A few days after Disha departed for India, we welcomed our new class of YAMEN and SALT participants. This year we have our largest class since prior to the pandemic, with six participants from Kenya, India, Zambia, Tanzania, and the United States.

These young professionals will spend the next year living with Khmer host families while serving in various roles at local Cambodian organizations.

This year’s participants will be at…

• Voice of Love: Cambodia’s largest Christian radio station.
• Women Peace Makers: Peacebuilding NGO focused on empowering women as peacebuilders in their community and using empathy to defuse insider/outsider power dynamics.
• Mission DOVE: Christian NGO with various programs, volunteer will support their drop-in program for impoverished urban youth.
• Peace Bridges Organization: Christian peacebuilding NGO with an emphasis on environmental peacebuilding and interfaith dialogue.
• ODOV: Development NGO based in rural Mesang district, Prey Veng province. This was originally MCC Mesang but localized in 2004.
• Building Community Voices: Development and community empowerment NGO.

It’s been a long month of orientation for them but they’ve now moved into their host families and are starting with their work placements this morning. The only exception is Isaac, who will be at ODOV. I’m taking him out to Prey Veng province this morning.

In Khmer, we don’t use the direct translation for “host family” but instead use the Khmer for “god family”. This is along the lines of “god parent” in English implying a closer, less transactional, and more reciprocal relationship.