Cambodian Street Kids

Cambodia is a developing country and there are so many people who suffer poverty at the same time. Cambodia suffered a great damage after Pol Pot Regime, which caused most of Cambodian people live a miserable life and in poverty. Still most of Cambodian families have a hard time raising their kids because they have a financial crisis within their family. In Phnom Penh and in the countryside, we can see there are a lot of homeless people who mostly are kids and older people. In fact, each year, Cambodia receives a lot of aids from other countries. Moreover, there are many NGOs who try to help Cambodian children by providing free school, food, and place to stay.

Nowadays, the biggest problem in the Cambodian society is about lack of human resources. Because there are so many kids who decide to drop school and some of them do not have enough money to study. As Cambodia is a poor country, there are a lot of children who do not have a chance to go to school. Most of them end up selling some flowers or bracelets along the road, especially in Phnom Penh; while the others end up working at the restaurants like washing dishes or serving food. There are several factors that lead them to do this.

First, they do not have enough money to pay for the tuition fee. Even in the public schools, kids must pay money to study every day. They are afraid that they do not have enough money to pay for that therefore they decide not to go to school at all. Secondly, their parents do not allow them to study. There are many Cambodian families (mostly poor with low education) that prefer their children to find money to support the family. As a mother and father, why do they do like this to their kids? Why do they prefer to stay at home and let their kids go out and find money to buy food while they are doing nothing at all? In my opinion, I think the reason is that those parents might think that people mostly feel pity when they see a kid sell something along the road and they will end up helping those kids like by buying the flowers or sometime they give more money. I am so shocked to see that those parents just sit under the tree and watch their kids who are 4 or 5 years old stand on the road begging people for money or selling flowers under the hot weather. However, most people want to help those kids by deciding not to buy those flowers or give them money. Therefore, their parents might change their thoughts and stop their kids from doing that. In short, I hope the Cambodian government will come up with a solution to deal with this major problem soon.