As one way to make our trip a more educational and contributing experience we decided to do some volunteer work while en route. Doing volunteer work sounds like it should be rather staight forward but is a bit more complicated than it first sounds. However we were very lucky to have Dan's Aunt Carol help us out. Carol is the director of Service Link which is part of the CRWRC (Christian World Relief Committee). Her job is to match volunteers to opportunities and so she was perfectly positioned to help us. We told her where we would be going and when and she conferred with some CRWRC workers in the area. After conferring she got back to us with an opportunity in Cambodia. It sounded interesting and so we jumped at the chance.

For one month the four of us are going to be working in the CRWRC office in Phnom Pehn. Jon and Deb are going to be teaching English and computer skills to office staff. Here is a PDF file with the details of their volunteer schedule. Dan and Sarah are going to be doing needs assesment. Right now the CRWRC is working with a number of smaller local NGOs. It seems the main goal of these partnerships is for CRWRC to provide oganizational capacity (click on the middle Index link of the linked Best Practices page to see some resources on organizational capacity) to the local NGOs. To that end Dan and Sarah will be visiting the offices of EFC (Evangelical Fellowship of Cambodia) to help determine how best CRWRC can provide this organizational capacity. This PDF file details exactly when, how and what we will be doing. For more information on CRWRC's general Cambodia program please open or save this PDF file. This file was created by a CRWRC staff in Cambodia and provided by Kristen DeRoo Vandenberg, a CRWRC staff person.