Friends of Cambodia in the U.S. wants to help orphaned children suffering from HIV/AIDS and other diseases and children with mental health problems whose parents do not know how to cope because they were deprived of family experiences by forced separations during the Khmer Rouge years. At the Nutrition Center, a hospital in Phnom Penh, we will help urban orphans from brothels and other hospitals that have abandoned them by funding training of nursing staff and buying medicine and equipment. At the Child Mental Health Center, we will fund training of a speech therapist, a special educator, two school/family counselors, a clinical psychologist, two physiotherapists, a psychiatric social worker, an occupational therapist, an EEG machine, a family cottage, a school for the retarded, a vocational training unit and speech therapy. Our goals for both are sustainability.
Key FOCUS members in the U.S. include two Vietnam veterans who know that American military involvement in Southeast Asia helped pave the way for the Khmer Rouge regime. Both residents of Maine, founder and CEO John Bodwell and President Dave Griffiths visited Cambodia in September 2001 to make plans for the children's health projects. Another FOCUS leader is Sunny Mao, a Cambodian-American refugee from the Killing Fields. FOCUS is organizing Cambodian-American volunteers who live in Maine and Massachusetts, and has established a network of Cambodians in-country who want to help with development efforts.
Since 1995, FOCUS founder John Bodwell has spent about $40,000 out of his military pension to build wells, replace flood-control culverts crushed by armored vehicles, donate rice and rice seeds, sponsor rural visits by two Cambodian doctors and supply writing pads, pens and pencils to a rural school with 300 students. As it grows, FOCUS' humanitarian programs will also include school construction, agricultural improvements, fish farms, basic housing, hospital restoration and scholarships.