Izzy Watson looks at the work of Mith Samlanh's vocational training for marginalised youth and the importance the centre puts on creativity and freedom...

In the big, confusing mass of experiences that was our trip to Cambodia, the things that stick out most clearly are the people we met. For me, the first of the many, many people leaving a big impression came on our second day, in an Art Therapy class. Her name was Wi Caa.

This holistic approach creates an extremely progressive centre which shows in every aspect of Mith Samlanh’s work.

We were visiting the organisation Mith Samlanh, an explosion of colour in the city centre. Mith Samlanh works with 19000 children a year in Phnom Penh, taking a holistic approach to helping ‘marginalised urban children and youth, their families and communities to become productive, independent citizens of their country’.

This holistic approach creates an extremely progressive centre which shows in every aspect of Mith Samlanh’s work. This can only be explained with a long list of examples, but to provide on:, Mith Samlanh ban photography of the kids in the centre to protect the centre as the kids' ‘own space’.

My favourite aspect of this forward thinking attitude and business model was in the Art Therapy class I witnessed, and their teacher Wi Caa. One thing that’s struck me talking to young people in Cambodia is that art is considered a profitable and reliable career path, so when I entered the class, I assumed that the teaching would be in the same vocational vein as the garage and the hairdressing salon which was obviously responsible for the funky haircuts and sometimes strikingly bridal midday hairdos of the Mith Samlanh crew. I was wrong.

Wi Caa was a newbie teacher with one of those serene demeanours that makes you believe that she had never experienced stress

Wi Caa was a newbie teacher with one of those serene demeanours that makes you believe that she had never experienced stress, corrected me on this. What she teaches "depends on the children, its free painting. [I don’t] focus hard on how they draw, what they use. Art guides them, lets them develop there own style. [We] don’t sell it, it makes them happy [and] they worked hard on it."

It was a nice reminder that whilst being trained in transferable skills is fantastic and necessary, there is something very important about having a room of your own, a blank piece of paper and the chance to make something that’s all for you.

Words and Photos:: Izzy Watson

Read what Luke Harman had to say about his experience at Mith Samlanh here.

To find out more about what Mith Samlanh do, visit their website.