Don Bosco from Cambodia to the Amazons

Kep - Cambodia & Puerto Leguizamo - Colombia -- The Synod of the Amazons of Pope Francis is getting a great impact not only in the biggest rainforest of the world, but also in many other areas where rainforests are also a vital part of the living of their peoples. Cambodia belongs to the great region of Southeast Asia, a place where rain jungles keep a great similarity with the Amazons and, definitely, a close atmospheric relation since they belong to the tropics. 

The support to indigenous children in Cambodia, mostly in the northern and mountainous Ratanakiri province, called the attention of a very special group of people living in Puerto Leguizamo, the provincial capital of the Colombian department of Putumayo, sharing the border line with Ecuador and Peru in the Amazon region. Puerto Leguizamo is a city without land roads to the "rest of the country" and it is in the middle of the jungle, with a small airport that is currently closed due to the covid19 pandemic and at the side of the brave waters of the Putumayo river that means in Quechua "River of Brave Waters." 

In Cambodia, right at the other side of the world, but in the same tropical latitud, living in the Kep National Park at the side of the Thailand Gulf, Fr. Albeiro Rodas, a Colombian missionary, listened to the claims of the leaders of the Siona people, the people of the Brave Cane and ancestral inhabitants of the Amazon forest. What can be done from a Salesian at the other side of Mother Earth? Contacts.

Fr. Rodas heard once from a group of Dutch benefactors that they wanted to help South American kids in their studies. Hands at work: He sent an email to them, relating to the difficult situation of the Siona people, who are also displaced by violence and at risk of the pandemic. The Dutch benefactors (Stichting Ontmoeting der Volkeren) approved 12 scholarships for children of the Siona ethnic group. This video is a visual report of this event that joined three countries: Netherlands, Cambodia and Colombia, through very special people. At the same time, Sawasdee Foundation from Netherlands too, approved 20 scholarships for Jarai children of Ratanakiri. Thanks for sharing this documentary and promoting the creation of more scholarships for indigenous children, the ones to guarantee the continuity of indigenous traditions, natural medicine and ancient wisdom that the world needs to listen to today.

“God’s fire burns but does not consume. It is the fire of love that illumines, warms and gives life, not a fire that blazes up and devours.” - Pope Francis on the Synod of the Amazons