With great excitement (and a little lingering frustration) I'm pleased to announce that the BGC has been granted NGO (non-government organization) status by the Royal Government of Cambodia. It's just the end of the beginning as there is much more ahead for us.

Thank you very much for your faithful prayers that have finally come to fruition.

After many months of nothing, I got a call this morning about 11 to go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at 3pm to sign some documents. So I went and signed the documents.

Now we have to wait for the Secretary of State to also sign them to make the NGO formal and legal. I don't know when this will happen.

Please pray that all proceeds smoothly.

We are still waiting............

Please pray.

Today I found out that the gov't has requested a new document. It seems to me that they are making things up, but I'm assured that's not the case. I've been told that different officials are arguing with each other and there have been a number of problems. However, it seems better and we may be nearing the end (after I submit the new document).

I also learned that one reason that new Christian NGO's are facing increased difficulty is an indirect result of the Joyce Meyer debacle last year. Through that incident the gov't began to see the Christian movement as a potential problem and is taking steps to monitor and control it more, not necessarily a bad thing.

Please pray that I'm encouraged in this belabored process and that it will come to fruition in the near future.

I have no new information regarding the approval of the NGO. At this point it looks more and more likely that it cannot happen before the election which means that it's very possible it won't happen until early 2009. This is a somewhat discouraging prospect. Please pray that God gives me wisdom about how to proceed and about how not to proceed.

God has blessed me with a new assistant with little disruption to our workflow. Vorn (John) took another job with another organization that offered him a lot more money. He only worked for me for two months. He's still helping me a little with some things.

We've jumped through all the hoops and handed in all our documents. We are now waiting to see if the inside track will be successful. Word is that it will be complete before the elections in July. This is important. God is good.

Our application for an NGO inches forward, even with inside track assistance. Please pray that God will move the mountain ranges that continue to block our way. Every time we reach one plateau, we are facing a new, higher peak.  It seems possible that the enemy could prevail and shut us down for good. But we believe that God will be victorious and that we are on the cusp of much greater blessings to come. Timing is important because in just over 2 months there are nationwide elections that will shutdown the gov't for 3-4 months-if things go smoothly.

The only thing to report at this time is that I've turned over the paperwork and am getting some assistance from my friend Meng, who has some connections in high places. Now I'm waiting. It may be another couple of months. Please pray that all goes smoothly from here on and there are no big, unpleasant surprises.

I now have a Cambodian friend helping me. He says it should be completed in a couple more months.

Sina met with the head of the district Office of Education. I was very hopeful that they would be cooperative after talking with the Ministry of Education. That was not the case. They want to see the approved Project Agreement with the Ministry of Education first. Of course, the Project Agreement will take many months to process (I just submitted it last week) and once it is approved we won't need the district approval anyway. Not sure what to do at this point. I suspect they want something.

Sina wrote out a report of our activities at the suggestion of the Ministry of Education and set out to get it approved by various local level leaders, some of which are political leaders and others work for the local Office of Education. She ran into a bit of a conundrum because the local people wanted a form from the Ministry. The problem is that such a form doesn't exist. So what to do?

I really think the key to all this is getting all these separate offices to talk to each other. They can explain to one another their policies. It also helps them take away the fear of doing something wrong. So I called the man I had previously met at the Ministry of Education and asked for his advice. I explained the situation to him. He agreed to call the district Office of Education and explain to them that there is no form and that they should try to help us. I was very appreciate for his help. He called me back to say that the local people should be more cooperative now.

Sina already had a meeting planned for Friday (tomorrow) with the local district office. I expect that it will go much better for her now. I'm looking forward to some good news.

[This report is very important to get and will speed up other parts of the application process considerably, though the report itself is not so important.]

I went back to the Ministry of Education today only to find that the person I was looking for was in Vietnam for a week or two. This turned out to be a good thing because I met a couple of new people there that were very helpful.

They were a bit confused about the new policies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so one of them called over there to learn first hand. That was one of the best things to happen so far because after that phone call they could clearly give me some advice about how to speed up the process because they said that a Project Agreement would take many months to complete, but they would help me get the support letter I needed more quickly. This involves writing a report about the literacy program and getting it approved by the district level Office of Education and then to provincial level office. Once the local level offices approved the program (by putting their red stamp on it) I should bring the report back to the Ministry of Education and they would give me a letter of support to bring to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. All this while my request for a Project Agreement with the Ministry of Education is also being processed.

So I gave the assignment of writing the report and getting local approval to Sina because she will probably be able to do it better and quicker than I could.

I finally got my documents together for the Ministry of Education and brought them down to drop off only to find out they were closed for some unknown holiday. I'll make another attempt tomorrow.

1. Submit a Project Agreement to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) in the form of an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) in both English and Khmer.
2. Wait for them to review it, send it to the Department of Non-Formal Education (NFE)  for review and then sign it.
3. After MoU is signed with MoEYS, I can request a letter of sponsorship to submit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs along with my other docs.
4. Make another MoU with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The MoU's need to be renewed every 3 years.

If you're wondering what NFE is see the national policy here. http://www.moeys.gov.kh/en/education/nfe/policy_nfe.htm

This morning Randy and I went to visit an admitted low level bureaucrat at the Department of Non-Formal Education. It turns out that it was probably good to talk with him, but it was out of order. We needed to go to another department first. He was pretty helpful in guiding us. He will come into play again further down the road.

His response to our request for a sponsorship letter was that they don't know who we are; they don't know our organization or our project. This seemed reasonable. So before we can get the letter we need, we need to make a Project Agreement with the Ministry of Education. After we have this we can ask for the letter.

So we went to the Office of Cultural Relations and Scholarship that handles the basic forms for the Project Agreement. We met with the director who gave us some samples to follow. He said that normally we should have an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before we can make a Project Agreement with the Ministry of Education. This was the case in the past; however, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently changed its policy. The director seemed to accept this because I showed him the sheet from the other ministry.

(If you're totally confused, join the club. I'm trying to give you a clear idea of just how confusing this process is. To make matters worse, nothing is computerized. Every office we see has piles of formal documents just lying all over the place. Also, These departments that should work together seem to have little contact with each other.)

So now I'm re-working my documents to fit the format I was given. Randy was kind enough to offer his assistant to translate for me. Hopefully, we'll be able to drop them all off in a week or so.

Yesterday my friend, Randy, and I made a visit to the Ministry of Education. More specifically, we were looking for the Department of Non-Formal Education. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs told me that I need to have the appropriate ministry give me a letter of support and partnership for my project.

We first went to the main building and were told that they were at another location down the road. We went there and a nice man walked us to a near-by building and helped us find the right department. After many thanks, we went in and talked with a woman behind a door labeled "literacy". She wanted to introduce us to her boss, but he was in a meeting so we waiting for about 40 minutes to meet with him.

Randy was a bit taken aback at the unkempt and cluttered "decor". I've seen worse.

All the while we were unsure if we were talking to the correct people.  The seemed to keep pushing us up the chain of command, but no one made it clear if we were even on the right road or if we need to be somewhere else altogether.

In the end, we were told that we need to meet with another man and were able to make an appointment for Thursday morning to see him. We encountered some nice folks along the way.

Most groups seeking NGO status hire a local "broker" or "agent" who does all this running around and finding the right people. I'm not sure yet if we need to follow that route or not.

Yesterday, my friend Randy took me over to meet with the office of Foreign Affairs about setting up an NGO for the BGC here in Cambodia. I brought with me a number of documents that I had prepared. We met with the woman in the lobby. She reviewed my documents which were okay, but I was missing some items. She said the process now was more difficult than before, even just last year. The one big thing I need to do is get a letter of sponsorship from the Ministry of Education. Hopefully, that won't be too difficult. Overall, the meeting was fairly positive.

For more information on Cambodia's policy of Non-Formal Education.