PROJECT #222
Project #222 | Crisis Pregnancy Support Program in Cambodia
Our Partnership with Mother’s Heart Organization (MHO)
As in many countries, women in Cambodia face unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. While the stigma of being single and pregnant is beginning to lessen in western countries, women and girls in Cambodia are often judged as promiscuous or morally corrupt for being single and pregnant. Women and girls facing crisis pregnancy in Cambodia often come from vulnerable or traumatic backgrounds including rape, poverty, addiction, trafficking, sexual exploitation, incest, or disability. In 2018 alone, 41% of women supported by Mother’s Heart Organization were underage, and 40% were raped, trafficked or involved in prostitution. These vulnerabilities are compounded when they are abandoned by their partners and families, leaving women to feel even more isolated and overwhelmed.
One Day’s Wages partnered with Mother’s Heart Organization (MHO) to support women experiencing crisis pregnancies in Cambodia’s Battambang province with a wide range of resources. MHO is the first and currently the only crisis pregnancy center in the country that offers holistic support services to women. Through our partnership, 50 women and girls received prenatal care, counseling, baby baskets with supplies for newborns, and home visits from a midwife. MHO also provided education on maternal and newborn health, rental assistance and legal advice. With this support, new mothers have the confidence and resources to provide for their children.
Our Collective Impact
Moms Supported
People Directly Impacted
Clients Received Legal Support
Meet Vorleak
Each year, dozens of Cambodian women are trafficked to China and sold as brides. Vorleak* came from a poor farming family in rural Cambodia, where she helped her widowed mother support the family of ten. One day, a stranger approached her family offering her work in China as domestic help for $1,000 a month. Like many other young women in rural villages, she was promised a better income and brighter future for her family. Instead she found out that she had been sold as a new wife to a Chinese man. For months, Vorleak was in domestic servitude under the close watch of her husband and his family. They controlled her comings and goings, finances, and banned her from communicating with her family in Cambodia. When Vorleak found out she was pregnant, she was distraught. However, undaunted, she made a plan to escape. One day she found her opportunity to run away and made it to an embassy where she was assisted to come back to Cambodia.
Pregnant and ashamed to go back to her village, she was referred to MHO by the Provincial Office of Social Affairs, Youth, and Veterans Affairs; she was given immediate medical and social support. Through counseling and home-visits, regular maternity check ups, and maternal education classes, Vorleak began to heal from her ordeal. She began to smile again and engage with those around her. Our midwife was happy to report a healthy mom and baby. These days, Vorleak is back in her village. She continues to receive support from Mother’s Heart for her ongoing story of recovery.
*pseudonym used
Thank you for making this possible!
Our movement is grassroots, to us that not only means the work on the ground is led by local leaders with the support of the community, but it also means that we raise the funds for our projects through everyday donors just like you. In addition to all the donors that gave $25, $100, or $250 and the campaigners that ran a race or donated their birthday to raise funds, we also want to thank our generous business, school, and faith sponsors who believed in our work and joined the movement.
If you want to support future projects like this you can make a donation to our maternal and child health fund.
One Day's Wages is a grassroots movement of people, stories, and actions to alleviate extreme global poverty
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