Bridging Worlds: A Volunteer’s Perspective – Part One

As an important part of their orientation, all volunteers with us spend time ‘on the field’, with the teams, to better understand their role in supporting our work.

This is a carefully controlled exercise, very much aligned with our policies on child protection, and our commitment to protection for all of those we work with.

It is extremely interesting for us to hear things from the volunteer’s perspective, so we are pleased to share with you part one of the thoughts of Clara, who is with us for a few months in Phnom Penh to support our Communications activities.

Field Feelings

‘When you join an organization as a volunteer, it goes without saying that you need to grasp all its dimensions in order to fully understand the purpose of your actions. So, as a new recruit to Friends-International, I spent the day with Mith Samlanh teams, who work with children and their families in various parts of the city.

Even though I’m aware of the realities, I think it’s difficult to fully grasp the precariousness and social reality of certain sections of the population when you’re not at all confronted with these situations on a daily basis. Especially as a 21-year-old Frenchwoman who has never left Europe, I’ve never had similar experiences in the past.

Firstly, I felt compassion when I saw the living conditions and poverty in which these people live. Isolated and marginalized, these communities have no choice but to stay in housing that is often deteriorated and very small. Faced with problems of drugs, alcohol, access to healthcare and employment that impact families, ensuring the protection of children and their schooling is a difficult job for the Mith Samlanh teams. All the more so as some of them unfortunately don’t want to be helped.

The second feeling was guilt, the guilt of having access to everything I need when others don’t have the same opportunities. Being a stranger to them, it’s hard not to feel like I’m intruding on their intimacy, and being intrusive. That’s why it’s so important for Khmer-speaking Cambodians to be the only ones in contact with them, not foreigners. I think that through this experience we really understand the possible dangers of voluntourism and the need to be careful about the impact our actions can have, even if we often think we’re setting off with good intentions.’

In the next (and final) part, Clara talks further about her perspective on the work (and impact) of Friends-International.

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