Dear Friends,
I’d like to introduce you to Vit.
 Vit is 55 years old and is married with two daughters. Her family used to live in a small wood and tin cottage in Village 4 on the peninsula that once jutted into Boeung Kak lake. Village 4 has since been erased from the map.
Vit moved to Boeung Kak in the mid-1990s because she could not make a living in her home province of Kampong Cham. Soon after she married, her mother-in-law gave her the house and a section of the lake, which she had purchased in the 1980s when Cambodia was still embroiled in civil war. Vit and her family lived happily in the area for thirteen years. It was easy for them to make a living growing morning glory on the lake and selling it in the nearby market. Her family never wanted for the basics of food, clean water and electricity. Her children both attended the nearby public school, as well as the Rudi Boa center – the community school that Bridges Across Borders Cambodia operated in Village 4. The center provided English and leadership classes and afterschool tutoring on math and science. Vit was a member of the Mom’s Group at the Rudi Boa Center and a part of the poor but thriving community of Village 4. She worked hard so that her children could receive a good education, because she herself is illiterate and wants more than anything else for her two girls to have more opportunities in life than she was ever afforded.
 In February 2007, Boeung Kak lake and the surrounding land was leased by the Cambodian Government to a private developer, stripping away the land rights of Vit’s family and 4000 other families who resided in the area. The company declared its plans to fill in the iconic lake and build high-end residential and commercial buildings in its place. One of the first things the company did was pour chemicals into the lake to kill all the morning glory. Vit recalls how the company would traverse the lake at night by speedboat ripping out the markers that demarcated the lake-dwellers’ morning glory plots. She felt scared and, like her neighbors, she worried that the company would try to burn down her house. In August the next year, the developer began pumping sand into the lake, causing Vit’s home and the other homes in Village 4 to be submerged.
Vit’s family had no choice but to move. The company gave them two options: a small flat in a relocation site on the distant outskirts of Phnom Penh or $8500 in cash. Although their property was worth at least $50,000, they decided to take the cash offer and move back to Kampong Cham province because the relocation site was too far from the city for them to make a living. First the company gave her $500 to transport her belongings away and forced her to dismantle her house in the rain. Vit spent the whole $500 moving the family’s belongings and scrap materials to a relative’s house in Kampong Cham. In order to receive the rest of her compensation, she was forced to sign a contract relinquishing her land and ownership rights to the company.
With the $8000, she bought a small plot of land, built a house, dug a well and planted some vegetables. The family used the rest of the money to live on over the past year and they have nothing left. Life for Vit’s family has become very hard. Their new home is far away from the market and they are unable to do business. Now she earns about $1.25 every few days growing and selling lemongrass and vegetables, which is not enough to feed her family. They have no more access to health care, which is a great hardship on the family, as Vit’s husband is disabled and requires medical attention. Her children no longer attend school regularly because it is more than 3 kilometers away. She tells us that her mental health has deteriorated and the displacement has caused problems in their family.
Vit’s story is common in Cambodia today, where the poor are being forced to pay the price of development. The developers are given carte blanche to take their property by force and rake in huge profits from land speculation, while the poor are driven into destitution.
Bridges Across Borders Cambodia is working hard to transform the dominant development model - which enriches the wealthy elite while sacrificing the well-being of families like Vit’s - into one that respects the rights of the poor and distributes the fruits of development more equitably.
While the challenges to achieving our goals sometimes seem insurmountable, we have seen some incredible results this year. Our campaign for a just solution for the residents of Boeung Kak has led the World Bank to agree to establish a multi-million dollar trust fund to help restore the lives and livelihoods of people like Vit who were unfairly excluded from the World Bank-funded land-titling program and later subjected to forced eviction. The Bank has also offered the Cambodian Government support to upgrade urban poor settlements in situ and improve the dire conditions at relocation sites. Our monitoring and advocacy on other major development projects and private investments has brought significant pressure to bear on donors and foreign investors to ensure that their funds are not being used to harm people and the environment.
I can proudly say that if not for the hard work of BABC’s team, many of these harms would go undocumented, those responsible may never be held accountable and there may never be any redress for victims like Vit.
As we work to help Cambodians challenge the destructive development agenda that has been imposed upon them from above, we continue to support the efforts of poor and marginalized communities to realize their own development aspirations. Our community development efforts have raised the standard of education and expanded access for thousands of poor children, while lifting their families out of the depths of poverty.
Our work depends on funding from an international circle of friends who believe that justice should know no borders – those united by the ethos of the Chinese proverb: “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”
This year, our circle of friends grew wider, as we welcomed dozens of new volunteers and we connected with new partners and supporters. Some of you gave your time to help us build houses for homeless families or teach at one of the four community learning centers we support. Many of you sent us precious donations this year. Others went even further and organized your own fundraisers for us. We cannot express enough how much your support means to Bridges Across Borders Cambodia and the families and communities we stand by. We simply cannot do this work without you!
I am appealing for your help once again.
The shoestring budget on which we operate has allowed us to leverage millions of dollars from donors and multi-lateral banks for the Cambodians who have been harmed by their ill-conceived projects. It has allowed us to help poor farmers increase their yields and give their sons and daughters the opportunity to get a university education.
Now we need help from our friends to continue this important work in 2011. During this season of giving, I hope you will consider making a donation to Bridges Across Borders Cambodia so that we can keep fighting for people like Vit and thousands of families like hers.
To learn more about our work, log on to www.babcambodia.org.
To make a donation, click here and select BAB Cambodia:
On behalf of our whole BABC team, I want to thank you for joining us to light a candle against the darkness that curses so many Cambodians to a life of poverty and injustice, and helping us to build the just world that we know is possible.
We wish you and your families a joyous holiday season and a very happy, healthy, and
peaceful New Year.
With gratitude,
David Pred
Co-Founder
Executive Director
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