Daughters Shop

We are in the exciting preparation stages for opening our new store in downtown Phnom Penh. It is in an old French building on the Art Street (St178, opposite the National Museum), and has space inside for several outlets in the one store. A team of Cambodian builders have been renovating the premises, along with Pete from New Zealand. The ground floor will house the shop selling Daughters products, along with a women’s spa. Exhibition rooms will be situated on the next floor up, with a tea shop on the top floor. There are a number of purposes: it will be an outlet for Daughters products and businesses to generate sales locally; it will provide jobs to around 12 Daughters clients; it will also serve as an educational venue where the general public will have an opportunity to more about the situation regarding the sex industry in Cambodia in addition to supporting the work of Daughters.

We are thankful to have the amazing skills of Richard, a chef from New Zealand, who has been training the girls in cooking skills, and also an interior designer recently arrived, Jennifer from the USA, who is styling the store. We are thankful to many other volunteers at Daughters who are all very busy helping with the many preparations, including; customer service classes, English classes, spa skills training, graphic design and marketing, product design, screen printing techniques, and many more. In addition, we are blessed to have had a clothing designer, Olivia from Australia, who has designed a range of clothing for our new shop. Olivia has taught design classes each day in order to pass on her skills, both for sustaining Daughters design department and also to empower girls with skills for their own future businesses

We in the final preparation stages and are anticipating opening mid-March. Watch this space for more...

Exit Strategy

We have been developing our exit strategy at Daughters, for girls who have been with us for 2 years or more. Our desire has always been that girls are able to graduate Daughters and live sustainable independent lives. Three girls entered our exit program in January 2010. These girls had been at Daughters for more than 2 years; they were reluctant and nervous about leaving. We arranged for them to buy sewing machines and over-lockers through a partnering micro-finance organization, and they started their own small businesses at home. The scheme is proving very successful so far. They have been taking in piecework from Daughters and producing high quality work much faster, as a result of which they have earned double what they had been earning at Daughters. We are currently creating a support structure for providing various other support structures that will help them be successful, including a social worker to visit weekly and business advice and support. These girls are able to attend the other programs at Daughters, including church, medical and counselling clinics and educational programs.

This scheme is in the early stages, but is considered so successful by the other girls that some have requested to buy sewing machines to work in their own homes, so we are expanding this program.