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Background
Cambodia is located in Southeast Asia, sharing borders with Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. Following French colonization, Cambodia went through various revolutionary regimes. In 1975, the radical Khmer Rouge devastated Cambodia, taking the lives of over two million people with knock on effects throughout Cambodia. Unfortunately removal of this murderous regime was accompanied by the Vietnamese invasion which led to a prolonged civil war.
After the war, the toll on the people was immense. Most of the people remaining had lost members of their families, leaving countless widows and orphans. In addition, many were left disabled from war and it’s after effects such as land mines. The people faced many obstacles to normal life such as ill health, lack of education, unemployment and in particular poverty. Moreover, the psychological trauma from years of war, compounded by the enduring suffering of many survivors, began to manifest in dangerous behavior. An increase was seen in drug and alcohol addiction, the spread of communicable and venereal diseases, violence within families, sexual abuse of children and smuggling of children for sexual abuse, as well as other criminal activities.
Worried by this horrific crisis, Prof. Long Sedtha established the Build Your Future Today Centre (BFT). Prof. Sedtha’s life is nothing short of an inspiration, demonstrating determination and care for his fellow people. He experienced suffering and hardship during the Khmer rouge regime in addition to 12 years as a refugee at the Cambodia-Thai border camps. The Build Your Future Today Center (BFT) aims to provide the opportunity for people who have been living through and poverty with effective solutions to improve their lives with the ultimate aim of successfully establishing well-being, prosperity and peace to the people of Cambodia.
BFT Center is a local non-governmental organization recognized by the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Education and Youth, unaffiliated with any political party. Since April 2006, BFT has active programs in providing skill training; supporting the orphans and indigent children, community peace building and micro finance for poor family business development. In 2007 BFT was funded by the Ellis Foundation based in the USA to implement the project called “Better Future for Angkor Temple Schools” with four programs - to end malnutrition in the Kravan and Sra Srang school areas for all children; to give every child the opportunity to go to primary school and upper grades to get a useful education; to provide villagers in the school areas with opportunities to become literate and to make more money and coordinate these efforts to produce measurable improvements in food security, educational opportunity and income potential. In 2009 BFT has also been funded by Make Every Child Count based in Australia for the project of “Eradicate Extreme Poverty & Illiteracy in the Rural Areas” with three programs- to eliminate the illiteracy by improving the quality of teaching and learning through implementation of a child – friendly school and school readiness program aimed at holistic development of schools including inclusive education, school gardens, child supplementary feeding center and family / community participation in non / formal education; to Eradicate Extreme Poverty & hunger through providing life – skills training and working capital assistance to set up the family business development and to reduce and prevent domestic violence through providing moral education and intervention to school children and people living in crisis.
Now BFT is also very lucky and proud of having compassionate supporters who have initiatively established Friends of BFT in Australia, USA and Norway to help raising awareness and funds for the BFT center projects in Cambodia. Moreover, BFT has worked very cooperatively with private business sectors, individual generous donors and other organizations such as Water4Life, Every Child Has Rights to Clean Water, GLOVESCO – Cambodia, Cambodia Development Research Institute, Kids International Development Society in Canada, Medicorps International and Buddhism Foundation for Community Development to provide supports for the children with food, clean water and health care and education.