Observing a Family seminar

In my last day of this Cambodia visit I got to observe a Family seminar. It is held by Joseph Keo, who met Finnish church workers while studying in Hong Kong. As a result of that encounter, Joseph is now training Cambodian couples for communication, budgeting and solving out the family issues. Joseph has been training five hundred couples in his three-year career of Family seminar consultant. His training consist of 57 sessions, so it will take about two years for a couple to graduate from this 'course' if you do the exercises every other week. 

Joseph uses a booklet that was designed by Finnish church workers. Joseph has big plans for the future in Cambodia. He would like to set up family counselling centers alongside churches. Also, he plans on extending his training so that he would train training of trainers for this course. That means, he would not need to travel everywhere to teach any more.

Today's seminar was about couples supporting each other in their work. Also there was a group exercise about community problems. Each group had to make also a solution for their community's problems. Main problems in Cambodian families in these communities were gambling, drinking, being poor, health issues and violence.

Sansa in Finland is supporting Joseph's Family Seminars and his program on Cambodia's Family FM 99.5. This seminar is a great way of creating awareness of the amount of help available for families and couples. Also marketing Family-FM so that these couples can learn every day something about family life via local radio.