Life and Hope Association (LHA)

Life and Hope Association is located on the grounds of the Wat Damnak in Siem Reap and run by the Venerable Lorm Loeurm.

They focus on two major services to girls and young women.

1.) Sewing Program: They run a ten-month long sewing program for 28 women each year. Upon graduation each woman is a skilled seamstress, with her own sewing machine, and a life-sustaining skill. While in the program, the women live in nearby housing provided my the monastery.

Thanks to some generous donors, including the Daybreakers Rotary Club of Edmonds, WA, USA the SE Asia Foundation has just completed a $6,600 grant to replace the 30 old, worn-out sewing machines used for this program.

2.) PAGE: Program for Advancing Girls Education. They provide safe housing, nourishing food, life skills counseling, and a supportive community for 35 impoverished, at-risk girls from local villages. They live in the same campus as the women in the Sewing Program. While in this program the girls are provided with uniforms, supplies, and transportation (often in the form of bicycles) to the local government high school. Also, to prepare the girls for the rigorous national exams, special tutoring classes are provided.

You may read here about our recent visit to Life and Hope Association and to their new, developing campus built to house the girls and women.

The immediate need for this fine organization is funding to continue the tutoring program to prepare the high school girls to pass their national exams. Ironically, the government has substantially increased the difficulty of the national exams thereby making it a major hurdle to graduation, but they have not redesigned the high school curriculum accordingly. Thus the need for special tutoring. $6,000 will fund this for an entire year.

If you would like to help ypu can do so by clicking here. Just note Life and Hope Association on your donation and we’ll see to it that it gets to them right away. Your donation is tax-deductible.