February updates
I am continuing to try and write a review of my activities each month; February started off at a gallop and never let up. The first week in February we held a special 3 day Social Concerns Committee (SCC) meeting for a Health Training at the Hagar conference facilities. There was a long discussion on the importance of the church participating in relief work. The highlight for me was learning about some of the traditional Khmer methods of raising funds to meet an emergency disaster. In some regions, other NGOs had helped to mobilize community-wide multi-religious efforts using these methods. In other areas, churches themselves had adopted these methods. In a few of the districts they have established bereavement funds, either among the pastors or with churches. But for many of our churches they still feel outside of mainstream culture and they neither organize local church fundraisers to meet emergency needs or bereavement and they participate in wider community events to a ve...