Exert is taken from Global Goods Partners. For more information visit their website here.

Cambodia: Friends-International

Friends-International (FI) was founded in 1994 to address the needs of vulnerable communities, particularly marginalized urban children and their families in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. Today, the organization serves 1,800 street children, providing hygiene and health care, vocational training, primary education, counseling, food, emotional support, and cultural activities. FI also reaches out to 20,000 children living and working on Phnom Penh’s streets. The organization’s social enterprises provide an opportunity for a marginalized urban community to earn a fair wage in addition to receiving medical coverage, health insurance, social services, ongoing training, literacy, and capacity building. FI also runs advocacy and awareness campaigns on street children.

Products made by Friends-International are hand crafted from local, recyclable materials that can be easily sourced by the producers. With an environmental consciousness, Friends-International favors production processes that minimize their environmental footprint, including the use of found and recycled materials, making each product unique and keeping garbage off the streets and out of overflowing landfills. Recycled materials include newspapers, comics, magazines, packaging, rice bags, tin, and sarong fabric. The bags available for purchases from the GGP website are made from colorful newspaper comics collected from the French embassy in Cambodia and recycled sarongs.

Supporting Friends International through the purchase of GGP’s featured bags, customers are helping to make the streets of Phnom Penh cleaner and safer, while contributing to a better future for thousands of children. (http://www.globalgoodspartners.org/fi)