3101 "Celebrating children": another of the 20th anniversary events for DBCF
austraLasia #3101
"Celebrating children":
another of the 20th
anniversary events for DBCF
PHNOM PENH: 22 July
2012 -- “Celebrating
Children” was the 20th anniversary activity that featured the
gathering
of more than 2,200 children from forty-seven villages of
fourteen
provinces of Cambodia at the Don Bosco Technical School Campus
at Phnom
Penh on 21st July 2012 to celebrate 20 years of love and
service
(1992-2012). Salesians, DBCF staff, volunteers, adults, youth
and
children were around St. John Bosco, Father and Teacher of
youth with
songs, dances, dramas and life witnesses of better change
after having
helped and supported by DBCF ministries. DBCF has served poor
and
marginalized children to access to compulsory basic and
literacy
education and AIDS orphans are offered health and education
opportunities like any ordinary child in Cambodia.
“Educating children, building their future” summarizes the
activities
of the Don Bosco Children Fund (DBCF) Cambodia. Conceived in
January
25, 1992 to give opportunities to poor and orphaned children
to go
school and receive basic education, the project continues up
to this
date.
It is important not to confuse two entities here: the DBFC, or
Don
Bosco Foundation, Cambodia, which had its origins in the Khmer
Refugee
camps in Thailand in the 1980s, then developed into a
fully-fledged
organisation under the Salesian Congregation Thai Province,
and the
DBCF or Don Bosco Children Fund, created by the DBFC to
support
children from vulnerable communities so they can have basics
such as
food to eat and schools to attend. Both entities involve a
huge number
of donors, volunteers, NGOs, local support reaching to the
highest
levels of the Kingdom of Cambodia.
It is fitting that the DB school in Phnom Penh was chosen for
this
particular gathering. After Royal invitation in 1990 for 'Don
Bosco' to
come to the city. the DB school opened a year later. It was
the first
of what has developed into a major educational presence across
many
parts of the kingdom
