I have been thinking about working children. According to the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, whether children work is not a choice for many children and their families. The causes of child labor are usually found in “poverty and underdevelopment, but also unemployment and underemployment, and rapid rural–urban migration”. In addition, children may work because of a lack of parental awareness of the implications for children’s health and development. Parents want what is best for their children, but often a child’s contribution, either in the form of helping with childcare or actually bringing in extra income, is not an optional extra but an essential need.

Culturally, in Cambodia it is completely normal for children to be instrumental in the family economy. The problem is when it means that the children are needed to the extent that they are unable to attend school. Another layer of complication is added when the family is faced by emergencies, such as a global pandemic, death or incapacitation of an adult earner, loss of a job, harvest failures, and severe weather. The families in these circumstances are in dire need of help. This is where Flame steps in.

Flame not only facilitates children’s enrollment into local schools and then reinforces that education, but educates the parents on the importance of their child’s participation in schooling. When we educate a child, we educate the whole child. This cannot be done in isolation from the family unit. We walk alongside the child from the early years right through to tertiary level education. This is when the young person is launched back into the community they came from, equipped with the education and leadership skills to confront the roots of poverty and make a sustainable difference. This is Flame.

S. Punch, in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2009