(ANS – Phnom Penh) – As a registered humanitarian, welfare, educational organization under the auspices of the Salesian Society of St. John Bosco, the Don Bosco Children Fund (DBCF) Program exclusively pursues goals that serve the welfare of Cambodian children (Help, Education, Love, Protection) and guided by Don Bosco’s Preventive System of Education (Reason, Religion, Kindness). The motto of DBCF is “Educating children, Building their future”.

DBCF Strategy is the concept of “education for all, all for education”  that includes

• encouraging the poorest of the poor to go to school and get an education for life;
• promoting the capacity program of poor children and
• offering children better opportunities for employment through vocational and technical training and/or further higher studies in university. With education as the goal, we have opened this opportunity to the poorest of the poor.

It is an opportunity to be a blessing to the street children, HIV/AIDS orphans and rural children within our target group. By January 2015 we had reached 3,474 children and youth in fourteen cities and provinces of Cambodia.

The criteria of DBCF for allocating assistance to education and health care are that children must be

• poor and/or orphaned. Their situation is assessed by visiting the home and village of the family;
• a child who has a strong desire to study but the parents are unable to support the child financially to go to school;
• a child who has no other support from another organization;
• the child must be in the age-group 6-12 for basic elementary education or 12-18 for secondary or vocational/technical education.

People living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) and/or orphans are being helped and encouraged to go to school. At present we have 843 children/youth that are inflicted with HIV/AIDS.

The most noticeable impact on the beneficiaries are that the children’s behaviour and values show positive results and improvements such as: they expressed more self-confidence, raised their dignity and hopes for the future; look at their lives in a more positive and meaningful way, get good employment and earn a decent livelihood as they understood that education is the key to increase their opportunities and reduce their status of poverty.

When emergencies arise like flooding or houses destroyed or family deaths, help and support are provided by the DBCF friends and sponsors.

Published 01/07/2015