House building in Cambodia

In 2006, a team from Gerringong Anglican travelled to Cambodia to complete the building of eight houses in a rural village outside the capital, Phnom Penh. Working alongside Tabitha Cambodia, the team of twenty completed the houses in the two days allocated for this purpose.

Since then, a team from Gerringong Anglican has travelled to Cambodia to undertake house building in 2007 and 2009. Our next trip is planned for 2011.

Tabitha Cambodia was founded in 1994 by Janne Ritskes, a Canadian with 20 years experience working in the slums of the United States, Philippines, Kenya and Cambodia. Tabitha Cambodia works exclusively to improve the lives of the poorest of the poor.

Tabitha Cambodia believes “Family Development through Savings”, a micro-banking program, is the key to Tabitha’s success At any one time, Tabitha is assisting over 33,000 families (representing over 264,000 people) to save their way out of desperate poverty. Participation in the “Savings Program” is a pre-requisite for families or villages to participate in other Tabitha programs.

Most families participating in the Family Development Program eventually are able to save enough money to buy land and the materials to build a house. However, some very poor families cannot save the complete AUD1500 for a house; reasons include head of the family being a widow, single mother or landmine victim, or the family lives in a very poor area. For such families, Tabitha Cambodia brings international, volunteer building teams to Cambodia to supply the additional money and work under the direction of Khmer builders to construct simple houses.

The house-building program commenced in 1996, with students from the international schools in Singapore and Cambodia building two houses. The program has since expanded to include students, teachers, parents, individuals and corporate groups. Currently, there are, on average, six teams of volunteers per month coming from Cambodia, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Australia, United States of America, United Kingdom and Canada to build houses.

Gerringong Anglican had a team of 21 return to Cambodia in 2007. This time, ten houses were constructed. About one third of the 2007 team had built before in 2006. In 2009, a team of 24 travelled over in July, when once again, ten houses were constructed. Additionally, we raised sufficient funds to construct three large ponds which villagers use for irricgation and fish farming. In 2009, we built out of the township of Kompong Thom, midway between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, the gateway to the temple ruins of ancient Angkor.

Our trip to Cambodia was one of the best experiences many of the travellers said they have had and many have expressed how great it was to be with a Christian ‘family’ for ten days and the fellowship between young and old will not be forgotten. When asked the question of why so many from our church keep going back to Cambodia, most answered with a resounding ‘the work we do is so worthwhile and to see how wonderful the Cambodian people are and there seems to be a great hope for their future’.

Planning for 2011 is well under way. We're expecting our biggest team yet and have an ambitious plan to build twenty houses. This will require significant fundraising. If you'd care to support the team's fundraising efforts you can do so online here.  Alternatively, you can download a donation form from the Downloads section on our own site and send in a contribution via mail. If you wish to mail your donation, download the form from our site rather than the Tabitha Australia site so that the contribution is certainly directed towards our building project.