How (Not) to Start an Orphanage Read online

  TARA WINKLER is the Managing Director of the Cambodian Children’s Trust (CCT), which she established with Jedtha Pon in 2007 in order to rescue fourteen children from a corrupt and abusive orphanage.

  Tara has led CCT through a number of significant organisational changes, including the closure of the initial CCT orphanage in favour of a holistic model of programs and services to help Cambodian families escape poverty, while ensuring family preservation. Tara now speaks out against the spread of orphanages in developing countries, caused by the good intentions of foreign donors, and of harm that comes to children when they are separated from family and left to grow up in institutions.

  In 2011 Tara was awarded NSW Young Australian of the Year in recognition of her work with CCT and she has been featured twice on Australian Story.

  How (Not) to Start an Orphanage is her first book.

  Dedicated to Sinet and Sineit Chan

  First published in 2016

  Copyright © Tara Winkler and Lynda Delacey 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 9781742376288

  eISBN 9781742695174

  Typeset by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

  Front cover images: Pete Longworth

  Cover design: Lisa White

  Contents

  Preface

  STEP 1

  Meet some orphans

  STEP 2

  Start an orphanage. Find out that’s a bad idea

  STEP 3

  Do something better

  Epilogue

  Picture Section

  CCT today

  Questions to ask before you support a children’s organisation

  Remember: you can be part of the solution

  Acknowledgements

  Preface

  If you’re reading this book, I’m guessing it’s for one of three reasons:

  1. You heard about the twenty-one-year-old Aussie girl from Bondi who rescued fourteen kids from a corrupt orphanage in Cambodia. You’re inspired by the idea of helping people in a developing country and you want to know what it’s like (or at least, what it’s been like for me).

  2. You’re cynical about charities and you’re reading this to, you know, feed the fire. (Because don’t we all do that sometimes?)

  3. You’re already a supporter of the Cambodian Children’s Trust (CCT), the non-government organisation that this book is about, and you’ve bought a copy because the proceeds help to support our work.

  If your reason is number three . . . thank you! It’s because of people like you that CCT exists at all. Even though I’m often the one out front receiving the praise, CCT’s work is very much a team effort. This team includes our incredibly generous supporters, as well as CCT’s amazingly dedicated staff in Cambodia and volunteers in Australia. So this book is a story about a journey that you are also a part of.

  If yours is the second reason, I get it! You’ll probably find a few reasons to be rather pissed off with me in parts of this story. But hopefully you’ll come to see that at CCT we are really good at learning from our mistakes, listening to constructive criticism and taking positive action to do better. There’s no gold standard or silver bullet in the fight against poverty, but I do believe CCT, working hand-in-hand with some other exemplary organisations, is helping lead the way in Cambodia.

  If your reason is the first (you want to know more about my story), I’m going to walk you through my experiences—the good, the bad and the ugly. Sharing my story in such a public way is not something that comes naturally to me. I’d give almost anything to remain behind the scenes and out of the spotlight. But I do understand that when people decide to support a small grassroots operation, they need to get to know and trust those who are running it. So it’s essential at this stage that I play a much more public role than I’m entirely comfortable with.

  But of course, for inspiration I need only look at the resilience and courage of the kids and families I work with in Cambodia; if they can soldier on through so much adversity with big, bright smiles still intact, then I can find the courage to share my story with the world.

  As the American researcher Brené Brown famously said: ‘The original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language—it’s from the Latin word cor, meaning heart . . . was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.’ That is what I will endeavour to do in this book: to tell you my story, from the heart, honestly and authentically.

  I do need to state that I’ve changed the names of many of the people and organisations that appear in this story to protect both the innocent and the guilty alike.

  And I should warn you, this is not a book about a saintly individual who runs an orphanage. In fact, CCT is not an orphanage anymore.

  As I write this, CCT, though only eight-years-young, is a well-respected Cambodian non-government organisation (NGO), whose work is made possible by a small but loyal base of generous supporters. We’re all about empowering the next generation of Cambodian kids to reach their full potential—because at the end of the day, solving Cambodia’s problems is not a job for one small NGO. It’s not even a job for all of the NGOs in Cambodia (and there’s no shortage of them). It’s a job for an entire generation. We believe CCT’s job is to empower that generation.

  We are dedicated to helping Cambodian children to escape the intergenerational cycle of poverty—for good. And, though this may come as a surprise to some, orphanages are not the answer. They are, in fact, a big part of the problem . . . (I could go on and on about this, and I will! But later . . .)

  For the last few years, we’ve been achieving our goal by focusing on family. We ensure that some of the most vulnerable children in the world have access to top-notch healthcare and a well-rounded education, while enabling them to stay with their families where they belong. This approach helps to prevent them from being trafficked and subjected to child labour, and from being separated from their families and ending up in orphanages. We do this because it’s better for the kids, better for the adults they’ll grow up to be, and better for the communities they are a part of.

  Sometimes, I have to pinch myself when I look back and reflect on how far CCT has come. It seems just yesterday I was standing at the gate of a very different organisation, with fourteen desperate kids running towards me.

  And I have to remind myself of how far I’ve come too, from the nineteen-year-old backpacker landing in town with a pair of oversized Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses on my head, thinking South-East Asia would be a cool place to hang out for a few months until I went back to real life to continue building my career in the film industry. (Spoiler alert: that never happened.)

  So. Here we go.

  STEP 1

  Meet some orphans

  1

>   I grew up in the eastern suburbs of Sydney in a not-so-average family. Peter, my dad, is a Hungarian-Australian musician, circus performer and bad-joke-teller. He loves Leonard Cohen and wombats. Sue, my mum, is a professional storyteller, preschool teacher and dog-lover. She loves gardening and listening to ABC radio.

  I’ve never called them Mum and Dad. They’ve always just been Sue and Peter to me. They never referred to themselves as ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’, so I didn’t either.

  I was very aware (and sometimes rather embarrassed) that Sue and Peter were a little more left-of-centre than most parents. They were proud of being part of the ‘counterculture’ and made sure that my little sister Noni and I were very aware of it. Both Sue’s and Peter’s political and idealistic views of the world mean they are still fundamentally hippies at heart. They’ve been in a committed relationship for over thirty years, but never married and have never intended to.

  When Sue was a young woman, she spent five years living in a pink caravan in Bellingen, with a pink cockatoo, a golden labrador and a little horse that she once rode to victory in a country horserace (wearing jeans and a wedding dress!). She left Bellingen to travel the world for two years. She has always given to charities, and always planned, in her retirement, to volunteer her time to a charitable cause.

  Peter spent his youth in a travelling circus as well as performing in bands. Like Sue, he was a passionate traveller. At twenty-three, he was backpacking through India when he got very sick with hepatitis. A local family took care of him while he slowly recovered. He often stayed with them in his years of travelling through Asia. When he came back to Australia, he returned their kindness—by helping them out financially for the rest of his life.

  Peter and Sue adore little kids. Peter loves telling the story of the first time he met me—especially when I’m being stubborn. Sue went through a long, painful labour with me and when I was finally dragged out with forceps, I was whisked off to intensive care to clear my lungs of fluid. Peter followed me down there. When he finally got the chance to pick me up, he says I looked up at him with eyes that said: ‘Watch out! I’m gonna give you hell!’ He loved that about me.

  I remember early childhood as an endless summer of daisies and music and My Little Ponies, with my little sister Noni by my side and my small, tight-knit family all around. My dad’s sister Eva and her family lived in the flat upstairs, and my grandparents lived nearby.

  My grandmother Joan, Sue’s mum, was a diehard social activist. She stood for election as a candidate for the Democrats. She rode on floats in the Mardi Gras, and wrote a book arguing against the prohibition of illicit drugs. She was pretty much the coolest granny ever. But I didn’t call her ‘Granny’. I think she might’ve punched me if I tried. She wanted to be recognised as an individual, not just a role, so Noni and I grew up calling her by her name, too.

  I’ve always been fairly headstrong. As a kid, once I had decided on something, that was that. Much to Sue’s dismay, I went through a phase in primary school of being a strangely fussy eater. At one point, the only thing I’d agree to eat for breakfast was fairy bread. So this was what I made (way overloaded with hundreds and thousands) every morning. But then I decided I didn’t like butter, so I had a rather hard time keeping all the hundreds and thousands on the bread. Then I discovered smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels and decided I wanted to eat those every morning instead.

  Growing up, my cousin Sarah, Noni and I used to spend every Thursday after school with my Hungarian grandparents. We’d eat pickle sandwiches and play My Little Ponies all afternoon. I was very close to my grandmother Nagy (Hungarian for ‘biggie’ as in ‘big mama’) and I never tired of hearing her stories. She had a lot of stories to tell. She survived the Holocaust as a young woman and was interviewed by Steven Spielberg’s research team for the archival project ‘Survivors of the Shoah’.

  Her stories were very vivid in my imagination. Being ordered by the Nazis to play piano for them before boarding a train to Poland. Arriving at Auschwitz, lining up in the freezing cold. Watching as people in the line ahead were casually divided—some sent left, some sent right. Having no idea what was coming except that it was bad. Coming face to face with Josef Mengele, the notorious Angel of Death, and being taken by how handsome he was, immaculately dressed with striking dark hair and eyes. The wave of his cane, sending Nagy and her younger sister to the right. Holding her mother’s hand and pleading for him to let them all go together, but still he waved left. Which meant that was the last time she ever saw her mother.

  Nagy’s stories entered my dreams and, in a strange way, became my memories. She would always end her stories by reminding me how grateful she was for the life she had now—in a beautiful country, surrounded by her beautiful family. She was never bitter or angry. But Peter was. He had a lot to say on the subject. And Peter’s anger and grief became my anger and grief. This is how intergenerational trauma works. You can look it up. It’s a thing.

  But anyway . . .

  During the school holidays, Sue and Peter liked to take us off the beaten track, and would drag us (sometimes protesting) deep into the Australian bush, or to remote villages in Indonesia or tiny islands off Vanuatu—places where breakfast was served with an attractive sprinkling of bugs, and where there wasn’t a smoked salmon bagel for miles. We climbed active volcanoes and swam with dugongs. We learned from a young age to embrace foreign cultures and form lasting friendships with local people.

  We were also lucky enough to be brought up in an animal-loving family. My first dog, Pepper, was a scruffy mixed terrier. She was two when I was born, and was my constant companion for the next sixteen years. As a toddler, I was often to be found curled up in Pepper’s kennel. To me, home just doesn’t feel like home without a dog. We also had pet mice, fish, cockatiels and, best of all . . . horses.

  I was six months old when Sue took me on my first horse ride. Poor Sue. I’m sure she had no idea what she was getting herself into. She’s a good rider herself—thanks to her farming background—but she hadn’t had much experience with the advanced equestrian disciplines she would soon be hearing about, twenty-four hours a day. Though it was expensive, she and Peter did their best to support my passion for horseriding. And I was about as passionate as they come.

  I was nine years old when I got my first job with horses at a riding school near Sydney’s Centennial Park. The school’s owner, Caz Stubbs, let me muck out stables and lead beginners around the park in return for riding lessons. I hero-worshipped Caz—who’d started the school at just twenty years of age—and hoped I’d grow up exactly like her.

  I did have other interests as a kid; I took piano lessons, learned guitar from my dad, I loved drawing and painting and surfing down at Bondi Beach. But in the end my passion for horses took over.

  After years of ferrying me to and from the stables, Sue and Peter decided to use part of an early inheritance they received from my grandmother Joan to buy twenty-five acres on the south coast, three hours from Sydney.

  ‘Can we get a horse now?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘Yes,’ they agreed (somewhat brokenly). ‘You and Noni can each have a horse.’

  They built a small weekender on the land, and for the next three years I spent every single weekend there, so I could ride, train and compete. It was heaven.

  When I think about it now, I don’t know how Sue and Peter did it. Horseriding is not a great sport for a middle-income family in the city. But they made sacrifices. I remember watching the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games with Sue from a little caravan in Parkes Showground in south-west New South Wales, where I was competing in an agricultural show. That wasn’t exactly Sue’s idea of a great time, but she didn’t complain. (Well, not too much, anyway . . .)

  In my early high school years, having my life split between the city and the country was a challenge for the whole family. Every Friday, as soon as the afternoon bell rang, I’d bolt out the school gates, rush home and grab my riding gear, then
either Sue or Peter would drive me the three hours down the coast so I could ride my horse all weekend. Finally, Sue and Peter (with help from Joan) agreed to send me to New England Girls’ School (NEGS) in Armidale, six hours north of Sydney. There I could combine my passion for horses with the last three years of my secondary education.

  I remember feeling as if all my dreams were coming true as we drove up the pretty New England Highway to NEGS. For the first time in my life I would be able to live on the same property as my horse, Theo, and be entirely responsible for his care.

  I missed my family and felt a bit bad about leaving Noni, but boarding at school was quite fun, kind of like one big long slumber party. Rain, hail or shine, I’d be up at the crack of dawn every morning to feed, water and rug Theo before classes. I could ride as much as I wanted in my free time. It didn’t do wonders for my grades, but I didn’t care.

  NEGS was great for me in all ways but one: the food.

  The culture surrounding food at NEGS was light-years away from the healthy, organic food I was used to at home. Each day we had a buffet breakfast, followed by a cake at morning tea, then another buffet-style hot lunch, then another sweet thing for afternoon tea, then dinner and dessert, then a cake for supper. We were given so much food we’d have silly eating competitions and food fights.

  In my first year at NEGS, I finally hit puberty. I was unaware of how integral having a streamlined tomboy’s body was to my sense of self. But the fact was that my body was changing. A very strange feeling came over me . . . a feeling of deep, profound discomfort with my changing shape.

  Over the summer holidays, I decided to go on a health kick and lose the kilo or two I’d gained at school. I attacked the project with my usual gusto. My grandmother Joan went to the gym every day, so I started going with her. I counted every calorie I put in my mouth, and restricted more and more of my food intake.

  By the time I went back to school, I seemed to be winning my personal war on puberty—I was super fit and shaped like a broomstick. And food and me . . . well, let’s just say we were developing a very unhealthy relationship.