A highly toxic landfill has become home to hundreds of young children in the Steung Meanchey district of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. An estimated 40% of Cambodia’s children suffer from malnutrition, and those that spend their days scavenging a vast garbage dump for scraps of metal and plastic to sell, also risk serious illness, injury and death. The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) has made two grants to the Cambodian Children’s Fund (CCF) to provide nutritious meals year-round at CCF facilities that provide refuge, healthcare, and education for children from pre-school age upwards.

The Foundation’s second grant to CCF will provide food for over 1,000 people in toxic landfill area of Phnom Penh.

TPRF has given a grant of $20,000 to the Cambodian Children’s Fund (CCF), its second grant in two years, to provide food for 1,076 people trying to survive in the landfill district of Seung Meanchey, one of the most toxic garbage dumps in Southeast Asia. The children living here typically spend their days scavenging for food and recyclables, regularly suffering injury and disease as well as malnutrition. The estimated child mortality rate is 20%.

The TPRF grant will provide food year-round for four residential educational facilities, the Community Child Care Center for preschool children, and the Community Café. Scott Neeson, Founder and Executive Director of CCF, expressed, "The Cambodian Children's Fund serves one of the most impoverished and deprived populations in the world. The Prem Rawat Foundation grant provides our community with an assurance that their basic food requirements will continue to be met. With so many ambitious plans to save the world, the beauty of Prem Rawat's work is in its simplicity: feed the impoverished."

CCF’s four residential educational facilities literally rescue children who have been relegated to a life in the dump, providing them with food, medical care, education and preparation to beat the odds and live productive lives. TPRF funds will directly provide the 440 children three nutritious meals and a snack six days a week and lunch for 140 staff members, many of whom come from the same impoverished area.

TPRF’s grant will also provide two meals and a snack for 58 children aged two to six and 27 staff members of Community Child Care Center, where children are not only fed but given shelter, healthcare, immunizations, preschool education and training in hygiene while their parents attempt to earn a meager living.

Remaining funds will go to the Community Café, which offers subsidized meals made fresh daily from local produce for an average of 500 people a month.

CCF reports that, “Even in a short period of time, the change in these young children is remarkable. Within several weeks of improved nutrition, these previously malnourished children demonstrate more energy, focus and alertness. They show healthy height and body mass increases, and damaged hair and skin begin to heal and show new vitality.”

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