Stories

Real lives. Real change.

Behind every donation is a child who sleeps safely tonight. Behind every mission trip is a family lifted from hardship. These are their stories.

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The story behind our first schoolhouse.

The IHM 2025 Cambodia Medical Mission team

Cambodia Medical Mission 2025: Five years in.

From July 28 to August 1, 2025, IHM returned to the floating villages of Cambodia for our 5th Annual Medical Mission. 2,486 patients cared for. 804 children. A second school opened. A promise renewed.

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Latest Stories

More moments from the field.

Hear directly from the children, families, and volunteers whose lives intersect with our mission.

Tao smiling in her classroom at the IHM school

The Inspiring Story of Tao: Overcoming Obstacles Through Education.

A stateless Vietnamese girl in Kampong Chhnang faced poverty, displacement, and exclusion — until education changed everything. Her story is what your sponsorship makes possible.

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Students of the Le Van Khanh School in their classrooms

Celebrating Cambodia's New Year with New Beginnings.

A reflection on resilience, gratitude, and the supporters who turned a school into a sanctuary — and a Khmer New Year into a moment of hope.

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Close-up of flooded floating houses during monsoon season in Tri An

The Quiet Flood.

Every monsoon, the Mekong overflows and Tri An disappears into the water. See how the children of Le Van Khanh refuse to let calamity stop their education.

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Chớ, a 7-year-old stateless Vietnamese girl at the IHM school

A Time of Reflection for all our Blessings.

A Thanksgiving letter from the children of Le Van Khanh — meet Chớ, a 7-year-old whose life changed because of you.

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Dragon dance at the Tet celebration at Le Van Khanh school

"Tết" — A Celebration of Rebirth.

For most stateless Vietnamese families of Tonle Sap, 2022 marked the very first Tết they could celebrate. Dragon dances, bicycles, sticky rice cakes, medical care, and clean toilets — all in one holiday.

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The Le Van Khanh school classroom on its first day open

Going to School for the First Time.

November 1, 2021. After two years of pandemic delays, IHM opened its school doors — and a generation of stateless Vietnamese children walked into a classroom for the very first time.

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A boy paddling a plastic tub at Chong Kneas floating village — the photo used in the Urbanist Hanoi feature

Inside Cambodia's Floating Village.

A feature from Urbanist Hanoi on Chong Kneas — the Tonle Sap floating village where 40% of residents are ethnic Vietnamese living as undocumented migrants. The same communities IHM serves.

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Floating wooden homes on the bank of the Tonle Sap River in Phnom Penh — the Reuters report that IHM curated

Cambodia Begins Evicting Floating Homes Amid Protests.

A Reuters report by Prak Chan Thul on the dismantling of ethnic Vietnamese floating-home communities in Phnom Penh — the same families IHM serves, now displaced.

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IHM volunteers with two young stateless Vietnamese sisters near the Tonle Sap River

Exploited or Liberated. Your Call.

An urgent op-ed by Richard Botkin — 20-year IHM anti-trafficking volunteer — on the stakes facing stateless Vietnamese children in Cambodia. Content note: discusses child exploitation.

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Hundreds of children gathered at a floating village with the IHM team in 2019

Cambodia Medical Mission 2019.

A first-person account by Dr. Mai-Khanh Tran — 45 team members, 16 healthcare professionals, 2,000 patients served, 200 families given safe homes. The foundational story of IHM's work.

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Boats moored at the floating village dock on Tonle Sap Lake — the families affected by the land relocation policy

Land Allotted for Boat People Must Be Rented.

A news report on the 40ha relocation plan for 4,563 floating-home families in Kampong Chhnang — including 2,480 Vietnamese families denied the right to own land.

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UN Special Rapporteur Rhona Smith speaking at a press briefing at the OHCHR

Smith Calls for Fairness in Vietnamese Evictions.

The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Cambodia urges the government to be "fair and transparent" on the relocation of evicted Vietnamese families. The international voice for the communities IHM serves.

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The floating village on the Tonle Sap River — image from The Phnom Penh Post

Minister Defends Relocation.

Cambodian Interior Minister Sar Kheng defends the eviction of Vietnamese floating-home families — saying the policy came on the back of "environmental" concerns. The government's perspective.

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A floating shop at dusk in Chong Koh, photographed by Andrea Frazzetta for The New York Times

A People In Limbo.

A New York Times Magazine feature by Ben Mauk — supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting — on the ethnic Vietnamese floating-village communities IHM serves. Major journalism.

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The Tonle Sap floating village in Kampong Chhnang — a 2019 photo from the RFA report

More Than Two-Thirds Evicted.

An RFA progress report. Of around 2,300 ethnic Vietnamese families on the Tonle Sap floating village, only 700 remain — and they face a July deadline.

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A large gathering of elderly ethnic Vietnamese men and women at a community meeting in Cambodia — the families displaced from the Tonle Sap floating villages

No Room on Water, No Home on Land.

A Thomson Reuters Foundation report by Rina Chandran on the ethnic Vietnamese families of Cambodia's Tonle Sap — moved off the water by government order, and finding nowhere to belong on the land they were given.

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