Foster Care & Building A Future – Yin

We spoke recently with Pisith, who is the Building Futures Program coordinator at Mith Samlanh, a ChildSafe Alliance and 3PC partner program which operates in Phnom Penh Cambodia.

He talked to us about Yin, a young person that the program had worked with (their first foster care case), and her progress on building a better future for herself over the years she had been supported by Mith Samlanh. In Pisith’s words, this is her amazing journey…

“Every case is different. Different challenges, different approaches needed. Young people themselves are all different, some are more confident than others, others need lots of support.

Take Yin* for example.

We first met her back in 2002 , when she was only 10 years old. Her mum was really sick. She had HIV/AIDS, which her father had actually died of when they were still living in Prey Veng province, before they moved to the city. Unfortunately her mum didn’t survive. She died that year. While she was in the hospital we needed to find a way of caring for Yin. This was actually the very first case where we looked to find appropriate fostering and we were able to find a foster care mother for Yin.

In the following years Yin was also supported by our all programs at Mith Samlanh. We reintegrated her to school, and then when she was old enough she joined one of our vocational training programs. She chose the beauty training.

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We also arranged education assistance at  a local University for her, and when she graduated we found her a job as a beautician. She then started her own beauty salon and online freelance sales consultancy, operating out of her foster parents home. She also worked in real estate and started up an on-line kitchen facilities business and bought land in the provinces and continues to set new goals for herself!

We heard from her again recently – some really lovely news. She’s 25 now, and is getting married very soon. Our family tracing team helped to trace and find surviving relatives of her late mum last week, so they will also be coming to her wedding – she is so delighted about that!”

*name changed to protect her identity