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Boeung Kok Lake
The Rudi Boa community center provides non-formal education programs for both adult and child members of the community. Educational performance is significantly below average in this area owing to high levels of poverty, migration and a lack of community services. Bridges Across Borders is addressing the educational need and demand through the provision of English, mathematics, arts and Khmer literacy classes, combined with a health and hygiene education, HIV/AIDS awareness raising and weekly classes in leadership for local teenagers.
Community Profile
Flooding is a serious problem during the rainy season, without connections to the city sewer system, all the toilets empty into the lake. It is estimated that around 2.8 tons of solid waste is dumped into the lake each day. Most of the fish that were once plentiful in the lake have now died or are not suitable to eat.
Pending Eviction
A USD $79 million contract between the Phnom Penh municipal authorities and a local private company for a 99-year lease of Boeng Kak lake and the surrounding land on February 6, 2007, confirmed fears about the imminent eviction faced by lakeside residents. Making way for luxury villas, hotels and shopping malls, this project will result in the biggest eviction Cambodia has seen since the Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh in 1975.
This ‘development project’ has grave implications for the entire city of Phnom Penh as proposed plans have indicated the filling of up to ninety percent of the lake. For a city already prone to severe flooding during the rainy season, the filling of this integral drainage system would literally spell disaster. In a bid for the highest possible profit returns, this project highlights the complete disregard of sustainable, effective and pro-poor urban planning schemes by the Cambodian authorities and private developers. The Khmer words ‘Chet Sabaras’ refer to someone who is kind, giving and thoughtful. A small group of women, mostly the parents of Rudi Boa Center students named their group Chet Sabaras to represent the ways that they hope to give strength to their community. The women’s group was established as a means of facilitating more active civic engagement in the two villages served by the Rudi Boa community center. The group, made up of around 20 members, spanning three generations, meets bi-weekly and engages in focused discussion, group activities, training sessions and information sharing.
The aim for this group is to build the capacity and participation of women so that they can represent their community and help bring about positive social change. Most of the group members carry the majority of responsibility within their families both financially and practically, yet they lack power both in the private and public spheres. Collective membership in this dynamic group of women is one way in which they can become empowered, and also build more cohesive family and community relations
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In January 2007, Bridges Across Borders opened a community center to serve two of the 21 lakeside communities which make up Village 4. The Rudi Boa Center is named after a young Scottish man who died in Australia shortly after he had volunteered in Cambodia last December. The Boa family generously provided Bridges with the funds to start this project in memory of Rudi, who had a profound experience teaching disadvantaged children while he was in Cambodia. 
The aim of the center is to provide a strong focal point in a disparate community - one that fosters a greater sense of solidarity - particularly at this time of uncertainty with the eviction threat looming. Bridges works closely with the community to help them identify and solve their most pressing problems. Plans are currently being developed between Bridges Across Borders, community representatives and several local organizations to begin providing the logistical and legal support that the 41 lakeside communities need to challenge the lake development project that threatens to displace and dispossess them. 
Besides the eviction threat, the biggest problem expressed by community leaders and residents alike is waste management. Children are regularly seen submerged in putrid overspill from the lake fishing for snails. Rudi Boa center staffs are working to address this problem through health and hygiene awareness training with both children and their parents. Plans are also under discussion with community leaders to establish a community garbage collection cooperative. By working with the community to clean up the lake and upgrade the living conditions of its residents, we hope to show the municipal authorities a far more environmentally sound and humane alternative for the development of the area than evicting thousands of families and filling the lake with concrete.
Boeung Kok lake has historically been one of the most important of seven natural lakes around Phnom Penh , dating back to the 1920s. The one square kilometer lake serves as a natural reservoir for excess rain water during the monsoon. In the 1960's, the banks of the lake were used by city residents as a park for recreation and enjoyment and following the Pol Pot era, the lake was again made into a public park with a zoo established on the eastern bank. During the 80s the first small communities began to settle beside the lake, mainly sustained by fishing and vegetable cultivation. The overflow drainage system was kept in good repair, so the water levels remained stable. 
Since the 1990's, however, the drainage system has fallen into disrepair and the lake has become heavily polluted as many rural migrants settled around the banks of the lake, where city property was still affordable. The poorest and most densely populated lakeside settlements are accessible only by a narrow path alongside an operational railway track. Due to the lack of road access, garbage disposal trucks do not service it, and residents lack the resources to ferry out their own waste. Consequently the area is strewn with garbage, and the lake itself is polluted with solid waste, raw sewage and even medical waste from the nearby Calmette Hospital. 
The participatory discussion and training sessions covered so far have included child nutrition and food hygiene, hand washing, dehydration, HIV/AIDS awareness, and a general health question and answer session with a qualified nurse. Recreational activities such as jewelry making, picnics and cooking demonstrations by the group members complement the more practical sessions by helping to build trust and friendships amongst members. 
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