Green Gecko Project, Siem Reap, Cambodia

We visited a project called Green Gecko http://www.greengeckoproject.org in Siem Reap.

The Green Gecko Project focuses on helping street kids. It was very well-run. Some things that stood out in what they are doing:

• The children are organized into groups identified by an animal, e.g., with names like the bumble bees, frogs, tigers, monkeys, snakes, elephants... The children in each group range in ages from young to late teens. Each group has their own area for eating lunch, etc. and they each have a permanent "mother" and a "father", and "uncle" and "aunty". These adults have a corresponding role in the children's lives while the children are in the community. Remember, these are street kids, who most likely come from non-existent or dysfunctional families and communities. So Green Gecko gives the kids a functional family and community with corresponding responsibilities.
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The children who have a home to go to, are strongly encouraged to go home on the weekends. This can be a problem if the home is dysfunctional, so Green Gecko has a social worker who works with the family, to ensure the children are going back to a functional home with food, no alcohol and good communications. The Green Gecko Project understands that parents need to be involved if a good environment is going to be developed. So children are not forced to go home on the weekends if they don't want to, but they are strongly encouraged to do so when the social worker deems the parents to be ready for it.
• The green gecko project runs out of a base where the children do everything except formal education (they attend school). So they eat, sleep, play, clean, do activities like games, reading, drawing, watching movies, etc. on the base. They do everything in their groups, which emulate families living in communities. They do things like growing their own food in a garden, playing soccer and once a week they watch English movies so they get exposed to English...
• Some of the "children" were older than 18. The Green Gecko Project lets children stay until they graduate from high school, and some of them got a later start on school than others.
  
  
• The Green Gecko project is based a few kms from Siem Reap, so volunteers can stay in Siem Reap and cycle to The Green Gecko Project everyday.

I was impressed and pleased to see such a well-run initiative doing such good work. The Green Gecko Project looks like a very good volunteer opportunity, especially to understand the wide range of factors that need to be addressed to help street kids integrate into constructive communities.

These are the "lunch rooms".