VIVA LA VIDA CULTURAL CENTER
The achievement of a small big dream.
Background
The Viva La Vida Cultural Center is located in Phoum Thmey, a small village of the Cambodian country side. Phoum Thmey is part of the Krala commune, consisting of 14 villages and included in the district of Kampong Siem. The village is 110 km from Phnom Penh and 12 km from the city of Kampong Cham, capital of the homonymous province. Phoum Thmey has 670 inhabitants, out of a total of 10,700 of the entire community of Krala.
Many children in this area live in poverty and often cannot attend school because they are forced to work or beg. Some of them are orphans, because the parentsor abandoned by them.
The idea of founding a center for these children was born after observing the reality, with the aim of creating a better future with the support of volunteers and the local population.
Who we are helping
All the children of the village can attend the Viva La Vida Cultural Center to make different activities and learn the English language.
Following a detailed study we started to offer daily support to the poorest children in the area where we work and we carried out renovations of different homes where children and adults lived in inhumane conditions.
The Viva La Vida Cultural Center
The whole center is developing on a land provided by a local owner who works with us indefinitely. It consists of the following macro-elements:
- A comfortable volunteers’ house obtained from the renovation of a traditional Khmer house, which is welcoming volunteers from all over the world and the heart of our project.
- An area dedicated to agriculture and hens, to teach children these fundamental activities and to have an internal production of food.
- An integrative extra-curricular school divided into three areas: a classroom where local teachers do daily English lessons for 100 children divided into 4 classes; a computer room equipped with 7 computers, a printer and a video projector where we teach the use of computers to teenagers of the fourth class; a laboratory where we are studying how to fight the problem of waste through creative recycling and where we do, with the help of volunteers, training workshops such as music, painting, sports, etc.
- A playground where the smaller children can play freely and where daily we carry out educational activities.A recreational area with a sports field, where children can play and train different sports, providing them with a safe place to spend their free time.
- Our dream is to build a base clinic in the center and an area with dormitories that can accommodate the orphans in the area.
How to contribute to the project
You can help in many different ways:
- Buying from our solidarity shop or donate in our webpage.
- Organizing events in your city, such as dinners, aperitifs, concerts, sale of items, lotteries or anything to raise funds. Contact us if you are interested!
- Coming directly to Cambodia to volunteer! In this way you will see with your own eyes what we do and you can contribute in a practical way to our projects.
- Spread the word!Share the project with your facebook friends or participate in crowdfunding events that we periodically open in response to the needs of children
- Adopt the Viva la Vida Cultural Center
