Dear Friends,
Thank you for the wonderful welcome.
It has been an extraordinary year, full of challenges but also great perspectives for the future. The team in Cambodia – with support from across the globe – has worked very hard in overcoming the challenges and taken great strides in extending the reach of our programmes to over 2,000 families in the past calendar year through various construction interventions. I must commend all my colleagues here for the incredible effort they have put to respond to the growing need for housing in the aftermath of disaster and the changing political and economic landscape. Now more than ever is Cambodia in need of our support to address housing problems.
As we enter 2015, Habitat for Humanity Cambodia will continue to build community impact helping vulnerable and homeless families to improve their housing conditions and transform their neighborhoods through improved access to clean water, sanitation or basic services. We will also invest more in building sector and societal impact, scaling up our successful innovative model where we partner with the private sector and government on improving the functioning of the housing market as a whole, making it work for the poor.
In all our activities we will continue to reach out to the extremely vulnerable individuals, marginalized groups and people living with disabilities. By strengthening our programming, we aim to be bolder and wiser, progressively serving the 600,000 families living in sub-standard housing and in delivering our commitment to involve our home partners in fulfilling their right to sustainable development.
We are committed to building impact within individuals, families and communities that we serve, impact within our government and non-government partners, impact within our local and international volunteers and impact within our donors.
Of course, we also could not continue to assist Cambodia without the dedicated support of our donors, and we are grateful for your continued encouragement.
I have spent the past two months appreciating our work and I am excited about the potential of bringing our work to the next level. The beneficiaries I have met shared how Habitat for Humanity Cambodia’s work has made a big difference in their lives. This alone makes me optimistic for 2015!
It is a dynamic time to be in Cambodia, with many difficulties but also great opportunity to improve and become more open to positive change to maintain our relevance. As the new Country Director for Habitat for Humanity Cambodia, I wish to extend my deep thanks for your support, and I look forward to strengthening our network. There are so many great things we can accomplish together, so may you continue this mission of building impact with us!
Kif Nguyen
