VIDEO: Rapid expansion in south east Asia

The cyclone crisis in Burma has focussed world attention on South and East Asia, prompting us to tell you about CORD’s rapidly expanding programme in the region.

From our base in Phnom Penh CORD’s Regional Director Noel Matthews and his team of eight are building active partnerships with seventeen Cambodian organisations; supporting them as they work to improve life for a people still dealing with the legacy of trauma and grief of the country’s tragic past.

Seventy per cent of Cambodians are under the age of 30; there is little redress for the huge social injustice and extreme poverty countrywide. Thirty eight per cent of people exist on less than 50 US cents a day. Mistrust is widespread.

CORD is at the heart of our partners’ work with the poorest of the poor, using our long experience to build effective ways of developing livelihoods; of strengthening communities as they struggle over land and water rights; of giving them a voice in a better future.

We are recognised as a key player in the peace building network, the most exciting grassroots movement to happen in Cambodia for 30 years.

In just twelve months our programme has grown rapidly; now we are actively planning to extend into Mynamar and Laos. To do so we need your help; in prayer and in giving, so that CORD can be an effective agent of peace; of practical, sustainable action with peoples who are living at the edge of existence.