The church was in a long, narrow building on a quiet side street in Kathmandu. After jumping out of the back of a beat-up red truck used as a regional bus, I walked the remaining way to this building with an American couple who taught in Nepal. It was exactly one year after the massive 2015 earthquake that claimed the lives of nearly ten thousand people. Yet the city still lay in obvious disrepair, with brick piles next to half-standing homes.
On the way to the house church, the couple I was with shared about different members they had gotten to know. One of those young men had grown up in an orphanage.
Turning to me, the wife said, “It must have been a good orphanage because he’s such a nice young man.”
She knew I worked in family-based care and was not a fan of orphanages.
I did not argue. I knew all too well that a person could have a lot of internal scars that were not readily apparent from both abandonment and an institutional upbringing.
As the only guest in the tiny church room, I was asked to introduce myself at the beginning of the service. I shared that I lived in Cambodia and briefly explained about my work with Children in Families.
After the service, the members came over to say, “Jai’ ma see” (Praise the Lord). A handsome, twenty-something man came up to me as the people left. He shook my hand vigorously and told me how wonderful it was to meet.
“About the work you do in Cambodia,” he said in good English, “it is excellent work. I grew up in an orphanage. I wish someone had done for me what you do for children, giving them a family.”
I did not have the heart to explain to him that I was in communications and media and did not directly work with putting children in families, but I was nonetheless proud of the work CIF did. I knew that even if he’d grown up in a “good orphanage,” as my hosts called it, institutional care is no substitute for a real family.
Some of my earliest memories are centered around orphanages. When I was five years old, my parents moved to Mexico to work in a children’s home. We lived in humble but separate quarters, isolated from the other children.
I remember knowing that most of the kids were not true orphans but I did hear things like, “They were abandoned” or “Their parents did not want them.”
My experience on the orphanage playground with the other children was that they were mean. They stole our toys and picked fights. But looking back, I wonder how the kind, tender-hearted among them fared as they had neither parents to run to nor a safe place to hide as I did.
A few years later, we moved to Venezuela so that my parents could start an orphanage. The plans eventually fell through as the government began to create a more stringent legal framework around foreigners taking in local children, thus making it more difficult to build and fill orphanages. But I did grow up believing the world was full of parentless children who were best served in orphanages.
It was not until 2015 when I had been living in Cambodia for a year working for an anti-trafficking organization that I learned differently. I met a staff member of Children in Families at a friend’s house, and when he shared about family- based care and that eighty to ninety percent of children in orphanages are there due to poverty, not the loss of parents, I was dumbfounded. I had no idea!
After he gave me his business card, I went home and began reading CIF’s website. By that evening, my paradigm of caring for vulnerable children had shifted. One month later, I started working at CIF. Soon I was visiting families, interviewing, researching, and immersing myself in family-based care. My passion has never waned.
If less than an hour of a common-sense discussion about family-based care can convince me that children belong in families and that the institutional model of orphanages does more harm than good, I am hopeful that this book will help either solidify the reader’s understanding of family-based care or shift the reader from belief in institutions to more sustain- able and loving ways of caring for children globally.
The book is broken into three different sections. The first is following a family’s journey of running an orphanage and their conclusion that there is a better way of supporting vulnerable children. The second takes the reader into the founding of CIF, where you will meet many people who helped shift the narrative, change laws, and care for children. Finally, I will address family-based care globally and solutions because this is not only an issue in Cambodia.
I felt compelled to write this book for many reasons, the first being that CIF has been incredibly successful, despite many challenges, and if they can start family-based care in a nation with no foundation for it, others can too. I also felt drawn to write it because, working in Cambodia, I know of several current children’s homes where rampant abuse and trauma continues.
The sad reality is that I have not interviewed a single person who worked in or grew up in an orphanage where sexual, cultural, and physical abuse was not taking place. Yet to this day, despite so much data that proves family-based care is significantly better for children than institutions, millions of dollars annually pour into Cambodia for the running of children’s homes. I cannot stay silent when I continue to hear stories of Cambodia’s most vulnerable children isolated from their families and communities, living in inadequate housing with revolving doors of caretakers, while foreigners plaster their sob stories on newsletters and social media. These same foreigners are applauded as heroes for rescuing the children; meanwhile, they do little to actually care for them. It’s a system that is failing these children and delaying their vulnerability rather than solving it.
I write because not one day passes when I don’t lament that our soft hearts and ignorance are causing great harm to these kids—kids who will grow up stripped of their cultural identities, in the very cycles of abuse we claim to rescue them from. Yet there are successful models out there to learn from. I write to give you very viable solutions and tools to do better for orphans and vulnerable children.
This book is full of real people. Real lives with stories that deserve our attention and respect. All the people I write about are real and their stories true. I did, however, take some creative liberties around conversations or small details to set a scene or condense timelines for length. I also changed many names, identifying factors, and some locations to protect vulnerable stories. The point of this book is not to name and shame any organization or person, it’s to bring you along on a journey to family-based care.
I learned early on while working in the world of Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that none are void of issues and problems. Probably because people are running them. And when people, even those with good intentions, are involved, there is usually a level of brokenness and dysfunction.
Some of the people in this book were victims of their circumstances. Many made poor choices at one point or another. Some repented of their poor decisions, while others never acknowledged their wrongs and continued to hurt and abuse. They deserve our grace but not our approval. I do not tell anyone’s story to create heroes, victims, or villains. Instead, I tell their stories so we can all learn and grow in our understanding.
When I met Cathleen, the founder of CIF and a main character in this book, one of the things that drew me to her was her willingness to admit her imperfections. She said to me one day, “I made a lot of mistakes. And I have spent hours, if not days and years, on my knees in tears repenting for the damage I have done on behalf of the children.”
I also appreciated her willingness to let go of CIF. Despite the years she spent fighting to protect children and to keep them in Cambodian communities, she handed control of her organization over to others. From the beginning, she wanted CIF to be championed by Cambodians and for CIF to collabo- rate with other organizations to strengthen families.
My favorite interviews were the ones with her and Ming Anny, CIF’s very first staff, sitting side by side, telling stories, laughing, and sometimes arguing over details. Theirs is a friendship forged in the furnaces of struggle and perseverance.
Cathleen and Ming Anny are not heroes. They are two broken people learning, growing, loving, and repenting as they do their best to be obedient to the things of God and the people He placed in their midst. They love children. They love families.
I tell their stories as honestly as possible and as honoring as possible while still protecting identities.