Friends-International named WiTR charity for 2019

Women in Travel Retail (WiTR), the membership organisation for women in the travel retail industry, has announced that its charity for 2019 is Friends International, nominated by Colleen Morgan of The Moodie Davitt Report.

Voted for by WiTR members, Friends-International is a leading social enterprise saving lives and building the futures of the most marginalised children and youth, their families and their communities via projects in South East Asia and across the world.

Based in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, Cambodia, Friends- International has projects in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia and Switzerland (serving Europe). WiTR will be raising funds to give beauty salon training for 24 young women, aged 16 – 24, in Siem Reap. This will also allow them to provide for their children and siblings, improving the lives of 100 women and children in total.

Siem Reap is the major tourism centre of Cambodia, and home to the Angkor Temples which attract thousands of travellers every year, bringing opportunity and economic growth. “Unfortunately the growth has not reached the most vulnerable in society, and with limited skills and few options for employment, many poor families end up on the streets with their children. A high number of these are young women, and the risks they face are huge, including abuse, exploitation and trafficking to work in the sex industry,” says Colleen.

This cause touched the hearts of many WiTR members and the task set is to raise  €15,000 to help these young women via the Friends-International Kaliyan Mith (“Good Friends” in Khmer) project in Siem Reap which enables marginalized youth to access skills training in various vocations including the salon project that WiTR will support. Friends’ beauty salon training business in Siem Reap provides a safe space to empower young women to learn market-friendly skills in a customer oriented, real-work environment.

This year’s charity was chosen from seven nominated by WiTR members– three in Cambodia, two in India, one in Bangladesh and one in the USA.

“Just reading the nominations makes us realise how much misery, illness and poverty exist in the world and how those of us who are lucky enough to have security, in our jobs and at homes, need to reach out and help others,” comments WiTR chairman Sarah Branquinho.

Various fund-raising initiatives will be run by WiTR members throughout the year, culminating in the annual meeting and raffle at TFWA World Exhibition in October.

“Every year we are amazed at the generosity of our industry in helping us to meet our ambitious targets. We are always enormously grateful for every contribution, however small and, of course, though WiTR is a women’s organisation, donations are accepted from our male colleagues!” adds Vice Chair Gerry Munday.

Note: Moodie Davitt Report has also selected Friends-International as the

beneficiary of its 2019 fundraising initiatives

Note to Editors:

Women in Travel (WiTR) was created in 2006 to recognise the contribution of women to the travel retail industry, past, present and future and as a forum for the women in the travel retail industry. It allows us a privileged medium to exchange ideas, and just as importantly to support people in need who we believe would benefit from our help. From year to year we help different groups or communities (from Haiti to India to Sichuan) to help themselves, with a strong focus on children.

About Friends-International. Friends-International was born on the streets of Phnom Penh in August 1994. It initially provided services to the street kids found in the Cambodian capital in the aftermath of years of genocide and conflict in the country. The original Friends project, Mith Samlanh (which means ‘Friends’ in Khmer – all programs use a local language version of ‘Friends’ in their name) became a local NGO in 1999, and the organisation went on to expand both its programs and partnerships in the following years, developing social business and child protection elements to ensure comprehensive and creative solutions and services for all the marginalized youth and communities it now works with. The 17 children whose lives F-I changed in 1994 have grown to over 130,000 in the ensuing decades, thanks to its innovative partnership model of ‘Together, building futures’.