Dear Friends, It’s the time of the year again when Mother’s Heart holds a day of prayer for our organization. This year, it will be held next month, on the 8th of July, and we would like to invite you to join us, wherever you are.
For our friends in Cambodia, do mark your calendars. We will gather in our office to pray in the morning, and you are welcome to come in at any time between 9am to 12nn.
Please join us as we thank God for sustaining us this far, especially in this difficult time, and to pray for continued blessings and provision, and for the health and safety of our beneficiaries, staff, and supporters here and everywhere.
The Infant Mental Health Awareness week has already passed (June 14-20, in the UK and Australia) but we at Mother's Heart would like to add our voice in underscoring the importance of babies' emotional well-being and development.
To highlight the event, we are sharing this article by our partner, Children in Families. It is an interview about Mother's Heart 's work, and describes how we work together to educate and equip mothers and caretakers on their important role in babies' brain development, and to ensure that babies have the best chance at building attachment and mental health.
"It’s a partnership that marries their expertise of caring for mothers and infants with ours of having solid, loving homes open to babies, with social workers to help monitor bonding and attachment." To read more, please click this link.
Many of those who fell into the trafficking trap are women from rural villages jumping into a promised better income and brighter prospects only to find that they have been sold and forced to marry "wealthy men" and subjected to domestic servitude.
We are proud to be in partnership with Ratanak International. In the past two years, Mother's Heart and Ratanak International worked together to support women who have survived trafficking and helped them get back on their feet again.
*** The Trafficking Journey - Setting the Perfect Trap
Each year, in Cambodia, thousands of young women and men are trafficked and exploited. How does this happen?
When we talk to the trafficking survivors in our programs, the trafficking journey they describe often begins with meeting a trafficking broker. Sometimes this is a stranger, sometimes it is a village member, neighbour or even a family member that has been recruited into finding young men and women for labour, marriages abroad or sexual exploitation. Some brokers might not even fully understand what will happen to the young men or women they convince.
Trafficking brokers typically approach vulnerable Cambodians who are living in severe poverty, struggling with debt or family illness with few other options to remedy their economic situations. Brokers offer high paying "opportunities" for work abroad or in the city, or share of idyllic marriages with "kind, wealthy and generous men" in foreign countries that will support families back in Cambodia. Doesn't sound so bad, does it?The trap is set. Read more about Ratanak International's work and advocacy here.
