Australian Story: Mar 17

On Australian Story, NSW Young Australian of the Year Tara Winkler gives another side to children’s orphanages in Cambodia.

Introduced by Jodhi Meares.

Tara Winkler who was named NSW Young Australian of the Year in 2011 after setting up an orphanage in Cambodia has now spoken out against the spread of orphanages in that country.

She says most children living in Cambodian orphanages have actually got parents – but the parents are too poor to look after them. Instead of placing the children into orphanages, assistance should be given to their families.

Tara Winkler was 22 when she started volunteering at an orphanage in the town of Battambang, before realising the director was embezzling donations and abusing children.

With permission from local authorities, she set up her own orphanage to house fourteen of the children, and called it Cambodian Children’s Trust.

Her work was featured on the ABC’s Australian Story program in 2010, by which time she had 27 children in her care.

But in the following years she began to have serious doubts about the orphanage model. A UNICEF report had found that the number of orphanages in Cambodia had doubled in the space of five years – even though most kids had parents.

“I had these moments of mild despair thinking about it. CCT had inadvertently become yet another orphanage to add to that list,” she says.

“The conclusion I came to was that no matter how good an orphanage is, the best place for a child is in a family.”

Now all the children in the care of Cambodian Children’s Trust are housed in families or foster families, and CCT runs a range of educational and health programs to assist the poorest kids in Battambang.

Over 100 children from the local slums attend the programs each day. “CCT was set up as an orphanage, but now it’s better described as a community development organisation,” she says in the updated Australian Story program to air on March 17.

But it hasn’t all been good news for Tara Winkler, who is now 28. In 2010, a young Cambodian orphan, Jendar Heng drowned during a CCT outing to the local pool.

It was “the worst day of my life” for Tara Winkler.

Drowning is a leading cause of death in Cambodia where few people have had swimming lessons. Following Jendar’s death, all the children in CCT programs are put through a ‘survival swimming’ program.

In the new episode of Australian Story, Tara Winkler also reveals a dramatic development in her personal life…

Monday March 17, ABC1 at 8pm