OUR JOURNEY BEGINS IN A SLUM

At the beginning of the year 2000, the founder of Alongsiders, Craig Greenfield, left a corporate career in the New Zealand technology sector and moved into a Cambodian slum (just a stone's throw from the slum community Craig and his family live in today).

Together with his wife Nay, Craig began working with poor families devastated by AIDS, so that children who had lost their parents were not taken away from everyone else they know and love as well. 

Cambodian communities were being empowered and supported to care for their own orphans. A community-based orphan care movement was born in a slum in southern Phnom Penh and spread to other slums around the city, eventually reaching hundreds of orphaned children. 

But as they grew close to many of the orphans who were their neighbours, Craig and Nay were frustrated that they could personally only reach a handful of children with the type of intense nurture, coaching, encouragement, and mentoring that would transform their lives.

Realizing that you cannot buy love (let alone for the thousands of children who need it), more paid staff was not the answer.  Instead, Craig began to plan for a volunteer movement of young Cambodians to rise up and reach the tens of thousands of marginalized children all across the country. This movement would truly be a movement of the poor helping the poor.

The movement started with just ten young Christians. They made lots of mistakes and made even more changes. But gradually they began to identify the keys to seeing such a movement take hold and last the distance.

In 2003, Alongsiders Cambodia was born (previously called Big Brothers and Sisters of Cambodia). Today, hundreds of young Cambodians faithfully walk alongside and mentor one 'at risk' child each in their own communities, and the movement has spread into ten provinces of Cambodia. One generation is being equipped to reach the next.

And the first group of "little brothers & sisters"? Most are now in their early 20's, they have become leaders in their own communities and many have gone on to become Alongsider mentors themselves.

Over the years, invitations have come from all over the world, to see Alongsiders-type movements established in countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. After more than ten years learning in Cambodia, the tools, resources and insights are in place to finally see that happen.

The best is yet to come.