Bridges Across Borders began working in Cambodia in 2003 with two small projects aimed at helping a few people in need, and a long-term vision to make a meaningful difference in a country whose people are still recovering from thirty years of war, hunger and unimaginable atrocities. Today, our Cambodia Program is working with partner communities in Phnom Penh and five provinces on a wide range of human rights, development and peace-building initiatives, reaching thousands of people throughout the country, and building bridges both between Cambodian communities and between Cambodians and individuals from around the world.

Child Protection

Our Child Protection Program is aimed at protecting the rights and dignity of orphaned, abandoned, and at-risk children who live in Cambodia 's most destitute urban communities and children who are forced to engage in dangerous and humiliating forms of child labor. Bridges has rescued dozens of children from the terrible life of scavenging for waste at the Stung Meanchey Municipal Waste Dump. We have helped to establish new child-care facilities and supported existing facilities that provide safe, loving homes, educational opportunities and protection from harm for over a hundred former street children. We also support alternative vocational, educational and harm reduction programs for children still living on the streets. These include dance and arts programs, and the provision of inoculations to garbage collector children and emergency medical care and support to individual children in desperate need.

Community Development

Our Community Development Program facilitates and supports community-based development and poverty reduction initiatives. The goal of our Community Development Program is to empower the poor and vulnerable communities we serve to use their own potential to improve their standard of living. Bridges provides support and training to our partner communities to help them solve the problems they face and realize their own development vision. We support creative, local initiatives that improve:

• access to education and vocational training
• health and sanitation
• food security and child nutrition
• employment opportunities and livelihoods

Bridges also works at the national level with our Cambodian civil society partners to advocate for housing rights, land tenure security and structural reforms needed to bring about broad-based, sustainable development and poverty reduction. 

Community Legal Education

Our Community Legal Education Program is founded upon the strong belief that no society can protect the rights of its citizens without the Rule of Law. Bridges Across Borders has thus been engaged in extensive efforts to promote and assist in the design and implementation of community legal education initiatives throughout Southeast Asia. In Cambodia, this work has included helping to build a university-based Clinical Legal Education (CLE) program at Pannasastra University of Cambodia (PUC), which is aimed at educating future lawyers in the spirit of social justice and public service to provide legal services to marginalized and socially vulnerable people in their respective communities. We are also working with local partners to expand access to justice by developing grassroots networks of community-based legal advisors and effective legal education materials to train them. Our Community Legal Education Program involves:

• Assisting universities to develop CLE programs
• Conducting teacher/student training workshops
• Facilitating and connecting programs from different institutions together to share lessons and experiences that have been successful
• Conducting student and professor exchanges, internship programs and study tours
• Developing interactive, understandable legal education curriculum for training community-based legal advisors

Transitional Justice and Reconciliation

As the Khmer Rouge Tribunal gets underway and the Cambodian people begin the painful process of confronting the heinous crimes of the Pol Pot regime, our Cambodia Justice Initiative is working to help improve this process and ensure that the legacy of the Tribunal will strengthen the administration of justice in Cambodia and foster healing and national reconciliation. Bridges is working closely with the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) on various activities in support of this long awaited opportunity to deliver justice to the millions of victims of the Khmer Rouge. The activities of the Cambodia Justice Initiative include:

• Court monitoring
• Advocacy
• Training Tribunal staff, NGO monitors and outreach provider

Technical advisor visits aimed at sharing the best practices and lessons learned from other international and hybrid criminal tribunals.