Tuesday Nov 1 It was 5:45 am as our alarm went of and we clambered out of bed for a quick wash and hasty exit down to the car for breakfast. It's light by 5:30 am so most of the town is usually on the move. One thing I'll never get used to is the sanitation techniques. While toilets are the norm the non-use of toilet paper is something one never seems to get used to. Maybe that's something to share on the next blog. :-) At 7:30 am, after a superb Cambodian breakfast, headed to the FH Cambodian house for morning devotions with their staff.

I couldn't understand a thing they said but how great to know that we were worshipping the same loving God. Mark Fender, the FH Director talked about their child centered community development strategy. A staggering 33.3% of Cambodians are aged between 0-14 (as of 2009). There is a poor quality of overall education in the country and one of the biggest unreached people groups in the world. FH Cambodia does not seek to accomplish welfare but rather, uses a holistic community development strategy called the five steps of hope. The purpose of these five steps is to empower community leaders and volunteers to pursue the wholistic well-being of their communities in alignment with biblical values. In utilizing this approach, they walk with a village community over a 7-9 year period and seek to lift the capacity of the community to take care of themselves.

What are the five steps? They include: Preparation is about preparing ourselves, our vision and our team for the community development process Exploration is about selecting a community and beginning to build relationships with it Mobilization is about imparting vision to the community leaders of what their community could become Empowerment is about developing people in the community through technical training (eg. Health, Child Development, Agriculture, Savings etc) in the areas of need that they have identified Reproduction is about the empowered community applying and living by the knowledge and principles that they have learned and then passing these on to others.

It was an awesome privilege to spend the rest of the day in villages hearing the stories of those in villages who were mostly in the empowerment step. We saw a school and spent time with a village chief as he explained how his Village Development Committee had built a store where those in the village could buy a share and each six months the money that was made was distributed to its shareholders. Very innovative for this village. We then visited a rice farmer who had learnt a new agricultural technique that increased his rice productivity. Prior to learning this skill, he regularly produced around 1.5 tons per hectare per year. Now he produces around 6.7 tons per hectare. These higher yields mean he has extra money to pursue other farming initiatives (Eg Chicken Farming) and provide better education for his kids. A visit with a pig farmer and a group of young teenagers who had started a savings group showed just how well FH Cambodia was doing in this region.

Our final village visit took us all afternoon and is a memory I'll never forget. The seven of us boarded a trailer and were taken 6 kilometers into the bush to another village which was just entering the mobilization stage. The hour long trip into the village took us over some of the most rugged roads I've ever seen. On one occasion the trailer lurched precariously and stopped the tractor dead in its tracks. The trailed had dropped into a mud hole so deep that the only thing that prevented it from flipping was the axle itself. This ride gave all of us a deep appreciation for the folk in this village and what they had to endure on a regular basis. Tough stuff.

It's our last night in Cambodia and I've thoroughly enjoyed this trip. What a blessing to be here with Paul Craig (aka Tony), Jonathon Shanks (aka Owen), Nick Scott, John Hickey (aka Vinney) and Scotty Higgins. While I'm ready to go home, my time here in this country has opened my eyes to the work of BWAA and I have a fresh insight into best practice community aid development in other parts of the globe. While there is much still I don't understand about aid work, I now have a greater appreciation for the work of our baptist agency as it seeks to make a difference in the lives of other people in developing countries around the globe.