Caritas Cambodia 20 Anniversary 1990-2010

Caritas Cambodia, an official social development arm of the Catholic Church in Cambodia, has been built on the values of love, concern, justice, peace, unity, sharing, and brotherhood. Established in 1990, Caritas Cambodia assists the poor, disadvantaged and displaced people of Cambodia.

Annual Report 2008

The Community Development Program has reached about 400 Village Development Associations (VDAs) across its target areas of 8 provinces. Trainings were initiated to enhance the capacity of the VDAs’ leaders, VDA members, women, and also the youth and children to help them work together to fight against poverty. Highlighted below are the achievements of the Community Empowerment Program that have been made throughout the year:

Annual Report 2006-2007

The Community Empowerment Programme is now taking place in six provinces across the country – Battambang, Kandal, Kampong Cham, Kampong Thom, Siem Reap and Preah Vihear. The programme aims to bring the poor and marginalised out of poverty and to help build community networks. The programme also inspires people to have critical thinking skills for their lives and includes such things as human values, dignity, self-reliance and basic rights and helps to make people better understand their essential roles in their communities and in the society.

Annual Report 2005-1

The highlights of the Community Based Child and Adolescent Mental Health program during 2005 were: following up awareness building exercise with action programs in the community, setting-up registers for data-management at the community level, distribution of seeds for home gardens during the monsoon, sharing achievements and challenges with the rest of the Caritas team, and taking the issue of prevention of needless disability to the national level.

History of Caritas Cambodia

Caritas Cambodia:
Caritas Cambodia is an official social development arm of the Bishop’s Conference of Cambodia has been built on the values of Love, Concern, Justice, Peace, Unity, Sharing and brotherhood.

Caritas Cambodia has two histories in the past 30 years. In 1970, the Catholic Church in Cambodia organized an Aid Commission to help the victims of war. This Aid Commission took the name of Caritas Cambodia that was also recognized by the Caritas Internationalis and accepted it as a full-fledged member in 1973. This Caritas functioned till 17th April 1975, the date when Khmer Rouge took over the political power in Phnom Penh. There was not only the closure of Caritas Cambodia and all religious activities but also there were the Vietnamese Army overthrew genocide of 1.7 million people out of the total 8 million Cambodians this regime in 1979.

Though after the Pol Pot Regime people who fled away have came back to their places in the country, practicing religion was fully banned under the Communist Regime. This continued till March 1990. In April 1990 freedom to practice religion was given to Cambodians.