when arriving in Thailand on his Asian tour.  As a result, schools in Phnom Penh have been closed for 2 weeks as the government traces and tests around 1,000 people who came into contact with Foreign Minister Szijjarto.

Compared to much of the rest of the world, Cambodia has done an amazing job controlling the virus.  As of yesterday the kingdom’s total cases stood at 301, with 288 recoveries.  However, in common with the international situation, a large outbreak would cause significant problems and the Cambodian health system could soon be overwhelmed.

So whilst we are desperate to start sending volunteers to the programmes we work with, and we shall as soon as we possibly can – we need to be very very careful. We need reliable, speedy and verifiable test-and-trace.

BUT we are not letting the pandemic stop us from supporting the programmes we work with.

If you would like to help our projects you could start your volunteer experience by volunteering for one of our projects from home – whilst we work with you to plan an in situ placement for when it is safe for us all to travel again – take a look here

If you would like to know more about the virus and Cambodia take a look here