Sex Work and Dignity in Cambodia – Not Everyone’s a Victim at That Girly Bar

Sex work is still stigmatized in Cambodia, a largely conservative nation, despite what Street 51s more than healthy hostess bar trade may lead you to believe. A group of sex workers has decided to create a union and ask for the right to work—and most interestingly, they want to let people know that they don’t consider themselves victims, and they are not asking for anybody’s sympathy.

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Trash Uncle

This story won the grand prize for "Story by an individual” award in the LIN Volunteer Stories Competition 2011. The competition was organised by LIN Center for Community Development, a philathropic institution that supports grassroots non-profit organisations in and and around Ho Chi Minh City. Words by Nguyen Huong Dao. Translated by UNV volunteers

I would like to tell you a story about the Nam Dinh Trash Team. It is special for me, and hopefully for you too. I am pretty sure about this.

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Peace through superior poetry

Ryan Tong and Kosal Khiev are on a mission. Part of new arts collective Studio Revolt, these Asian-American activists – one a youth worker, the other a former refugee and convict recently deported from the US to his native Cambodia – are using poetry to teach orphans the delicate art of self-expression. Ninety kids aged seven to 16, who survive by scavenging from Phnom Penh’s dump sites, are embarking on a voyage of self-discovery through spoken word at local NGO A New Day Cambodia.

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2011 - 2012 - Transiting – from the Past through the Present into the Future

The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) carries, with every e-mail sent, the following line:

“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”

Have a look – click! - at their resources: the Documentation Center of Cambodia, the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor, and the Sleuk Rith Institute – the latter is a Permanent Documentation Center of Cambodia, explaining that it refers to “Sleuk Rith, dried leaves that Cambodian religious leaders and scholars have used for centuries to write on them and to document history, disseminate knowledge, and preserve culture.”

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